The Potato that Became a Tomato, Playgiarist Raymond Federman, 1928

10/14/2009 The Potato that Became a Tomato, Playgiarist Raymond Federman, 1928 - 2009

You're born a playgiarizer or you are not. It's as simple as that. The laws of playgiarism are unwritten, it's a tabou, like incest, it cannot be legalized. The great playgiarizers of all time, Homer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Diderot, Rimbaud, Proust, Beckett, and Federman have never pretended to do anything else than playgiarizing. Inferior writers deny that they playgiarize because they confuse plagiarism with playgiarism, not the same. The difference is enormous, but no one has ever been able to tell what it is. It cannot be measured in weight or size. Plagiarism is sad. It cries, it whines. It always apologizes. Playgiarism on the other hand laughs all the time. It makes fun of what it does while doing it. - Raymond Federman on playgiarism from An Interview With Ray Federman

No single writer of our age has captured the true spirit of Diogenes more than Raymond Federman. No, not even his old friend Samuel Beckett whom he idolises and quotes at every opportunity. But then Federman was the very first Beckettian. When his Ph.D. board challenged Federman that Beckett was a charlatan, he retorted angrily “You’ll see, Beckett will win the Nobel prize for literature in ten years time”---he predicted the exact year! Federman integrates all of the essential modes of cynical discourse: action, laughter and silence into his prolific writing. The victim who refuses to see himself as a victim, was given in that small closet not only the gift of life, but the gift to make others laugh---laugh at a world that he knows to be truly absurd, laugh at himself, laugh at The Laugh That Laughs At The Laugh. - from Raymond Federman: Cynic by Ian Cutler, author of Cynicism From Diogenes To Dilbert.

THE POTATO THAT BECAME A TOMATO

Oh! the potato
the po ta to
the po to ta
the pa to to
the to pa to
the ta to pa
the po to ma
the pa mo to
the po ma to
the ta po mo
the po mo to
the po to po
the pa to ta
the ma to po
the ma pa to
the to mo pa
the mo ta to
the to to ma
the ma to to
the to ta mo
the to ma ta
the to ma to
Ah! the tomato

ACRO BATICS
Y
O U
give a work out
to your essential muscle
and all your other muscles
essentially
also get a work out
*****
***
*
therefore
exercise your
essential muscle
as often as possible
so that
IT
stays
I N
g
o
o
d
shape
to make
all your other
muscles also profit

- two of five anti-poems by Raymond Federman

Double or Nothing
Raymond Federman
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

Take It or Leave It
Raymond Federman
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

My Body in Nine Parts: With Three Supplements & Ten Illustrations
Raymond Federman
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

Smiles on Washington Square
Raymond Federman
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

Here and Elsewhere: Poetic Cul de Sac
Raymond Federman
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

subscribe to lovethebook.com news

Literary Obituaries