Grammalepsy

An essential book for many reasons. The quality of the author’s theoretical sharpness and reflection is of course one of them, and one will find in this book an in-depth but often somewhat polemic dialogue with all the major critics and theoreticians in the field ... One can only be admiring of the pioneering and visionary dimension of these essays, often much ahead of their times. * Leonardo Music Journal *
John Cayley has been a respected figure in digital language art since his first works appeared in the 1970s. For decades, his distinctive creative approach has combined with careful, critical, erudition to continually chart new directions in the field of emerging literary practices. This collection of essays, many of which are now canonical references, tracks twenty years of Cayley’s thinking about poetics, code, and composition. As for this radical new concept–grammalepsy­– as a way to understand how language is “grasped and read”—it will no doubt have a long-term ripple effect through the multiple domains of linguistic discourse. * Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies, UCLA, USA *
John Cayley has already had a deep and lasting influence on the fields of new media studies, electronic literature, conceptual writing, and poetics – and this long-awaited volume elegantly frames his most important critical essays as well as his artistic practice. No one has done more to theorize, and translate, the philosophical and aesthetic complexity of digital language art, and this volume will endure as the definitive compilation of Cayley’s work. * Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA *