The much expanded 1000th edition of Click Nilson’s book Collected Rewritings has just been released (free download). As one of most perplexing books ever written, it may be of interest to the general reader interested in rewriting it themselves, even beyond the live coding community to the margins of experimental literature, text scores, surrealism, and militant musicology.
(2016, 1000th edition 2025) Nilson, C. Collected Rewritings: Live Coding Thoughts, 1968-2037. Burntwood: Verbose. https://composerprogrammer.com/research/collectedrewritings.pdf
An excerpt: Preface to the 1000th edition
It is a massive achievement to have reached this 1000th edition, even if it has meant missing out the 2nd through 999th.
I won’t trouble you with the details of recantations, denials, withdrawals of material, corrections to earlier editions, refutations, grimacing embarrassment, the floor, opening up, swallowing all thoughts and me within it, a limbo, a fall further, the hell of edits, the worldnether neverword, trickery, conceit, the full flow of sadness, prongs and barbed comments, inflatable tridents and a sorry mess all over my face palm face palm shame and public hubrisiation, regret, a withdrawal from pubic lice, public life once a toilet then a bar where I lost my live programming virginity, yesterday’s papers which did not feature me, wrapping cold fish and chips which I did not eat, and more regret, more shame, more details which I shouldn’t go into, and all for what?
The book has expanded significantly since the 1st edition, gaining at least one preface and innumerable newly nimted footnotes, all but invisible to the trained eye.
There is a newfound hope in the world, that humanity’s future, and more specifically the future of live coding, will not be cut short by
