ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents

In each chapter, proceding from A to Z and returning to A, a letter is added alphabetically to the text and then subtracted from it. Therefore the first and last chapters have all words beginning with A, and the middle chapters use the complete alphabet. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The author is Sally Alatolo who is not identified as the author. Each chapter, in alphabetical order, contains repetitive lists of words beginning with the chapter letter that might be found in a pulp romance novel. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This book is described by Charles Bernstein as"The Borscht belt meets concept art in this delirious digest of obsessive gaiety, this useless collection of perishable information, this wily catalog of everyday life, this alphabetic bestiary of the ribs, joints, sinews, and bones of language's alluring lore. {This] could be the longest, and maybe the last, list poem of the 20th century. On the way, Goldsmith has reinvented prosody - conting by 1's 2's 3's, and up - as he inventories the raring rush of rippling, or is it ripping?, words: inchoate yet coalescing, a fractal romp on just this side of virtual reality." All the phrases end in sounds end in the sound R and are organized alphabetically by syllable-count beginning with A, aar, air and ending with a "7,228 syllable tour de force of astonishing proportions. But in the spirit of George Perec...Goldsmith uses these rules to expose the reader/listener/viewer to the marvels and vagaries of language in the late twentieth century....