The irony of Silliman’s post about wanting to sue the creators of Issue 1 is that he posted the entire list of “contributors” to the volume on his blog. Of course, he merely cut-and-pasted it, but he doesn’t say that, and the implication is that he typed the list himself.

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-advantage-of-e-books-is-that-you.html

The most “creative” aspect of Issue 1 was the collection of author’s names. One of Silliman’s favorite critical tactics (see the introduction to the In The American Tree and Art of Practice) is the list of excluded poets. By cutting-and-pasting this list on your blog without clear attribution, within the context of understanding that the mere list of poet names is a form of criticism, you are committing a sort of plagiarism not unlike the — whatever it is that Silliman is accusing the creators of Issue 1 of havng done.

He should redo the post and type the names in from scratch (the difference in typeface is the dead giveaway that it was pasted in). Or at least include the list author’s names (which, I suppose, he really can’t).

Or something like that — I’m really just pointing out an irony. Don’t ask me why I’ve decided to comment on this now, but Kenny Goldsmith gave a very interesting presentation at Untitled: Speculation of the Expanded Field of Writing conference here in Los Angeles that ended with a great discussion of the project — though, strangely, Kenny neglected to include the list in his excerpt from the blog post.