M (John Cage book)


M: Writings ’67–’72 is a book of essays by American avant-garde composer John Cage, first published in 1973 by Wesleyan University Press.
M was Cage's third full-length book, after and A Year from Monday. All of the essays in it were written between 1967 and 1972. Charles Hamm, a biographer of Cage, has said "virtually his entire career as composer, poet and visual artist was counterpointed by his own words", including this volume in the middle of his most productive years. Henahan, writing for The New York Times Book Review, contrasted the "uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water" form of his music with "slight chance of outliving him by much" to the solid permanence of his writing, including M. In 1981, Henahan predicted that only Cage's four books of essays, including M and that year's For The Birds, would be remembered in 2001.

Thoreau's influence on Cage

M was Cage's first work after his exposure to 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.
Bock further notes that seven out of eleven of the poetic works in M mention Thoreau by name, and she and another scholar counted between 27 and 30 direct or indirect references to Thoreau in the book.

Contents

The book contains the following writings: