I have previously written in praise of Olivia Laing non
by Olivia Laing
cheap jordan sneakers This really is a most perplexing book. I have previously written in praise of Olivia Laing non fiction The Lonely City especially so was more than intrigued about her first novel. I finished it wishing it had been non fiction. The flyleaf claims, rather cheap jordan sneakers boastfully, that cheap jordan 7 it the novel although personally I believe that cheap jordans 6 rings every novel ought to rewire the novel. Yet in some ways it seems like a nostalgic throwback to high Modernism. cheap jordan sneakers
cheap jordans from china It opens: “Kathy, by which I mean I, was getting married. Kathy cheap jordan sneakers , by which I mean I, nike air jordan for sale cheap had just got off cheap air jordans 3 the plane from New York. It was 19:45 on 13 May 2017″. This has the kind cheap authentic jordan shoes of rhythm and repetition I associate with Gertrude Stein. But the specificity is curious. On the same page we learn cheap jordans under 60 dollars that “Kathy had written several books Great Expectations, Blood And Guts In High School” which clearly identifies this Kathy as the novelist, provocateur and punk experimentalist Kathy Acker. At the same time, it can’t be, given that Acker died in 1997. This book does something similar indeed, there are retro jordan shoes cheap seven pages cheap jordan sneakers online of footnotes showing where Laing has taken Acker’s cheap real air jordans own words and where she has lifted things from the London Review Of Books and the Twitter account of the current incumbent of the White House. It is justified in cheap new jordans the novel itself, with at one point a character saying: “You take what you find, it’s all material, I mean what is art if it’s not cheap air jordans 6 plagiarizing the world?” cheap jordans from china
cheap jordans for sale Although michael jordan cheap shoes there is cheap jordans in china much here derived from Acker’s own life, the “I” of the opening is someone else, a nameless narrator, sunbathing in Italy, preparing for her wedding, attending some ghastly cheap jordan retro 11 literary shindigs and even more awful dinner parties. In a way it is wrong to think of the “I” and Acker as distinct characters. It is almost as if one has possessed the other in order to grant the kind of radical licence that Acker promoted. cheap jordans for sale
cheap jordans cheap jordans ireland sale And the “I” certainly does not hold back. Ali Smith has been working through a quartet of books attempting, and succeeding, to capture the contemporary. Crudo almost rushes past the present. I can’t quite imagine how the novel was constructed, given the lead times in publishing, and yet it manages to include Jacob Rees Mogg, the Leave Campaign, Trump, Guardian editorials and, in another Stein like sentence, “smiling men policing women’s bodies, smiling men deporting immigrants, smiling men telling smiling lies on daytime television”. cheap jordans sale
cheap jordans shoes Worthy though this all is, I was reminded of the late Angus Calder’s comment “if you’re that concerned, write a letter to the newspaper, not a novel”. cheap jordans shoes
cheap jordans on sale The title gives some indication of all this. “Crudo” means raw in Italian, but it has a connotative as well as a denotative meaning it can refer to the uncooked, but also to the raw as in “raw anger” or as in our phrase “harsh reality”. It is also Mexican slang for being terribly hungover, which is appropriate given the amount of drinking in the book. The addictions in the novel are not limited to drink and drugs, cheap jordans $30 free shipping and include social media our “I” character is never off her phone. cheap jordans on sale
cheap jordans online But is it, in the end, a novel? I would super cheap jordans have been more delighted to read a non fiction book by Laing on Acker and her influence, especially in the age of Pussy Riot and the pussy grabbing POTUS. It does, by disrupting temporal order and even the intact nature of the self, attempt something brave. There is a consistent and radical contradiction in how emotions are described. But the sad point about literary experiments is cheap jordans size 7 that, like scientific experiments, they sometimes fail. The attempts at humour here left me utterly cold. It always felt like cheap jordans kid sizes laughing at, not laughing with. Moreover www.umjordanshoes.com , the liberal smugness of the opinions seems very, very far from Acker’s own fury. “Pain is the world” as she wrote, and this is quoted at the end of the novel. If one wanted a fictional depiction of Acker, then I would recommend Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel Sandman, where there is a homage to her she was a friend of his as the goddess Delirium. It captures her anger and melancholy, especially given she was once known as Delight cheap jordans online.
