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In the Desert of Mute Squares
The titanic new text object from M Kitchell. In its production is the escape from the spaces of indentured tedium where the time is measured only by the presence of the body, into a nonspace of pleasure in impossible architecture and bodily torment & this book is the nonspace of its reception. Excessive insanity / Copious Fluid.
454 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 20, 2019
The book, a set of often-standardized rectilinear contours, provides a deceptively ordered shell for its contents. While these contents may in fact be as orderly and linear as their veneer, the mannered exterior may also contain unstable and in fact uncontainable worlds. A book may be a labyrinth, a dream, a subconscious. In some cases, any of these may be a metaphor. Within the tangled, unnumbered pages of In the Desert of Mute Squares, all three of those could be taken more literally.
The 450-odd pages here are roughly grouped into 11 subsections, but the content itself -- death, dream, and desire, in text and grainy, often tantalizingly vague images -- defies all order, shimmering every which way and creating new threads and echoes across great swaths of non-sequential pagination. Perhaps the numbers that intersperse the text are in fact page numbers, but they've been thrown out of order, or more than one may appear on a single page, or none at all. Perhaps the sequencing is in fact extremely planned and precise (it's clear how much care went into preparing this work, it is not in any sense haphazard) but this is not to suggest that the physical printed order, or the sequential order were the book to be chopped up and reordered by number-sign, or any other possible path/map based on numerology, chance, or divinatory page shuffling, would reach a definitive form. This is the book's open structure. So we're left to wander, to explore, to learn, to forget, and to reencounter under new conditions. Finishing the text, despite a final line providing one potential exit from the book, actually explains nothing besides the need to plunge back into the maze. The experience lies not in finding the exit. In fact, finding the exit may be hazardous. The persistent motif here (besides the architectural and mineral forms, the oceans and deserts, the erotic bodies that recur throughout M. Kitchell's corpus, an especially apt word in this case) is of the mercuriality of dreams, but it's not clear if these are the visions of sleep or death. A two-page spread beseeches the reader to NEVER WAKE UP: this may be a limbo whose uncertainty is preferable to a non-existence which may await in prime reality. I had a sense of this early on, and a late entry seemed to confirm it, but there may be entries to confirm any notion. Or who's to say that a prime reality exists. The book may be an infinite space able to contain any set of contradictions. The collage-format extends, further, beyond genre or category: these are stories, essays, poems, diaries, words, windows.
I realize it would seem that I'm more hung up on form than content. The form is the content. The experience of the thing.
Actually, I know what the demarcating numbers dotting the pages correspond to in some basic sense. In 2013, M. released a zine each month of the year. One of these became Hour of the Wolf, one appears in Spiritual Instrument. Four of them were Non-Site 1 - 4, spaced throughout the year and containing a sampling from 200 numbered texts described as fictional dreams or "Errors". "Dreams I Never Had" and "Errors" are also two of the alternate titles of this volume and sure enough, some of the texts match, and some have been recombined, reformatted, edited, rethought. Most were never printed in those other forms at all. This is a glimpse into process, but it does not "explain" the result, nor do I seek explanation. I don't know what the new order suggests, I don't know why some are considered errors and crossed out, I comprehend only some of the endless meta-forms their new alignment traces.
I read much of this on the verge of falling asleep over many nights. This seems appropriate. The images penetrate further perhaps, even as others slip away. Cacti and murder. The luminous rectangle of the projecting screen. Sweat and blood. A labyrinth, a limbo, a subsconcious, a book.
The 450-odd pages here are roughly grouped into 11 subsections, but the content itself -- death, dream, and desire, in text and grainy, often tantalizingly vague images -- defies all order, shimmering every which way and creating new threads and echoes across great swaths of non-sequential pagination. Perhaps the numbers that intersperse the text are in fact page numbers, but they've been thrown out of order, or more than one may appear on a single page, or none at all. Perhaps the sequencing is in fact extremely planned and precise (it's clear how much care went into preparing this work, it is not in any sense haphazard) but this is not to suggest that the physical printed order, or the sequential order were the book to be chopped up and reordered by number-sign, or any other possible path/map based on numerology, chance, or divinatory page shuffling, would reach a definitive form. This is the book's open structure. So we're left to wander, to explore, to learn, to forget, and to reencounter under new conditions. Finishing the text, despite a final line providing one potential exit from the book, actually explains nothing besides the need to plunge back into the maze. The experience lies not in finding the exit. In fact, finding the exit may be hazardous. The persistent motif here (besides the architectural and mineral forms, the oceans and deserts, the erotic bodies that recur throughout M. Kitchell's corpus, an especially apt word in this case) is of the mercuriality of dreams, but it's not clear if these are the visions of sleep or death. A two-page spread beseeches the reader to NEVER WAKE UP: this may be a limbo whose uncertainty is preferable to a non-existence which may await in prime reality. I had a sense of this early on, and a late entry seemed to confirm it, but there may be entries to confirm any notion. Or who's to say that a prime reality exists. The book may be an infinite space able to contain any set of contradictions. The collage-format extends, further, beyond genre or category: these are stories, essays, poems, diaries, words, windows.
I realize it would seem that I'm more hung up on form than content. The form is the content. The experience of the thing.
Actually, I know what the demarcating numbers dotting the pages correspond to in some basic sense. In 2013, M. released a zine each month of the year. One of these became Hour of the Wolf, one appears in Spiritual Instrument. Four of them were Non-Site 1 - 4, spaced throughout the year and containing a sampling from 200 numbered texts described as fictional dreams or "Errors". "Dreams I Never Had" and "Errors" are also two of the alternate titles of this volume and sure enough, some of the texts match, and some have been recombined, reformatted, edited, rethought. Most were never printed in those other forms at all. This is a glimpse into process, but it does not "explain" the result, nor do I seek explanation. I don't know what the new order suggests, I don't know why some are considered errors and crossed out, I comprehend only some of the endless meta-forms their new alignment traces.
I read much of this on the verge of falling asleep over many nights. This seems appropriate. The images penetrate further perhaps, even as others slip away. Cacti and murder. The luminous rectangle of the projecting screen. Sweat and blood. A labyrinth, a limbo, a subsconcious, a book.
January 16, 2024
A lot to say about this Gargantuan Art Cinderblock that I'm sure someone more passionate toward it could illuminate the deeper nuances of, but I really enjoyed my time with this nonetheless and certainly will be flipping through it recurrently. This may be one of the single most gorgeously composed books I've ever seen; a titan of graphic design if there ever was one, you could compare this to House of Leaves in just how much tender loving care clearly went into composing this piece specifically as an object, though this one stretches the limits much further of what could be considered a novel. In fact it's not a novel at all, but a collection of narrative breadcrumbs that seem to detail a morbid journey through a liminal dreamworld, where the end game of the journey seems to be the unnamed protagonist(s?) spiritual odyssey to exit the dream, either through waking, death, or, excuse my crassness, orgasm. (All three? Seems like they're one and the same.) Kind of feels like Yume Nikki in its approach as this Endless Dream Expanse created from a perspective point who we never get a look into the direct thoughts of; like the protagonists of both works, the reader is left to wander the maze of their traumatic nightmares and piece this oneiric puzzle together on their own terms, soaking in the surreal sights and sounds along the way which provide the closest thing possible to a roadmap in this abstracted headspace.
I read this from page one to the end, as I do with my first read of all books, but the primary fascination with this book is in its structure, of which there are surely patterns occurring that hint at the deeper mechanics of the work, beyond what one could get out of a quick first read. The numbering of the pages seems to be a key here that I'll be interested in unlocking with further ventures. The pages themselves are numbered out of order, making the reader's place in the labyrinth unclear; basically, you're dropped into the middle of a maze, possibly one that goes on forever; could the only way "out", as in, unraveling some kind of narrative going on here, be through corresponding the scrambled page numbers in the margins to the actual pages they link up with in the book? In that case, the book may take forever to read, but that may be the point as the spiritual journey detailed is infinite as far as we know, as sprawling as the world of dreams. I do think the book could have used just a little more oomph in grounding me to a more emotionally resonant context, but the questions its vignettes poke and probe at are enough to get my brain moving and thematically and formally compelling enough to return to multiple times. Really happy to have received this as a Christmas gift from my lovely family and to have something this striking and beautifully composed on my shelves.
I read this from page one to the end, as I do with my first read of all books, but the primary fascination with this book is in its structure, of which there are surely patterns occurring that hint at the deeper mechanics of the work, beyond what one could get out of a quick first read. The numbering of the pages seems to be a key here that I'll be interested in unlocking with further ventures. The pages themselves are numbered out of order, making the reader's place in the labyrinth unclear; basically, you're dropped into the middle of a maze, possibly one that goes on forever; could the only way "out", as in, unraveling some kind of narrative going on here, be through corresponding the scrambled page numbers in the margins to the actual pages they link up with in the book? In that case, the book may take forever to read, but that may be the point as the spiritual journey detailed is infinite as far as we know, as sprawling as the world of dreams. I do think the book could have used just a little more oomph in grounding me to a more emotionally resonant context, but the questions its vignettes poke and probe at are enough to get my brain moving and thematically and formally compelling enough to return to multiple times. Really happy to have received this as a Christmas gift from my lovely family and to have something this striking and beautifully composed on my shelves.
June 25, 2018
Full Review
In the Desert of Mute Squares is a beautiful, disturbing, and exciting poetic labyrinth. The form is unique and a work of art in itself and the prose paints vivid, surreal images. M Kitchell remains, in my opinion, one of the best contemporary creators of experimental literature. I highly recommend this book.
In the Desert of Mute Squares is a beautiful, disturbing, and exciting poetic labyrinth. The form is unique and a work of art in itself and the prose paints vivid, surreal images. M Kitchell remains, in my opinion, one of the best contemporary creators of experimental literature. I highly recommend this book.
January 9, 2018
It will tear your soul... apart.
June 19, 2024
"Praying for air so I can be displaced into too many pieces to ever again reach the totality of spirit. Dust sniff. The dead angel glide. Forgotten ritual. Fuck this body. I'm going to live forever by refusing to let my body exist. Like air or God I will be invisible."
Reading In the Desert of Mute Squares is like trying to solve The Lament Configuration Box. Like crawling through the hot sand in a fever dream. Like reading an instruction manual for an out of body experience. Like edging without orgasm for 454 pages.
Reading In the Desert of Mute Squares is like trying to solve The Lament Configuration Box. Like crawling through the hot sand in a fever dream. Like reading an instruction manual for an out of body experience. Like edging without orgasm for 454 pages.
January 13, 2021
M Kitchell’s text-object or a collage, or a text labyrinth or whatever we call the genre of the book In the Desert of Mute Squares invites readers into an engaged reading from the very first page, i.e. the title. It poses the question of what exactly are the dead mute squares Kitchell mentions. Are they pyramids, about which he talks 14 times in the book? Or is it something more contemporary, are those more “in our faces” objects, such as the grey skyscrapers with their open offices filled with numb faces? I would think the latter since Kitchell draws the readers attention often to capitalism and existentialism, both of which can be found in the offices.
I’m unable to stop thinking about the book even three months after reading it and rereading it. It was the combination of black-and-white pictures that often felt almost manic and the short text that kept my interest high throughout the whole book. Kitchell was able to tackle many different themes, from the arbitrariness of language and its consequent erasure completed by images to the current themes such as sexuality and breaking taboos, as well as the ultimate struggle of existentialism. While the sexual parts scream for attention, it was more the parts where the author expressed his belief in the corruption of the world and the ultimate depression at the state of our existence that fascinated me the most. “When did the world become this” (p. 253) is a quote that resonated with me the most. In the current era, the quizzical questions such as how did we get to a place from which there is a very narrow road of escape (the environment, the politics, the virus, etc.) are pushing on everybody’s minds. Overall, the book was incredibly eye-opening in the sense that we can say a lot by saying very little and instead proposing a way for the readers to find their own meaning between the lines and the pictures.
I’m unable to stop thinking about the book even three months after reading it and rereading it. It was the combination of black-and-white pictures that often felt almost manic and the short text that kept my interest high throughout the whole book. Kitchell was able to tackle many different themes, from the arbitrariness of language and its consequent erasure completed by images to the current themes such as sexuality and breaking taboos, as well as the ultimate struggle of existentialism. While the sexual parts scream for attention, it was more the parts where the author expressed his belief in the corruption of the world and the ultimate depression at the state of our existence that fascinated me the most. “When did the world become this” (p. 253) is a quote that resonated with me the most. In the current era, the quizzical questions such as how did we get to a place from which there is a very narrow road of escape (the environment, the politics, the virus, etc.) are pushing on everybody’s minds. Overall, the book was incredibly eye-opening in the sense that we can say a lot by saying very little and instead proposing a way for the readers to find their own meaning between the lines and the pictures.
April 1, 2020
IN THE DESERT OF MUTE SQUARES by M. KITCHELL is beyond indescribable. Sensational. Pioneering. Proving the probe of voice, style, theme, repetition, is the sustenance to our literary boners, keeping them engorged, warped cocks with our warped, altered minds and bodies whole and in tune in an existential almost wet, cum smelling, sandy terrain where notion, visual is all second to experientialism, where invigoration, is oh so sexually materially cosmically appetising, literary bones of muscle and sinew and blood circulatory literary fictionary arteries see us kept monolithic and upward, formed, hardened, blood flow prose flow flood rush gushing of visage of metaphor and hyper-analysis of structures and human bondage to the page to the book to the form to the intention to the allegory glory sexual synaptic ripples where we float and drift on this experimental mind enhancing innovative piece of genius.
February 26, 2023
I had a fun time with this book. The varied text, font, size, and images felt playful and kept me wanting to turn the page. Even when words or sentences were repeated, the varied way they were presented kept them from feeling redundant. I love poetry that simultaneously manages to ground me and make me feel weightless, and that's exactly what this book did. In the desert of mute squares felt like a tribute to someone’s human experience and I thoroughly enjoyed being privy to it.
September 2, 2022
more books should be like this
April 5, 2020
My first Kitchell. Interesting piece; would love to own it as object, find it challenging and immutably architectural as text, building without doorway -- "cry of the self as doubled victim" -- yes, I am unsure of my place in this all and as such will revisit when my brain turns it over its internal gears.
August 15, 2022
YES TO FAILURE, YES TO NOTHING. “With every night comes a new color. Something beyond the spectrum made available to our eyes, something positioned just beyond graspable experience. Language is failure. The colors ring like silent sounds, entirely outside experiential description. Like nothing.” WHAT THE STRETCH “Yogic stretching. I am in love with everything I fuck.” IT IS WAR “The psychic time-war has begun, continues.”
August 31, 2018
I finished this a while ago and, while interesting, I don't feel like the uber experimental - what felt sometimes like "dick measuring" - nature of the whole thing really struck a chord with me. A lot of the prose is quite evocative and some images are haunting and well arranged, but overall it feels incomplete, often flat and meandering.
August 13, 2022
Text pieces from this text object:
“What is it that will kill you in the end? Probably the water.”
“Reality is a fucked narrative of everything you can’t wholly remember. This is how you fake a moon landing.”
“The dream encoded in narrative. Neither symbol nor allegory.”
Item #10 on “a short list of what I must learn from the dead”: “Whether fire or air is lighter”
“What is it that will kill you in the end? Probably the water.”
“Reality is a fucked narrative of everything you can’t wholly remember. This is how you fake a moon landing.”
“The dream encoded in narrative. Neither symbol nor allegory.”
Item #10 on “a short list of what I must learn from the dead”: “Whether fire or air is lighter”
September 1, 2023
I appreciate kitchels ability to craft a text, but I can’t get past what is here overwrought. Too much design creates contrivance. Tries too hard to be a gestamstkunstverk, a sealed totality. I find myself lost at admiring the work on the walls; the strokes of the hieroglyphs but not the meaning of their togetherness. How I wish the fist would open inside me.
August 4, 2022
4.5 stars
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January 23, 2019predicting that this will be my most re-read book of the year
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews