Buzzwords

The task of describing one’s or indeed any one experience of reading in 2016 is daunting. It’s daunting because, in a lifetime of heavy reading I don’t think there’s been a year when I read more. When I say reading I am aware now that to speak only of reading literature or even words is to place arbitrary limitations on a phenomena much more expansive than that. To read is to recognise patterns and relationships and to spin from them narratives that become the contextual framework we use to navigate reality. There’s a lot to read. This year I read

Books for which I was thankful this year.   1. ‘Monuments are interesting mostly in how they diminish all other aspects of the landscape. Each highly perceptible thing makes something else almost imperceptible. This is so matter of fact, but I’ve been told I’m incomprehensible: Anne, what do you mean that noticing one thing can make the other thing disappear?‘ —from ‘The Innocent Question’ Through sketches, fables and prose-poetry Anne Boyer‘s taut Garments Against Women (Mute Books, 2016) rethreads the genre of conventional memoir and critical essay writing. Boyer addresses ‘the conditions that make literature almost impossible’ and submits history’s

12 of what I’ve read this year: The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880. Frederick Beiser. Beiser is an essential read and this is a great and readable book about an important sub-field of continental philosophy. It includes, for the Beckett fans amongst us, a chapter on Windelband, one of whose books Beckett read and from which he made copious notes. After Hegel : German Philosophy, 1840-1900 Frederick Beiser. This is a tight little philosophy book about what went on after Hegel in Germany – sometimes the way people talk you’d think there was little of interest between Hegel and the twentieth

Yuri Herrera’s novels seem to me not merely good or even very good, but something much more rare: consequential. Signs Preceding the End of the World (2015) and The Transmigration of Bodies (2016) are metaphysical noir exhibiting intense allegorical compression—both come in around 100 pages—while remaining convincingly grounded in the borderlands of this world. These books, particularly Signs, must be some of the most important recently published in English. The Buried Giant might be another. Ishiguro is at his most transgressive here,treating evil dragons and questing knights without even a trace of whimsy. Rather, for him it is the stuff

  My book of the year was Claire-Louise Bennett’s  Pond, which, technically, came out in 2015, but has haunted me ever since first reading it. This is where the future of fiction in English is being written. Joanna Walsh is also pushing back boundaries in both fiction (Vertigo) and nonfiction (Hotel). With  Hot Milk, Deborah Levy produced a worthy successor to her classic  Swimming Home. With  Feeding Time, Adam Biles has turned into a force to be reckoned with.  Agustín Fernández Mallo’s  Nocilla  trilogy (Fitzcarraldo have brought out the first two volumes) is in a league of its own, as

Mário de Andrade (E. A. Goodland, trans), Macunaíma A beautiful Brazilian modernist novel in an incredibly well-achieved translation into English. This books exudes fantasy, colours, smells (and ants), without ever losing the sense of being part of a universal cultural history. The perfect antidote to the essentialism of magical realism. Don DeLillo, White Noise Funny and piercing critique of the senselessness of academic life, the senselessness of life. A professor of Hitler Studies tries not to think about his own death by thinking about his wife’s own thoughts about death. Supermarkets abound. It might explain Donald Trump. Joanna Walsh, Vertigo

2016 has been hell but I don’t need to tell you that. I don’t need to tell you reading has been hard – everything has been hard: pulling your socks up in hell is difficult. And it’s not like social media or TV shows have had my attention instead. Twitter is my only social medium and I’m on it less and less. I fell asleep in the middle of episode two — or maybe it was three — of Narcos. I watched 20 minutes into the second episode of Stranger Things and went to the pub. I watched half an

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Volodya: Selected Works, edited by  Rosy Patience Carrick (Enitharmon Press) I’ve been reading Mayakovsky my whole poetry life, which isn’t that long, but he’s always been important to me, but this volume, well I suppose it did what it was supposed to do – crystallise, refocus, intensify appreciation. It blew me away. I read it cover to cover, twice over, and dipped further. I bought copies for friends who don’t read poetry. It’s artfully edited, beautifully produced, and just the man’s energy, his range, his deep innovation, it sings from the pages. Huge credit to Enitharmon, always a

We are simultaneously proud and happy to announce that, despite some past emails to the contrary, 3:AM is now in the market for submissions related to ‘music’ (usual provisos apply).  Sorry about those.

1 – 3 DECEMBER 2016 50TH YEAR PEOPLE SHOW Toynbee Studios 28 Commercial Street E1 6AB T 020 7650 2350 To mark their 50th anniversary, People Show will be taking over Toynbee Studios for 3 days for a landmark celebration including live performances, films, music, talks and a retrospective exhibition featuring previously unseen material from People Show’s extensive archive. A Peephole History of People Show – Parts 1, 2 & 3 include a rare chance to see People Show’s original member Mark Long’s solo durational tour-de-force that narrates the story of every People Show from its beginnings in December 1966

LISTENING TO PHILOSOPHY, SILENCE & SELF FOUR BY THREE MAGAZINE in conversation with Jean-Luc Nancy What would it mean for philosophy to listen? What does silence or the self sound like? French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy talks to four by three magazine about the responsibility of philosophy, his approach to the arts, the noise of being and the difference between seeing and hearing oneself.