Goldsmith, Kenneth

"At one point, I envisioned making all the invisible language in the air around us material. At any given moment, there’s language flying all around us that we are not aware of: think of radio waves and cellular phone connections, TV signals, etc.."

"I began to obsess on the amount of language being produced by individuals. What would happen if all the language were somehow materialized?"

"I wanted to write a book that I would never be able to know. The approach I took was that of quantity. I’d collect so many words that each time I’d open my book, I’d be surprised by something that I had forgotten was there. What constitutes a big book? I looked on my bookshelf for clues. I found that any dictionary worth its salt was at least 600 pages so with that in mind, I decided that I would write a 600 page book. I did. And in the end, the project was a failure. I got to know every word so well over the four years that it took to write it that I am bored by the book. I can’t open a page and be surprised. Perhaps quantity was the wrong approach."

Kenneth Goldsmith:

I look to theory only when I realize that somebody has dedicated their entire life to a question I have only fleetingly considered (a work in progress)