student megan cohen
tries to figure out
why Matthew Goulish's book 39 Microlectures
fills her with disgust and wrath.

 

 

"Don't read the whole book if you don't want to."


One of Matthew Goulish's first gestures towards me as a reader was to grant me permission to pursue what are already my unalienable rights-the rights to skim, to skip, and to stop. Never before in history, whether in geologic or any other kind of time, has a reader needed permission from an author to stop reading a book.
Perhaps, with performance looming in the background, Goulish is calling attention to the omnipotence of the lone reader in order to make a statement about spectatorship in general, and live audiences in general.
Perhaps it is actually very bold of him to remind the reader of the freedoms that surround the act of reading. Very bold to make the implicit truth of writing explicit-- as an author, he will never know if you actually read his book or not, so why pretend otherwise. Perhaps Goulish is attempting a kind of meta non-fiction, attacking the genre of book with full awareness of its ironies.
Or, perhaps, he is engaging in the kind of touchy-feely pseudo-zen that permeates the language of self-help books. Perhaps he is smugly allowing his readers to become empowered, an act made possible only by his certainty that they are not powerful already.
Perhaps he is joking. If so, the deadpan is impeccable.


"Of course, reading is always a creative act, and you may read any book this way. But in this case, feel encouraged."

 

"We have manufactured death with such perfection that life feels counterfeit. The result is that the exact moment when the act of atrocity begins now eludes us, as does its end, or its limit."


Maybe your life feels counterfeit, buddy.
Sorry.
It's just that the overwhelming pronouncements of doom....and the grandiose statements about changes in the psychology of all humankind...without much rigorous basis in evidence....tend to make me feel snappy.
Perhaps his "us" refers to the Goat Island Performance Group. But he doesn't seem to set that up specifically.
Perhaps his "us" refers to a secret bond between writer and reader.
Perhaps he is simply using the royal "us." As it were.
Perhaps he is joking. If so, the deadpan is impeccable.


"The sum and potential of human behavior presses on the imagination with a new kind of darkness"

 

 

"What repetition?"


Many of the pieces end with a fragment of text which has appeared earlier.
Perhaps it is a kind of look-at-how-things-change-over-time rhetoric. "Look, repetition is impossible because now it is five minutes later and I told you a different story as the introduction to this fragment. You are five minutes older. Things have changed."
Perhaps it is in keeping with Goulish's encouragement to read creatively. A series of windows that emerge periodically to allow the reader to jump back in. To pick back up almost-but-not-quite where they left off.
Perhaps Goulish's ethics of conservation require squeezing all possible life and meaning out of every word he uses. Wearing things out. Making the most of them.
Perhaps he is showing off how clever he is, like a rapper returning to a slick chorus.
Perhaps he is joking. If so, the deadpan is impeccable.


"What repetition?"