The Pain Itself

Kevin McPherson Eckhoff has persisted in reading what was meant to be illegible, or irrelevant, or what Robert Smithson might have referred to as "language to be looked at" rather than words to be read. Undesigning the cipher of a place-holder, the matrix of layout meant merely to give space, he has transformed geometry into signification. In the process he renders "not the euphemism, [but rather] it" what the sheer materiality of language insists on continuing to say despite our best efforts to muffle, disrupt, or ignore it. Craig Dworkin, author of Reading the Illegible and The Perverse Library




Annoying, my god, this book. Occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure a reader some great pleasure, but this isn't one of them. Fifty-one grammars duel for the pain itself. And the easy hatred, my god. He/She/It's all ill-advised pulpiness to me. Don't say I promised you pleasure. Rachel Zolf, winner of the Trillium award for Human Resources