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Publishing The Unpublishable
Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith
2007-present
What constitutes an unpublishable work? It could be many things: too long, too experimental, too dull; too exciting; it could be a work of juvenilia or a style you've long since discarded; it could be a work that falls far outside the range of what you're best known for; it could be a guilty pleasure or it could simply be that the world judges it to be awful, but you think is quite good. We've all got a folder full of things that would otherwise never see the light of day.
Invited authors were invited to ponder to that question. The works found here are their responses, ranging from an 1018-page manuscript (unpublishable due to its length) to a volume of romantic high school poems written by a now-respected innovative poet. You get the idea.
The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure.
The series will be concluded when the 100th manuscript is published.
001 Bruce Andrews WhDiP, a sequence from White Dialect Poetry 445pp (PDF, 825k)
002 Bruce Andrews Libretto from White Dialect Poetry 166pp (PDF, 476k)
003 Robert Fitterman Hi My Name Is: A Libretto 21pp (PDF, 120k)
004 Doug Nufer Rumor 21pp (PDF, 244k)
005 Claude Closky Couché sur le ventre 15pp (PDF, 24k)
006 Stephen Dirle Onan The Illiterate 1080pp (PDF, 3.8mb)
007 Kimberly J. Rosenfield The Unsurpassed Joy 53pp (PDF, 272k)
008 Simon Morris An Intolerable Piece of Writing: Pedagogy as Performed Absence 90pp (PDF, 396k)
009 Craig Dworkin Maps 8pp (PDF, 156k)
010 Peter Manson English in Mallarmé 88pp (PDF, 684k)
011 Jamba Dunn American Dust 124pp (PDF, 588k)
012 George Kuchar The Kiss of Frankenstein 27pp (PDF, 296k)
013 Tim Davis - Sweet Little Racist Landscape SuiteLow Resolution - 7pp (PDF, 4mb)
High Resolution - 7pp (PDF, 12.4mb)
014 Brian Kim Stefans Booty, Egg On 160pp (PDF, 14.8mb)
015 Brian J. Davis Voice Over 23pp (PDF, 212k)
016 Mary Jo Bang By M 4pp (PDF, 8.2mb)
017 Michael Scharf Selected Criticism, Jeffrey Jullich 252pp (PDF, 2.3mb)
018 Tan Lin BIB. 269pp (PDF, 956k)
019 Mónica de la Torre Overkill: First Poems in English (1993-1995) 16pp (PDF, 188k)
020 Jeremy Sigler Math 34pp (PDF, 3mb)
021 Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch from Conversations Over Stolen Food 66pp (PDF, 364k)
022 Christian Bök The Xenotext Experiment 11pp (PDF, 220k)
023 Tom Johnson The Voice of New Music (1972-1982) 294pp (PDF, 7.8mb)
024 Ara Shirinyan Speech Genres 1-2 294pp (PDF, 7.8mb)
025 Stephen Ratcliffe Cloud / Ridge 479pp (PDF, 656k)
026 Stephen Ratcliffe Human / Nature 1003pp (PDF, 1.1mb)
027 Eiríkur Örn Nordahl Hemd stafakarlanna, 1.hluti 2pp (PDF, 11.6mb)
028 Charles Bernstein Three Works 8pp (PDF, 230k)
029 Michael Coffey Magnus Cooney 57pp (PDF, 412k)
030 Raphael Rubinstein Through a Blue Field 10pp (PDF, 188k)
031 Kenneth Goldsmith All The Numbers From Numbers 22pp (PDF, 177k)
032 Alan Licht Spring Without Alan Licht / Dime Double Minutemen Nickels On The / Lou Reed Minus Lou Reed / (Give Them Enough Nope) 55pp (PDF, 328k)
033 Elisabeth S. Clark Between Words 62pp (PDF, 692k)
034 Derek Beaulieu How To Write / How To Edit 55pp (PDF, 320k)
035 Eleanor Brown A Play on Words 9pp (PDF, 100k)
036 Barry Schwabsky Two Poems Circa 1992 11pp (PDF, 112k)
037 Mairéad Byrne Example As Figure 41pp (PDF, 452k)
038 Mark Peters Men 205pp (PDF, 996k)
039 Dannielle Tegeder
Falling Apart NYC 62pp (PDF, 160k)
040 Stephen McLauglin, Vladimir Zykov, Gregory Laynor, James Carpenter
Issue 1 3785pp (PDF, 3.9mb)
041 Vincent Katz
Shopping For Oliver's Chili 3pp (PDF, 216k)
042 Vanessa Place
Statement of Facts 67pp (PDF, 330k)
043 Dana Teen Lomax
Disclosure 26pp (PDF, 25mb)
044 Hans Ulrich Obrist & Rirkrit Tiravanija
Hurricane 7pp (2009) [PDF, 212k]
045 Erik Belgum
THE_CITY Battery: a Neurological Evaluation of THE_CITY 50pp (2009) [PDF, 344k]
046 Ryan Trecartin K-CoreaINC.K (Section A) 41pp (2009) [PDF, 184k]
047 Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen One-Way Street: An Index 55pp (2009) [PDF, 312k]
048 Christian Bjoljahn & Martin Johs. Møller Flytning 137pp (2009) [PDF, 5.3mb]
049 Franck Leibovici "9+11" 136pp (2005) [PDF, 11.5mb]
050 Joachim Georg Schmitt ingredients 22pp [PDF, 280k]
051 Martin Glaz Serup The Field 100pp [PDF, 296k]
052 Carlos Rowles The History 218pp [PDF, 11mb]
053 Fabian Peake Amalgam: Collection of poems and writings 2000 - 2010 61pp [PDF, 434k]
054 Casey Smith Opulent Stone Moccasins 270pp [PDF, 1.2mb]
055 056 Steve Giasson II 2493pp [PDF, 14.5mb]
057 Doug Nufer The Dammed 64pp [PDF, 197k]
058 Michel Melamed Regurgitofagia 18pp [PDF, 1mb]
058 Feliz Molina Nail Hearts Clip Epistolary Fantasy Blog from 2009-2010 33pp [PDF, 6.7mb]