I’m currently reading Geeta Dayal’s exploration of Brian Eno’s creative process in her book about Brian Eno’s 1975 album, Another Green World. One aspect of this creative process that I find particularly fascinating is Eno’s use of generative techniques. My interest piqued, I read about generative techniques in other arts and rediscover Jeff Noon’s work via this piece on Cut-up techniques. I say “rediscover” because Noon’s books fell off the end of my always-growing list of things to read a long time ago, so I’m returning him to the top of this list. Actually–scratch that–maybe not the top. Noon himself contributes to his quick demotion on my list with his list of top ten fluid fiction books wherein he recommends Ben Marcus’s “The Age of Wire and String”. Always a sucker for the off-beat and/ or experimental I head on over to Marcus’s site, which links to an interesting interview with him at HTMLGiant. And, yet again, a new book is added to the top of my reading list as Marcus recommends John D’Agata’s book-length essay, About a Mountain, which is described by Booklist as a “circuitous, stylish investigation” in which “D’Agata (Halls of Fame) uses the federal government’s highly controversial (and recently rejected) proposal to entomb the U.S.’s nuclear waste located in Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, as his way into a spiralling and subtle examination of the modern city, suicide, linguistics, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, ecological and psychic degradation, and the gulf between information and knowledge”. I love essays and documentaries that take a collage-like approach. In fact I’m currently developing a multimedia project/ documentary of my own that’s structured this way. So, hungry for a sample of D’Agata’s work, I read his piece, Joan Didion’s Formal Experience of Confusion right away. I am also looking forward to reading his international anthology, The Lost Origins of the Essay,”An expansive and exhilarating world tour of innovative nonfiction writing”.