Publishing Genius Press is pleased,really really pleased, to announce the release of Christopher Higgs's chapbook, "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously." Linguists will recognize the title from Noam Chomsky's seminal book, Syntactic Structures (1957), in which Chomsky presents that sentence as something grammatically correct but meaningless, or at least nonsensical, and something that had never been uttered until he wrote it.
Now Chris Higgs, curator of the art blog Bright Stupid Confetti, gives us a story that, within its inverted syntax and in spite of its grammatical dissonance, creates a sort of meaningfulness that is at once subtle and pervasive. It's not the sort of piece that culminates in meaning, such as the way Andy Devine's "As Day Same That the the Was Year"; it's more the case that meaning and sense is a constant undercurrent behind the language of Higgs's story.
But who cares about meaning? "All words mean infinity, says Derrida," says Higgs's story in a savvy nod to his forebear. And another thing that "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously" pulls off is a rejection of interpretation's hegemony. This is managed through the sonic beauty of the piece, the rhythms and tones that wash through it like waves. Higgs writes liquid sentences. Read them on the screen or print yourself a copy here.
**SPECIAL BIRTHDAY OFFER** Today is Chris's birthday, so to mark the occasion PGP is offering FREE PRINTED CHAPBOOKS of "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously." Just email me your address by midnight tonight (03/19/2009) and I will put one in the mail. All PGP printed versions have highlighter on the cover. Limit: one per household, US readers only (sorry foreigners, you should have thought of that before not living in America). My email address is adam at publishinggenius dot com.
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And NEXT WEEK don't miss the release of the third installment of James Iredell's brilliant and sensitive series about moving to Nevada. The first two sections are "Atlanta" (DOGZPLOT's Achilles) and "When I Moved to Nevada" (Greying Ghost) -- you'll want to study up. PGP is proud to be a part of this monumental experiment in publishing when we release Iredell's "Before I Moved to Nevada" next week. This PDF Chapbook features a drawing by Christy Call on the cover.
**COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY**
5 comments:
Yes, finally! I missed the free print copy, but I have no problems paying for this. I've been looking forward to this for months. Good work Chris and Adam.
I saw that tree and my heart stopped. Whew. Flashbacks of graduate school.
hi adam, i asked chris what the cover of "colorless green..." was an excerpt of, and he believed it was saussure, but said i should ask you to verify. either way, could you tell me from what book also? thanks.
Hey Keith, thanks for asking. It's Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics." This is an amazing structuralist text.
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