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<\/p>\nBy C. D. Rose.<\/p>\n
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Melissa McCarthy, Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro<\/a><\/em> (Sagging Meniscus, 2023)<\/p>\n Though I have now read it twice, I cannot remember the title of this book \u2014 that is, I keep getting its four words mixed up. This is perhaps because the four essays of which it consists (\u2018Flowers,\u2019 \u2018Early Processes,\u2019 \u2018Refixing the Image,\u2019 and \u2018Explosions\u2019) follow a sequence not of Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro<\/em> but of phyto, proto, photo, nitro. The title might not have been chosen only for its more euphonious qualities but to acknowledge the fact that what the book does among many other things \u2014 is to show that these four elements (to quote \u2014 \u2018Photo: to do with light. Phyto: plants and flowers. Proto: the first, the original. Nitro: it blows up\u2019) are not discrete objects or processes, but ones which inhere in each other. Each section loops back on the others, blooms and branches out, leaving traces on its counterparts.<\/p>\n This method in turn provides a guide to reading the book. The first section begins with a brief mention of tattoos before rapidly turning to John Hersey\u2019s book about Hiroshima then pauses to closely parse one small excerpt from Aeschylus\u2019 Agamemnon<\/em> before moving on to archaeologist Leonard Woolley\u2019s accounts of the excavation of Ur. That\u2019s just the first ten pages. There are another 118 to go, and the pace doesn\u2019t slow.<\/p>\n The reader here will be forgiven for worrying that PPPN<\/em> may merely be yet another voguish non-fiction book, one which attempts to link together a number of disparate \u2018oh-isn\u2019t-this-quite-interesting\u2019 facts, take a punt at uniting them somehow then add a dash of personal memoir to create something which we are assured will change how we think about subject X or Y for ever. Relax, it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The book also manages to avoid the risk of information overload: while the method may initially seem digressive, it is anything but. PPPN<\/em> follows its trails of argument precisely \u2014 every detail mentioned is vital as it will be returned to, and looked at again in a sharper light or from a different angle or in a new context, bringing each element and the whole they form into clearer focus and relief each time. McCarthy\u2019s style is clear, even when dealing with complex subject matter (the interior of a shark\u2019s eye, for example), and moves smoothly between lucid academic and casually friendly. There is nothing de haut en bas<\/em> here, only the dazzling pleasure of being with an incredibly sharp, wide-ranging and well-informed mind as it thinks. McCarthy asks us along, inviting us to explore the worlds of cyanotypes, sharks, nitrates and memory books (among other things) together.<\/p>\n Though the structure is recursive, there are strong narratives here. The story of professional solider and amateur photographer Alfred Capel Cure, for example, reads like another modish genre, that of the \u2018non-fiction novel.\u2019 However, whereas, for example Benjamin Labatut\u2019s When We Cease to Understand the World<\/em> speculates on the interior torment of the great men who would inevitably shape our world irrevocably, McCarthy resists such speculation and the temptation to fabricate, and gives us the lines of the story with enough narrative delay so as to make it both compelling and well worked into the book\u2019s overall themes. If PPPN<\/em> has any analogues, it is the work of Marina Warner (her book Phantasmagoria<\/em> especially), or Philip Hoare\u2019s Albert and the Whale<\/em>. Anyone seriously interested in photography should place this book alongside Barthes\u2019 Camera Lucida<\/em> and Geoff Dyer\u2019s The Ongoing Moment<\/em> on their shelves.<\/p>\n The still-nascent field of Forensic Literature takes the useful mis-quotation of Walter Benjamin (\u2018every photograph is a crime scene\u2019) and looks at a range of objects very carefully, looking at the marks upon them which show how they came to be and how they may have ended, at their erasures, lacks and scars, what is missing from them, and considers how they can reveal unexpected connections which shape our world. Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro<\/em> is a vital addition to it.<\/p>\n Read an extract<\/strong> from Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro<\/em> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ABOUT THE REVIEWER<\/strong> The still-nascent field of Forensic Literature takes the useful mis-quotation of Walter Benjamin (\u2018every photograph is a crime scene\u2019) and looks at a range of objects very carefully, looking at the marks upon them which show how they came to be and how they may have ended, at their erasures, lacks and scars, what is missing from them, and considers how they can reveal unexpected connections which shape our world. Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro<\/em> is a vital addition to it.<\/p>\n C. D. Rose<\/strong> reviews Melissa McCarthy<\/strong>‘s Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114223"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114232,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114223\/revisions\/114232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/51280463672_c32bfdbcd8_z.jpg\")
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\nC. D. Rose<\/strong>‘s three books The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure<\/em>, Who\u2019s Who When Everyone Is Someone Else<\/em> and The Blind Accordionist<\/em> form a loose parafictional trilogy about lost books and forgotten writers, about who is forgotten and who remembered, and how, and why. Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea<\/a><\/em>, a collection of short stories, will be published in January 2024. You can read an interview with him here<\/a>.
\nTwitter: @cdrose_write<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"