Anarchy: New York City-January 1988

Anarchy: New York City-January 1988Winner of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Best Scholarly Typography (2002) "That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." This quote from Henry David Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience is one of thirty quotations from which John Cage created Anarchy, a book length lecture comprising twenty mesostic

Winner of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Book, Jacket, and Journal Show - Best Scholarly Typography (2002)

"That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." This quote from Henry David Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience is one of thirty quotations from which John Cage created Anarchy, a book-length lecture comprising twenty mesostic poems. Composed with the aid of a computer program to simulate the coin toss of the I Ching, Anarchy draws on the writings of many serious anarchists including Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, and Mario Malatesta, not so much making arguments for anarchism as "brushing information against information," giving the very words new combinations that de-familiarize and re-energize them. Now widely available of the first time, Anarchy marks the culmination of Cage's work as a poet, composer and as a thinker about contemporary society.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 07/15/2001
ISBN: 9780819564665
Pages: 91
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.65h x 6.41w x 0.62d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 06/04/2001 pg. 77