This is the first e-text I’ve read in my life, and it was a strange experience. When I first entered to the webpage of text, I didn’t understand what and how I have to read that? It begins with a phrase written in Germany by L. Wittgenstein: “Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense”.

Soliloquy is a sort of dialogue written as a monologue. This text is made up of real conversations the author has during a week with his friends; he recorded it from Monday morning till Sunday night when he goes to bed. In the introduction there’s a two-lined dialogue which is the beginning of a new way of reading, because Soliloquy is so pallid but so powerful also. It begins like this:

REPORTER: “Why don’t you write the way you talk?

GERTRUDE STEIN: “Why don’t you read the way I write?

So, after reading this phrase I began to read the way he writes. Then I start following the text in the order Goldsmith proposes; that is from Monday to Sunday. It is a really long text and a bit colourless, it has no images (at least I didn’t see them!) and is written in blue letters.

I click on Monday. Dialogue, only appears on the screen one phrase at while you drag the mouse the rest of the dialogue begins to appear and disappear while the mouse is being moved. I was a bit lost. I began to move the mouse and read the story. The first two pages are really difficult to follow because I didn’t know where to drag it. After a while I began to understand the story. Many phrases are disconnected, and are a bit too repetitive.

Many topics appear in the text. First, they are talking about some famous people they met in the opening of an art gallery. There’s a very long conversation about art-world and literature. One of the characters is a writer who can’t publish because nobody likes the way he writes. So, they start to write a hypertext with the recordings during the week. Religion also appears, one of them, who hates multiculturalism, is Jewish and they talk about religion, too. Then, the conversation turns back to the former topic, and goes forward again. Internet is also a topic spoken in that week. They explain what they are doing, and the surfing in the internet. Then, the conversation changes its language, and they start to talk about porno place in the net; but only for gays they found. Suddenly they start to call themselves as she. And they have bisexual relationships.

After a while, this text became very difficult to read, and quite boring. They talk all the time about what they are going to do; they gossip about other people. There are some parts where they are in expensive restaurants, because the writer wants to sell his book. And so on during the whole week.

It has a lot of sexual connotations and conversations. They are in all the parties.