Thursday, September 10, 2009

2nd Edition of Over-Sensitivity

Jalal Toufic has released a 2nd edition of his 1996 book, Over-Sensitivity (Sun and Moon Classics), via his Forthcoming Books. Here is what Toufic has to say about the significance of the 2nd edition:

"While many books are first announced as forthcoming (for example in the inflated bios of mediocre academicians, who keep mentioning such books as forthcoming over a period of years), then published, Over-Sensitivity, published originally in Sun & Moon Press’ Classics series in 1996, is here republished, in a revised edition, by Forthcoming Books, this making its status more explicit: even after its publication, it is still forthcoming.

What does a second edition indicate? That in the case of the first edition, one’s fruits were ripe but one was not ripe for one’s fruits (“Oh Zarathustra, your fruits are ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruits!” [Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra])?"
--Jalal Toufic

Like many of the writers and artists who preoccupy Toufic throughout his books (Walt Whitman, Jack Torrence, Gertrude Stein, Francis Bacon), it interests me that Toufic himself is acting as a version artist. A version being a difference that makes a difference; a resurrection that does not happen once but multiply within what Gilles Deleuze calls "a disjunctive synthesis." What surprises me is that under a list of "Books by Jalal Toufic" on the first pages of Over-Sensitivity (2nd ed.) Toufic does not list the 1st editions of (Vampires) and Distracted (the two other books for which Toufic has written 2nd editions). Aren't the first editions equally important as versions of their own forthcoming? Or, on the other hand, possible counterfeits (those 'false' resurrections to which Toufic also refers)?

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