Noah Eli Gordon's Book the Source Takes Essay

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Noah Eli Gordon's book The Source takes on the structure of a new long poem and uses several references from other works in an intrinsic battle between reference and experience. The Source is such a node -- a beaming node -- inside a site-specific complex of other books. Within the time span of 20 months or so (January 2008-September 2009), intertextuality, the author's experience in creating such a book, was not simply a conversational circumstance but became an intense chance for procedural arrangement: throughout that interim, Gordon fashioned The Source by arrogating things that he located only on page "26" from the numerous (thousands) of books located in the Denver Public Library. What is so special about the number 26?

In addition comparing with the quantity of letters existing in the English alphabet, the number totaling 26 -- conferring to Gordon's development notes -- it essentially signifies the arithmetical value of the Tetragrammaton, or the Hebrew form of the name of God which are four. Furthermore, there is a spiritual symbol punctured into the title, the circumpunct, which ingeniously substitutes the role of a predictable "O." The circumpunct is a point within a circle. It also represents the symbol of the Sun and represents also the unfolding of the mind. Some of this meaning can be drawn back to alchemical tradition. The circumpunct represents the "sun-like" component of gold.

Certainly, The Source is a heliotrope of the blossoming mind, a theatrical act of philological and wordsmith alchemy. Nonetheless within the Kabbalistic context to which the author makes alternative, the circumpunct signifies "Kether," the original of the 10 Sephiroth, or hypostatized characteristics or releases by ways of which the Immeasurable arrives into connection with the determinate. Kether is the source of Conception, the rudimentary life-force at the origin of all arrangements. Essentially, this book is about the source of all sources.

Not only is The Source a chief fictitious declaration for the age of post-secularism, nonetheless it is also a compulsory interference in the present poetic design involving conceptualism. The author said he took on this project so he could examine whether or not theoretical, constraint-based writing might possess a mystical element. Gordon made it so the stiff and general modes of writing can symbolize an expressively charged assignation with the realm of humanity. The Source is an effort of sophisticated interposition, a labor of not just replication but adept collage, an amalgam work that recompenses both a theoretical "thinker relationship" including a readership that is immersed in a romantic almost modern tradition.

A literary work such as The Source is, in statement, a catalogue of the vivacity of existing abstract writing as conceptualism is now seeing people follow a diversity of astonishing trajectories. From the approximately ten thousand sources of page 26s that he bumped into while being in the Denver Public Library, Gordon discarded parts of language, which were then bonded together, varying some nouns to deliver his version or interpretation of "the Source." Through these complicated developments of assortment, synthesis and replacement, Gordon was capable of stitching together a logical and poetic text that impressed readers. Quite unusually, with his own specific trademark of conversational lyricism, a good example of such ability is this chiefly remarkable sentence on page 128: To cover the expense of attendance, to list one's extraordinary lovers, to wear a petite blue linen dress, these will not stagnate its mystery (I'm sure he's referring to the source), substitute the hallucination of fancy with that of reminiscence, the time a bullet takes to journey a dozen feet with its accurate massive and multifaceted architecture -- for the Source shapes towers of smoke with the material of our lives, the nameless, unrecorded music that comes from thrashing, grinding, and trembling naturally resonant things. (I decided to paraphrase since it was long.)

The recurrences, the assonantal/consonantal music, the ornamental syntax, the unsolidified and astonishing appositions, multiple layers of forced metaphor, the slanting logic -- in its entirety, it amounts to a delectably greasy and seductive grandiloquence. Plus as can be anticipated from this kind of theoretical project, the passage is extremely reflective, self-reflective, recognizing the "unrecorded music" stripped from now "nameless" sources. To provide just a minor sagacity of the varieties of sources the author used like Edgar Allan Poe and the like, and to highpoint his uncharacteristic aptitude for DE familiarizing collocation -- the expression "towers of smoke with the material of our lives" this was derived from An Erotic Beyond: Sade, by Octavio Paz. The culmination phrase, "comes from thrashing, grinding and trembling naturally resonant things" was pulled from Traditional African and Oriental Music by Otto Karolyi.

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Although some may say the work of these writers should be at least referenced to point the reader to their work and the reason why he chose their page 26's, it's important to understand why such words were chosen and thus interpreted and put together as such. People often hide many thing in words and through the process of self-reflection, one can undermine what was the original meaning, and change into something else, something much more dynamic. This is the case with The Source. Gordon does what no one else has really done, and that is, take what exists, and add another level of meaning and attachment to. In particular, add something that few cannot or will not ever truly understand. Therefore it becomes a unique and individual process. This is the work of Gordon.

He often uses rhetorical questions within his newly arranged amalgam of interpretation. So much so that it makes the reader forget where he could have derived such information. Essentially what he did in this book was cut and paste from other books and format in a way that adds additional meaning. He was so skilled in doing so, that one almost forgets exactly where it was taken from and if it was taken at all. For sometimes his work looks like it was created himself, and not just copied pasted from page 26 of thousands of books.

Most of The Source contains examples of prose, believably so because most of the work he copied was not poetry, there are some premeditated lineation that replicate and showcase Gordon's understanding as it relates to graphic pacing and the "mise-en-page":

"A new house in the piney woods.

The lovely quiet of the dunes.

A neatly folded studding-sail." (Gordon)

These images do the job of evoking hidden feeling that perhaps the original words could not. It possesses the ability to transform, almost reuse something so that way it breathes new life into what was and now becomes what can be, what should be, what is. So few writes have done what Gordon has in such a clear and obvious way. His talents lie in the positioning of the already conceived words, and in the way he interprets them. This interpretation is the repudiation of imagery in lieu of the stated "unadorned declaration" is, itself, renounced as the words cunningly expand into an unknown and encompasses into superior syntactic intricacy.

The use of contradiction reminds the reader of that white-knuckle instant seeing someone one really likes for the first time. Indeed, The Source indulges in this kind of moment both conceptually and strategically. The soul of The Source and Gordon's source takes form in the sphere of its tireless recessions. It suggests a voyage of whimsical books articulated in an infinitesimal instant of reading. Its topic, no longer a thing of reality, has molded great railings of knowledge, perchance retorting to the slender hallway that points to a bizarre yet inadequate set of steps in the air. Why this renunciation? The expedition stands before the reader. The Source now exists in once elapsed words positioned in watchfulness, grimy words reproduced comparatively in light.

So the Source has inflicted a wound on the compact flesh of the intellect, and the only thing that can emerge from this aperture is levitating into the night sky. I shall here make no attempt to explain the enigma acquainted with the room where it is to speak. Pressing insight into the service of a specific line of action is not far from bliss. Do your exercises and daydream about rebellion. The principles of negotiated peace remain unimpaired. (Gordon)

In conclusion, The Source is a book about rediscovery. It is a means of discovering a new sense of belief and mysticism from things that would have otherwise been overlooked. It is what some would say a means of reusing and recycling old, forgotten material. By simply choosing to create a book based on the page 26's of other books, it has given a new level of meaning to those books and those words. It offers what some say couldn't be offered. It brings it what some say was non-existent. It adds more meaning to those things that people either already had meaning to or never thought about before. Because of this The Source truly is a unique invention in literature and will never be….....

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