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@everyword:
the book

by allison parrish, with an introduction by the author

From 2007 to 2014, the Twitter account @everyword painstakingly tweeted every word in the English language to thousands of riveted followers worldwide. Containing all 109,157 words from the original run of the account, along with accurate counts of the number of times each was favorited and retweeted by Twitter users, @everyword: The Book provides an accelerated, “director’s cut” experience of the English language like no other—as well as, in Parrish’s writing on her methods, inspirations, and reactions to the initial reception of her work, a deeply personal look at the intersection of conceptual art and secret humanity.

praise for
@everyword

Adrian Chen:

“I love Everyword. They say a good writer can make words come alive, but watching thousands cheer and jeer Everyword towards its pointless goal was more exhilarating than any novel I’ve read in years. I hope they invent enough new words so that Everyword can start up again.”

Washington Post:

“Surely no one would read through a dictionary this way, index finger underlining each consecutive word — so many of them either mundane (“a”) or trivial (“aalii,” a Hawaiian plant). And yet, since @everyword revved up in the fall of 2007, the account has attracted more than 92,000 followers and inspired a wave of copycats and spin-offs. . . . Parrish suspects her creation is the most widely read piece of conceptual literature in existence.”

Christian Bök:

“Allison Parrish has designed a bot that allows followers on Twitter to savour one word at a time out of context—each word offered to the reader, like an éclair, for delectation, until the device has, at last, exhausted this smorgasbord. A “conceptual dictionary” (recording the popularity of its own lexical entries)—this inventory lists all the “components” in the lovely, if not brutal, machinery of discourse itself. The book itemizes every piece of a common puzzle, out which of which we must make our individual identities for expression in the world. Find your word—and like it.”

The Guardian:

“One of the internet's most beloved bots.”

The Paris Review:

“In the days of the early letters, we felt footloose and fancy-free. It seemed, for a while, that the dictionary and its roughly 109,000 entries would last us for the rest of our natural lives. Years passed. Words came and went at a stately pace. The most retweeted among them were sex and weed, those poles of the human condition. But things took on a sudden urgency earlier this year when x, y, and z came around. None of us felt young anymore—we were living in the twilight of the alphabet, suddenly, acutely aware of our own mortality. @everyword, once a fixture of the Twittersphere, was soon to be snuffed out by Fate, as we all must be.”

Darius Kazemi:

“At long last: every word in the English language compiled in a single volume.”

...soooo much praise for @everyword

USA Today:

“As an expression of conceptual poetry, essentially “uncreative” writing, @everyword showcases Twitter’s ability to be used as a medium for artistic expression and social commentary.”

Nick Montfort:

“Everybody knows @everyword, the everyday bot for the everyman. Everyone thinks everything about it, heading everyway to everywhere. The system does not omit or overword, so there is no reason to reword its output for a book. You need no afterword or foreword to appreciate its buzzword, byword, catchword, codeword, crossword, headword, keyword, loanword, password, swearword, or watchword.”

Gawker:

“With a few dumb lines of Python code, Everyword manages to say more in a single word than most human Twitter users ever do.”

BuzzFeed:

“Surprisingly poetic and popular.”

Danny Snelson:

“From the meeting of a bot, a corpus, and a platform to that stable inscription technology known as the book, Allison Parrish has brilliantly transformed what we have known as the list poem. Like a microfiche archive of daily newspapers or a collector’s folio of heavily trafficked pennies, each word featured in @everyword: The Book has already lived a full and unknown life in another realm. The book is an afterword, a new direction derived from and driven by the poetics of digital communication. The beauty of @everyword is bound by the delivery of digital inevitability (what could be more perfect for Twitter than the rote reproduction of every word in order?) and the bookend of analog impossibility (what could be more unlikely than 3,000 pages indexing the output of a Twitter bot?). It is the transposition of @everyword to the static pages of the codex that astounds the reader. Drifting through these pages, an unfathomable narrative emerges within favorites and RTs, between lost replies and hidden meanings, each leaving a mysterious trace in the statistical overlay of use. In this way, the internet’s most beloved bot performs an even greater feat, translating not just an entire platform to literature, but transfiguring every word in turn. Put differently, in a word, this (RT: 416) is (RT: 1,645) essential (RT: 0) reading (RT: 28).”

The Atlantic:

“This afternoon, @everyword will send its final missive. . . . and the rest will be silence.”

you are standing in a field of [[red glass roses->Red Glass Roses]]. your eyes are full of [[saltless chemical tears->Saltless Chemical Tears]] and there are [[blood-encrusted wires->Blood-Encrusted Wires]] coming from the back of your head, hanging down your back. There is a [[yellow book->Yellow Book]] in your hands.

you break off one of the roses and hold it up to the 'sun,' which burns with a cold computer light. the 'sun' shines through the red glass rose and you can feel warmth refracted onto your face. the red glass rose shatters after a few moments and you feel as if you have done [[something wrong->someone is coming]].

the twin streams from your eyeholes flow down the runnels in your cheeks and you keep tasting the warm fluid. the 'tears' taste like flouride, the same chemical that dental hygienists use when they clean teeth. swallowing the tears, you feel a little better and less anxious. the [[Yellow Book]] in your hand seems to glow.

You tug the wires where they jut out of your skull. The pain is so severe that you nearly fall over forward. You drop the yellow book, but you pick it up. You remain standing. your mouth fills with [[saltless chemical tears->Saltless Chemical Tears]].

the title of the book is "videogames for humans" and there is a picture on the front of myriad cartoon characters all connected by various strands of fabric, tears, and streams of magic. in the distance, you hear shattering, snapping, and groans. [[someone is coming]].

a massive many-mouthed ball of fur twice as tall as you rolls across the infinite field of red glass roses. the ball of fur and sharp teeth and hungry mouths is bleeding from all the cuts it has recieved and it stops right in front of you, quivering, bleeding, gnashing its teeth. [[soon it will die.]]

you could [[ignore]] the ball of teeth, fur, and blood. you could try to [[pick glass from its cuts]]. you could [[read to it]] from the yellow book.

you pretend like the giant ball of bleeding fur and hungry mouths is not hovering over you, breathing heavy, moaning. you light a cigarette and smoke the entire thing. you are certain the dying ball of fur and madness thinks you are 'pretty cool.' you could read to it or try to help or [[keep ignoring it]].

you carefully pick the glass from the thousands of cuts in the skin and fur. the monster snaps at you a few times in its hurt and confusion, but it does not catch your nimble fingers. it lies there, blind, but no longer bleeding, breathing heavy. it seems [[drawn to the yellow book]].

as you begin reading from "videogames for humas," the yellow book in your hands, you are consumed with a healing, holy light and your face begins to glow and the roses begin to vibrate. the monster sings along with the words from every mouth, a [[song of dying]].

you keep ignoring the dying monster in front of you. eventually it vomits up an unholy torrent of blood and black bile, covering you from head to toe, and then it dies, groaning, the death-noise of flatulence and despair wringing from every orifice. you are [[alone]] in an infinite field of red glass roses with the corpse of a monster.

you are [[alone]] in a field of infinite red glass roses with the corpse of a monster. the yellow book in your hands haunts you. is it filled with secret power?

You are [[all alone]] in a field of infinite singing red glass roses beside the corpse of a monster whose soul surrounds you and you are reading "videomages for humans" and you are happy.

You are [[all alone]] in a field of infinite singing red glass roses beside the corpse of a monster whose soul surrounds you and you are reading "videogames for humans" and you are happy.

you begin reading from the yellow book, "videogames for humans." your entire soul fills with a healing yellow light and the monster perks up and listens, singing along in harmony with the words from every mouth. the glass roses in the field begin to glow. the harmony is deafening, the most [[beautiful thing you have ever heard or been a part of]].

you are in a field of infinite red glass roses and you are reading "videogames for humans" out loud to a monster made of a million singing mouths and blood-encrusted fur and the creature is levitating and the roses are glowing and you are happier than you have ever been in your entire life and you understand [[EVERYTHING]].

ebook edition
(.epub, .mobi, and .pdf)
ISBN 978-0-9904528-5-0

buy for $10

Tweets by everyword