[silence] Cage and Oulipo 2

[Marjorie Perloff]

Thanks, everyone, for your prompt and good responses.  But I am not wholly
convinced.  True, Oulipo descried chance but what, in practice, is the
difference between, say, a mesostic rule (even if the vertical strings are
generated by chance operations) and the Oulipo N+7 rule, which is not
Œunchancy² in that different dictionaries would give you a different seventh
noun after the N.  Besides, Cage admits again and again that he changed the
chance products ³according to taste.²

The key link may be Duchamp,, who is connected to both camps.  I will try to
check more fully.

Marjorie Perloff
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