The Book, Meaning, and Densities of Essential Forms in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe

the piece of writing was the first public acknowledgment of Coetzee's ongoing experimentation with computer-generated literature.Such experimentation had begun a year earlier when Coetzee had moved from South Africa to England to work as a programmer for IBM."A chess player, mathematics graduate, and aspiring poet" (Roach 312), Coetzee proved an attractive candidate to companies like IBM who needed employees with both creativity and a healthy respect for formalism to thrive in "the black art of programming" (Ensmenger 40).Working during the evening on the same IBM 1401 computer that occupied his days, Coetzee explored the potential of generative literary computation."Computer Poem" was the result of a rudimentary algorithm that instructed a computer to generate poems from an 800-word lexicon.Of the 2,100 poems that the computer produced during its half-hour runtime, Coetzee saw potential in frustratingly few.But, with the right kind of editorial intervention, some of the outputs could be reworked into something passable.(Coetzee, "Computer Poem" 12) All of his subsequent experiments would show similar results.At best, the computer would produce a provocative series of words that gave the Poem (ex computer) Poem (edited) Dawn Birds Stream Dawn, birds, a stream, a calm morning.Calm-Morning You stand among the trees alone and tense.You) Stand-Among You have cried.Forest You spend the nights away from me, Alone Tense Terrified, rapt, You) Cry Among owls and black men, You) Spend-The-Nights Hoping for violence.