(Well, not necessarily . . .)
or Writing with My Eyes Open
(or Never Talk to Strangers )

Myka Vielstimmig

Bartender, I'd like a manhattan, please.

Stop me if you've heard this one, but I feel as though we've met before.

Now tell me did you really think I'd fall for that old line? I was not born just yesterday.

  I wanted to begin with something French and decadent. Something Baudrillardian, noir as I wanna be. But here at the end of the 20^th century, noir is--well, diverting, amusing, but . . .

Nostalgic (and as xenophobic as the French). It doesn't move us forward. To explore the territory ahead--where we see what might be a more visible convergence of rhetoric and poetics, of narrative and exposition, and even of visual aesthetics with all of these--we need to construct a more optimistic postmodernism.

What current experiments in academic writing do, seen through the lens of readership, is to invite the reader to play a role in the text with the writer, and also apart from the writer perhaps; that's one effect of re-presenting collage-like invention processes. An effort to please the reader, too: to provide an aesthetic experience.

And fundamentally, to understand that the writer can't control how any text will be read or narrativized--will be experienced. Or: how others may join in the plot.

  Cube Ist as Cube Dost

Picasso: Trois Musiciens