Syzygy, Beauty
An Essay
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $10.99
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
“In Syzygy, Beauty, T Fleischmann re-imagines the essay, creating a spare little book that reads like a collection of prose poems.” (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times)
In Syzygy, Beauty, T Fleischmann builds an essay of prose blocks, weaving together observations on art, the narrator’s construction of a house, and a direct address to a lover. Playing with scale and repetition, we are kept off-center, and therefore always looking, as the speaker leads us through an intimate relationship that is complicated and deepened by multiple partners, gender transitions, and itinerancy.
“A complex, tightly wound (and wounded) cri de coeur that is simultaneously accessible and intensely, cryptically personal.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“T Fleischmann’s Syzygy, Beauty shimmers with confidence as it tours the surreal chaos of gender, art, and desire . . . I hail its weirdness, its ‘armpit frankess,’ its indelible portrait of occulted relation, and above all, its impeccable music.” —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
“This distinctive debut traces ‘the past made alight by impact’ through a diverse set of sources: film and carpentry analogies; interior monologues; references to artists Méret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Grayson Perry, and Louise Bourgeois; gnostic texts; and personal, yet ambiguous, disclosures.” —ForeWord Reviews
“At its most basic, this unusual and engaging book describes the ins-and-outs of an unorthodox love affair, but it also functions as a sustained exploration of the ambiguities of love, gender, intimacy, and aesthetic possibilities.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At its most basic, this unusual and engaging book describes the ins-and-outs of an unorthodox love affair, but it also functions as a sustained exploration of the ambiguities of love, gender, intimacy, and aesthetic possibilities. Fleischmann carves out a writing style somewhere between essay and poem, taking the reader through a series of vignettes that range from scenes of the affair, through meditations on Tracey Emin's Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, 1963-1995 (a tent appliqued with the names of everyone the artist had ever slept with ), to philosophical attempts to define the compromises of romantic partnership. Early on, Fleischmann declares, "By describing something we place it at a distance," and this tension informs the stuttering action that follows. Attempting to describe the beloved and the act of loving, Fleischmann sets the writer at a distance from both. Fleischmann appears, unsurprisingly, as quite a lonesome narrator. The book, however, is engaging company. Its short passages are by turns smart and witty, but always carefully observed. Though certain passages are earnest to the point of tedium, the brief vignettes quickly give way to the next. Fleischmann asks tough questions about selfhood, love, and loneliness, and provides some keen and fresh--if ultimately inconclusive--answers.
