M: WRITINGS '67-'72 by John Cage
Wesleyan University Press, 1973, First edition, 217 pp., 8 1/4" X 9 1/2", Hardcover
Very good with some rubbing, chips and short closed tears. (please see photos)
Mainly mesostics inspired by music, mushrooms, Marcel Duchamp, Merce Cunningham, Marshall McCluhan and Thoreau.
"Cage's first work after his exposure to Henry David Thoreau, considered possibly "a decisive moment in Cage's artistic life" by Thoreau scholar Jannika Bock. Bock also analyses the book's title to be not as Cage said, chosen randomly, but taken from the title of one of Cage's works in the collection, "Mureau", a portmanteau of "music" and "Thoreau". Cage wrote about the importance of the word Mureau in the book's foreword in which he said that it was both one of the more unconventional texts contained in it, and that vocalization of the word itself formed the basis of many of his then-recent musical performances."