John Cage | A Year From Monday

John Cage

A Year From Monday

Middletown, USA: Wesleyan University Press, 1967

23 x 20.3 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Subtitled New Lectures and Writings, A Year from Monday is John Cage’s second book, following the 1961 release Silence (also published by the Wesleyan University Press). The volume is a collection of essays, lectures and journal entries from 1961 to 1967. It includes an early version of "Diary: How to Improve the World (you will only make matters worse)”, which was later republished by The Something Else Press and, posthumously, expanded into a full book by Siglio Press. 

The book also features texts about several of Cage’s contemporaries, including "26 Statements Re Duchamp" (1963),  "Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas" (1964), "Miró in Third Person: 8 Statements" (1967), and "Nam June Paik: A Diary" (1965). 

"Daniel Charles: Well, where did the title of your second book, A Year from Monday, come from?

John Cage: From a plan a group of friends and I made to meet each other again in Mexico 'a year from next Monday’. We were together on a Saturday. And we were never able to fulfil that plan. It’s a form of silence ...

Daniel Charles: Is your second book very different from the first one?

John Cage: It deals in particular with change. Consequently, it touches on plans. Or at least, it englobes something in the future - keeping the future in sight. Frankly, when I thought of the title, I wasn’t being pessimistic, contrary to what you might be led to think from what I’m saying. The very fact that our plan failed, the fact that we were unable to meet does not mean that anything failed. The plan wasn’t a failure.”

- For The Birds