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Apparitions of the Living
In the aftermath of a kidnapping.
390 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 24, 2019
Full Review
Apparitions of the Living is an odd and often frustrating read. However, John Trefry’s prose is beautiful and well-constructed and the narrative remains compelling despite its deconstructed nature. It enforces my opinion that Inside the Castle is one of the most interesting presses putting out work today, both in the field of experimental literature and literature in general. Highly recommended.
Apparitions of the Living is an odd and often frustrating read. However, John Trefry’s prose is beautiful and well-constructed and the narrative remains compelling despite its deconstructed nature. It enforces my opinion that Inside the Castle is one of the most interesting presses putting out work today, both in the field of experimental literature and literature in general. Highly recommended.
December 9, 2018
Instructions for breaking down or constructing an occult organism.
July 23, 2021
Everything I always wanted from Paul Auster but only ever found in Jane Unrue—outside of Robbe-Grillet himself, of course, who casts so long a shadow over Trefry’s dense postmodern mystery novel/mystery of a novel even the typeface can’t hide. Which is all well and good by me, because this kind of intricately surreal, formally audacious detective story is catnip to me.
June 14, 2020
“I am classified as human. But this assignation dehumanizes the surface by naming rather than describing.”
Some rambling:
Over a year of life has transpired since I began reading this—the book’s coda suggests 8 years passed during its writing. This aggregated time would be best visualized in skin cells shed. Imagine feeling each one—sense its departing, follow its restless buoyancy moving through spacetime, and regard its reincarnation as part of a new skin, one that either settles over and invisibly sheathes objects in the room you occupy, or highlights their absence from that space as objects are moved, lost, or taken. Imagine the superabundance of a text that converses in the language of those transactions. The result is a kind of infinite morphology of surfaces, language being the prime interface (and this concession is presumably made only because of the physical limitations of a book as a three-dimensional consumer object; were books ever able to be printed in six dimensions, this might be a good candidate to try it out). That “plot” (in a sense) does emerge as a byproduct of these conceits is rather astounding. Will be thinking about this one for a while.
Some rambling:
Over a year of life has transpired since I began reading this—the book’s coda suggests 8 years passed during its writing. This aggregated time would be best visualized in skin cells shed. Imagine feeling each one—sense its departing, follow its restless buoyancy moving through spacetime, and regard its reincarnation as part of a new skin, one that either settles over and invisibly sheathes objects in the room you occupy, or highlights their absence from that space as objects are moved, lost, or taken. Imagine the superabundance of a text that converses in the language of those transactions. The result is a kind of infinite morphology of surfaces, language being the prime interface (and this concession is presumably made only because of the physical limitations of a book as a three-dimensional consumer object; were books ever able to be printed in six dimensions, this might be a good candidate to try it out). That “plot” (in a sense) does emerge as a byproduct of these conceits is rather astounding. Will be thinking about this one for a while.
April 10, 2022
"The grating of salt crystals down across interlocking geometries married to the footfall then loosing grips, clasping serifs and breaking in increasingly diminutive meshed interactions promotes a toothed resonance in the sole of the shoeboot."
June 4, 2019
Text as dust storm?
June 20, 2024
shoeboots
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews