Empty Words [Paperback]

John Cage (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1973

Cage voices his concerns on the nature and future of music, they ways of dancers, the West's interpretation of Eastern ideas in this thought provoking collection of anecdotes and epigrams.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"John Cage is one of those few contemporaries who do important work in more than one art...a master of several arts, a slave to none."--Richard Kostelanetz, The New York Times Book Review

"For those who've savored Cage's previous books, Silence (1961), A Year From Monday (1967), and M (1973), no further introduction is necessary. Whether sharing with us details of meals he's enjoyed on tour, transforming texts from Thoreau's Journal by I Ching operations, or digging 'mesostics' on James Joyce's name out of Finnegans Wake, he'll keep you fascinated, exasperated, or amused, depending on your reaction to this sort of thing. There are only two essays on 'music' in the book--but then, to Cage, everything is music. Recommended for freewheeling art/music/poetry collections."--Library Journal --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

7 x 8 1/4 trim. 65 drawings. LC 78-27212 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Marion Boyars (January 1, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714527041
• ISBN-13: 978-0714527048
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,313,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Great Body of John Cage!, May 14, 2010

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Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Empty Words: Writings '73-'78 (Paperback)

John Cage was busy during the 1970s, and his book Empty Words reflects that busy-ness in ways obvious and hidden. As a book of essays on music, it's a satisfying and provocative read. As poetry, that depends on what you make of his procedural driven work in the field, and also how much you like what seems today like frankly occasional poems, the bread and butter notes of another, more polite age. Cage interestingly foregrounds his lack of fixed address, what one might call his transnationality, early on, in the epigraph, which involves a typically charming anecdote among houseguests, one from the US, one from Melbourne, who find themselves at the same breakfast table in Paris. As many attest, Cage was an enchanting conversationalist, the equal of Wilde or Lytton Strachey, but perhaps with more of a Buddhist pacific nature. In Empty Words we find him singing for his supper over and over again, and like Coleridge's Table Talk, there's something sort of sad about him having to amuse the rich and curry their favor, but he also felt comfortable among them, could let his hair down to a certain extent. It was thoughtful of his patrons to give him an annual stipend so he didn't have to work, but it made him into a pet. Someone is probably doing an analysis right now of Cage and capital, but it speaks between the lines of every other mesostic on display here.

"The Future of Music" is Cage at his happiest, an essay in which he asks us to consider what is missing from today's music (well, the music of the mid 1970s). In generally advancing concentric circles of prose, he makes the circle more and more inclusive, asking us to consider what soldiers (instead of being shipped out to war) might offer to music, what the elderly can give--the "senior citizens whom we have persuaded to leave us in favor of sunshine, fun and games." (Florida perhaps?) Music ignores prisoners at its peril, and the retarded and disabled as well. He would see a world in which social interaction was everything, and to hell with the hierarchies which have divided music into a specialized labor force of performers, and a lumpenproletariat of listeners. In this gradual widening of effort and access he sees something of what he calls, after George William Mead, the "religious spirit."

Another major work is the fascinating "Series re Morris Graves." I have no idea how this long poem got itself written but it is a Bressonian meditation on what it's like to live in one fabulous place after another, from the point of view of the eternal houseguest, one with a wry eye for his ridiculous hosts. With his vegan and raw foods diet he himself wasn't the simplest guest to feed, but he acknowledges this in a dashing way and he never lost his aplomb, nor his sense of wonder.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great mind of John Cage!, November 19, 2007

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E. Abadia "maitreya" (New Bern, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Empty Words: Writings '73-'78 (Paperback)

If you are familiar with John Cage's thinking you will enjoy and understand this book as well as his other numerous writings, and fantastic music. If you are new to Cage's work, well, be patient and try to follow. Perhaps some previous reading of his poetry and writings will guide you more towards this book. I am a fan and admirer of Cage's work, so I loved it.