What do you think?
Rate this book
You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury
Do you feel it? I'm holding your hand. Come with me. Look! There's a mirror, many mirrors! They are watching us, but we don't have to care. This night belongs to us. This infinity. Come! ... World! Just watch us...as we prowl the arcades of fallen memory...
118 pages, Paperback
First published July 19, 2022
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 3, 2022
Definitely not your usual book of fiction.
You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury feels more like a stroll through a museum of Jennifer Robin's animated daydreams, visions and hallucinations. The vignettes are so short and surreal that it's difficult to attribute them any narrative intent outside of symbolism. Words are like paint and clay that craft images and express feelings. I've never quite encounter a book like this, but I kind of live to find such literary UFOs. I was pleased and entertained by this little tome.
There is a lot of social anxiety and even a beautiful vulnerability to these scenes: parties that turn weird, settings that suddenly change against the wish of the protagonists. Support characters trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. These supports characters are sometimes celebrities like David Bowie and Iggy Pop is one story who are trying to make sense of contemporary art at a New York party.
This is a book you pick up and read little by little. You read two or three stories and put the book down, let them live with you a little. Then you pick it back up after. This is coming up in July. Fun summer read even if you "don't have time" to.
You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury feels more like a stroll through a museum of Jennifer Robin's animated daydreams, visions and hallucinations. The vignettes are so short and surreal that it's difficult to attribute them any narrative intent outside of symbolism. Words are like paint and clay that craft images and express feelings. I've never quite encounter a book like this, but I kind of live to find such literary UFOs. I was pleased and entertained by this little tome.
There is a lot of social anxiety and even a beautiful vulnerability to these scenes: parties that turn weird, settings that suddenly change against the wish of the protagonists. Support characters trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. These supports characters are sometimes celebrities like David Bowie and Iggy Pop is one story who are trying to make sense of contemporary art at a New York party.
This is a book you pick up and read little by little. You read two or three stories and put the book down, let them live with you a little. Then you pick it back up after. This is coming up in July. Fun summer read even if you "don't have time" to.
July 17, 2022
Jennifer Robin’s dreams begin in layered places – a cruise ship that’s also a Catholic church, a hip European mod bar run by children, another day in the life of Marianne Faithfull, or a suit a man was murdered in. They take our cult-of-celebrity and social-media infected age as a jumping off point, and jump we do. They are indeed strange, funny, haunted. They begin when you open You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury, but don’t end when you close the book. Savour these dream songs: their logic will take you nowhere predictable. Even if you don’t dream, you’ll dream here. This is one to add to your dream shelf, a worthy cohort to Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, Jack Kerouac’s Book of Dreams & John Berryman’s Dream Songs.
November 23, 2022
This book is dreamy!!
August 13, 2022
A new book from Jennifer Robin is always a reason to celebrate. Her last book, EARTHQUAKES IN CANDYLAND was a fascinating, insightful combination of memoir, road trip, confession, and manifesto, with memorable imagery and an incredible eye for detail. In YOU ONLY BEND ONCE WITH A SPOONFUL OF MERCURY, she moves into another territory: her dreams.
As one would expect, Robin's writing is still as keen as ever, but now she writes without being bound by logic or rationale. Her dreams vary from page long vignettes to multi-page epics. She meets various celebrities, faces various apocalypses, has her body transformed, and all sorts of other adventures, all while keeping the same observational and insightful approach to the material that made her other books so compelling. Let's be honest, in less talented hands, a collection of dreams might be boring or unbearable. Instead, Robin's slim volume is best taken slowly and savored, letting the weird characters and surreal storylines wash over you slowly.
In addition to her dreams, there's also an introduction that explores a bit of why Robin put this book together, and a great glossary in the back that explains some of her pop-culture references in her own unique style. She also provides spot illustrations throughout.
Great fun for fans of things outside of the mainstream. Highly recommended.
(I was trying to think of something to compare this to, and the best I could come up with is a comic book series that artist/writer Rick Veitch produced in the mid-1990's called RARE BIT FIENDS, where he illustrated his dreams and the dreams of his friends. Veitch recently started publishing new issues of his series, so maybe there's something in the zeitgeist?)
As one would expect, Robin's writing is still as keen as ever, but now she writes without being bound by logic or rationale. Her dreams vary from page long vignettes to multi-page epics. She meets various celebrities, faces various apocalypses, has her body transformed, and all sorts of other adventures, all while keeping the same observational and insightful approach to the material that made her other books so compelling. Let's be honest, in less talented hands, a collection of dreams might be boring or unbearable. Instead, Robin's slim volume is best taken slowly and savored, letting the weird characters and surreal storylines wash over you slowly.
In addition to her dreams, there's also an introduction that explores a bit of why Robin put this book together, and a great glossary in the back that explains some of her pop-culture references in her own unique style. She also provides spot illustrations throughout.
Great fun for fans of things outside of the mainstream. Highly recommended.
(I was trying to think of something to compare this to, and the best I could come up with is a comic book series that artist/writer Rick Veitch produced in the mid-1990's called RARE BIT FIENDS, where he illustrated his dreams and the dreams of his friends. Veitch recently started publishing new issues of his series, so maybe there's something in the zeitgeist?)
May 18, 2024
There may be a parallel between dream-art and AI art. Yes, I know, people love to hate AI. But it’s just a tool, right? Morally and aesthetically neutral until employed. Like nuclear power. Like language. Dreams spurt and layer from “prompts” in the unconscious. Although tied to more or less specific existences – to what happened the day before, or to insecurities, to un-nursed desires, or to seeming silliness such as celebrities or the smell of a certain cheese, or shape of a mustache – the dream itself is a mess. A blob of images, feelings and “meanings.” Maybe that’s why they are often hard to remember. Because to “remember” them requires organizing, signifying with language a thing that resists language. The conscious mind intervening. Therefore, it takes some heavy-duty communication skills to make messy dreams into art, while retaining, even enhancing, their dream magic. I could go on about how this book does it. How it translates the ineffable into mood, time travel, architectural space, psychological insight, eschatological doom, laffs. How it borders the high surrealism of Leonora Carrington while relating the here and now. And how its refractive phrases or climactic mysteries even subvert the dream. Nullify it into fleeting parables that slip through fingers. But I won’t. Because I’m not sure of any of this. And I’m in danger of forgetting everything.
November 23, 2022
I have had the pleasure of purchasing this book from Jennifer, and hearing her read from it. it is hard to find adequate words to describe her words; some that come to mind are psychedelic, stream of consciousness, extremely vivid, brilliant- but also based in real life. The real appears surreal. A walk across town immerses one in a densely vivid world of images, descriptions of characters and places- unique turns of phrases, often hilarious, sometimes reminding one of one's own past experiences, but brought to life in an incomparable writing style. Just dive in, and you will be well rewarded with a highly individualistic reading experience.
July 31, 2022
Psychedelic, vivid, clever. Disorientation that leads to orientation—a clearer perspective of Earth.
Favorite lines:
"We do this as a trance, generate noise to blot out the largeness of everything else, the sheer weight of unknowns."
“Our bodies are getting older, but our minds are going backwards.”
Favorite lines:
"We do this as a trance, generate noise to blot out the largeness of everything else, the sheer weight of unknowns."
“Our bodies are getting older, but our minds are going backwards.”
September 6, 2023
Robin does a difficult job of quickly building and demolishing relationships crafted in single segments of sentences. By the time you turn the page your heart will be broken, repaired, and lost all in a few paragraphs. My advice? Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
March 7, 2024
An amalgamation of the dreamiest and most tragic dreams. Easy to place yourself within these moments.
Very special, will hold onto it forever.
Very special, will hold onto it forever.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews