Triad 24 of 32 · 2026-10-17 · Difficulty 4 · Shared form or method, Shared figure or motif, Conflict
The thread
Three attempts to make a work of nothing, each of which ends up describing a reader who fills it in. Lem’s A Perfect Vacuum (1971) reviews Solange Marriot’s nonexistent Rien du tout, a novel of pure negation: ‘a critique of a book that not only does not exist but also cannot.’ Dworkin’s No Medium (2013) reads real blank books, erasures and silent records, and closes with ‘Further Listening,’ a discography of silences written in record-review voice. Cloninger’s Some Ways of Making Nothing (2021) sorts ‘flavors of qualitative nothing’ and calls making nothing a braking of becoming, as opposed to abstaining. Exact links: the blank turns erotic in the reader (Marriot’s railway station / Cocteau’s Nudisme); and a three-way quarrel over whether nothing can be completed. Lem’s language ‘suicidally disowns itself’; Cloninger’s apophasis allows no last word; Dworkin: ‘there are no real absences, only replacements.‘
The three books
- A Perfect Vacuum, Stanisław Lem, Michael Kandel (translator); 1971. Anchor: the impossible blank book, reviewed; the extreme position (nothing reached only by language’s self-annihilation)
- No Medium, Craig Dworkin; 2013. Empirical counterweight: real blank works read closely; denies any true blank
- Some Ways of Making Nothing: Apophatic Apparatuses in Contemporary Art, Curt Cloninger; 2021. Theory: a taxonomy of nothings and an ethics of making them; argues with both Lem (no permanent nothing) and Dworkin (nothing can be made, as braking)
Notebook
- The erotics of the void. Lem’s reader supplies the station and the tryst (p. 75); Nudisme offers nudity and withholds it (Dworkin, ch. 1). Write ten all-negating sentences (‘The train did not arrive’), then record what you supplied reading them back. Is desire the default content of any blank, or only of blanks signed by a woman, as Lem’s critic twice insinuates (p. 77)?
- Ceasing vs. braking. ‘The novel does not end: it ceases’ (Lem, p. 79); ‘Neither kataphasis nor apophasis ever get the last word’ (Cloninger, p. 143). Write two endings for one Gestext piece: one where the language gives out, one where it is braked and can restart. Which would Cloninger call ethical (p. 421)?
- Three reviews. Dworkin reviews a real silent record (‘18 seconds too slow,’ ch. 8); Lem’s critic reviews an impossible book. Write three short reviews: an existing blank work, a book that cannot exist, a book of yours of which only the title exists.
Rabbit holes
Links as checked on the day of the reading.
- Roy Sorensen, ‘Nothingness,’ SEP — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/
- Eugene Thacker, ‘Black on Black,’ Public Domain Review — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/black-on-black/
- Andrew Spira, ‘Precedents of the Unprecedented: Black Squares Before Malevich,’ Public Domain Review — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/black-squares-before-malevich/
- Johanna Drucker, ‘Understanding Media: Craig Dworkin’s No Medium,’ LARB — https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/understanding-media-craig-dworkins-no-medium/
- John Cage, Silence (1961), archive.org full text — https://archive.org/stream/silencelecturesw1961cage/silencelecturesw1961cage_djvu.txt ; Lecture on Nothing recording, UbuWeb — https://ubu.punctumbooks.com/sound/cage_nothing.html
- Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology (early English translation), archive.org — https://archive.org/details/cu31924090848742
To carry
“Total freedom is total paralysis in literature.” — Stanisław Lem, A Perfect Vacuum, ‘Rien du tout, ou la consequence,’ p. 72 (trans. Michael Kandel)
Themes
4’33” · antinovel · apophasis · apparatus · Barad · bereft nothing · black square · blank book · blank page · braking becoming · Cage · Cocteau · erasure · erotics of the blank · fecund nothing · Fludd · hyle · imaginary books · kataphasis · Lecture on Nothing · Malevich · medium · negation · nothing · nouveau roman · Nudisme · Orphée · Pseudo-Dionysius · pseudo-review · Rauschenberg · Rien du tout · silence · silent records · Solange Marriot · space before creation · substrate · tzimtzum · Whitehead
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