Seven American Deaths and Disasters

By: Kenneth Goldsmith

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Paperback | 14 March 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
176 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
17.78 x 10.89 x 2.67

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What are the words we use to describe something that we never thought we'd have to describe? In Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Kenneth Goldsmith transcribes historic radio and television reports of national tragedies as they unfurl, revealing an extraordinarily rich linguistic panorama of passionate description. Taking its title from the series of Andy Warhol paintings by the same name, Goldsmith recasts the mundane as the iconic, creating a series of prose poems that encapsulate seven pivotal moments in recent American history: the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and John Lennon assassinations, the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the Columbine shootings, 9/11, and the death of Michael Jackson. While we've become accustomed to watching endless reruns of these tragic spectacles'often to the point of cliche'once rendered in text, they become unfamiliar, and revealing new dimensions emerge. Impartial reportage is revealed to be laced with subjectivity, bias, mystery, second-guessing, and, in many cases, white-knuckled fear. Part nostalgia, part myth, these words render pivotal moments in American history through the communal lens of media.

Industry Reviews

"...it's like nothing he's done. It knocks the air from your lungs."
-The New York Times

"This book feels both like an important historical document and a beautiful example of what the Great American Novel might look like today."
-The Paris Review

"It mingles the language of radio and TV commercials with sometimes bumbling, sometimes heroic reports from journalists filing their first draft of history. 'Seven American Deaths and Disasters' is of a piece with Mr. Goldsmith's provocative literary aesthetic."
-The Wall Street Journal

"The high priest of what he calls Non-Creative Writing, Goldsmith continues
producing books from found texts--in the case of Seven American Deaths and
Disasters, he transcribes radio transmissions announcing famous deaths and other
bad news. His new book is a textual equivalent of Warhol's Death and Disaster
paintings, ripped from the front pages of the Daily News."
-Publishers Weekly

"Goldsmith's material, unmistakably real, refuses to remain in a literary frame."
-Bookslut

"Kenneth Goldsmith is always ahead of the curve! Just when readers were becoming used to his "boring" transcriptions of weather or traffic reports, he here reverses the game by turning his attention to the extraordinary: seven cases of assassination, murder, sudden death, or terrorism and how such unforeseen events have been handled by the feckless and unaware media. Seven Deaths is a real page-turner: you will feel you're there, living through the horrific events as they unfold."
-Marjorie Perloff, author of "Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New" Century

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