Critique

SOLILOQUY was not at all what I expected. It certainly was not like Leonardo DiCaprio’s soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet. A soliloquy, by definition, is supposed to be uninterrupted speech. Kenneth Goldsmith expands this defintion to create his own form of a soliloquy. For an entire week Goldsmith recorded his conversations and made a soliloquy by publishing his contributions in these conversations. Goldsmith’s soliloquy is far from the traditional or expected soliloquy. It doesn’t make sense. It seems to be a series of ramblings that jump from one topic to the next. Every sentence is independent and does not necessarily relate to the sentences that come before or after it.

I chose this electronic text because Goldsmith’s idea was so ridiculous that I found it intriguing. I couldn’t imagine keeping a record of everything I said during an entire week. I also had doubts about the reality of this text – was Goldsmith really going to include everything?

SOLILOQUY is an incredibly random text, but among the randomness the reader learns about Goldsmith as a person. That is what I like about this piece of literature. It is real. Goldsmith is not writing a story for us to read; he is recording everything he said. We learn that Goldsmith is normal. He is a man who encounters people that he will later refer to as assholes, a man who loves his grandmother, and he also has an appreciation for children’s movies and Maculy Culkin. During the week Goldsmith is very work-oriented, and it was long until I began skimming the text looking for curse words, or anything that wasn’t about computers and font sizes. Goldsmith, as I expected, is almost a completely different person on the weekends. He talks about Vegas, makes fun of people, and also speaks about strippers.

The only thing I didn’t like about this text is the actual electronic format. The format is not very reader-friendly. The reader must hover the mouse over a sentence in order to reveal the writing. Those who are very tech—savvy like myself can highlight the entire page to read the entire text at once. I didn’t like having to hover the mouse because I found it hard to keep my place. I started missing large portions of the text and it was frustrating. However, I can see the purpose of having this format. Goldsmith’s soliloquy doesn’t make any sense when read as a normal text. The hover technique reveals one sentence at a time, and that creates a sort of flow. It keeps the sentences separate from each other. In order to have any meaning the sentences need to be read separately. 

Overall, this text was enjoyable because it was an interesting idea. But the format made it difficult to read and it was incredibly lengthy. One person can certainly say a whole lot in one week.