{"id":1494,"date":"2007-06-08T09:40:17","date_gmt":"2007-06-08T09:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/the-human-war\/"},"modified":"2007-06-08T13:22:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-08T13:22:00","slug":"the-human-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/the-human-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Human War<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noah Cicero<\/a>, The Human War<\/em>, Snowbooks<\/a>, 2007<\/p>\n

hwa.jpg<\/p>\n

The Human War<\/em><\/a> — a short book written as a combination of prose poetry\/dialogue, which therefore gives each and every sentence an elaborate, rhythmic yet dissonant weight. This significance to each staccato line betrays the protagonist’s adolescent angst as a meagre hysterical rant that rebuffs the reader’s close attention (perhaps intentionally), whilst mirroring the narrator’s alienation. <\/p>\n

However, this is a tired existential nonsense, and I dispute the lazy comparisons of this work with Beckett — whilst it’s true Cicero’s characters witter on without dynamic or conclusion — this is merely a facile aping of Beckett’s revelation of the human condition written in weary tropes.<\/p>\n

If this book is intended as a synecdoche for Western society then I am afraid it is disappointingly successful, and perhaps that is my problem with this work, whilst personally shunning redemptive novels this small reflection of Post-Modern apathy is just too lacking in poetry or revelation to raise it from the lowest common denominator and frankly I can watch reality TV if I need a fix of that.<\/p>\n

heidi.jpg
\nABOUT THE REVIEWER<\/strong>
\nHeidi James<\/a>‘ novella The Mesmerist’s Daughter<\/em> (published by Apis Books) will be launched in July 2007, likewise her novel Carbon<\/em> (published by Wrecking Ball Press). She has a column in Dazed and Confused<\/em>, is a regular contributor to Another Level<\/em> and Arts Editor for 3:AM<\/strong>. Her essays and short stories are published in a variety of anthologies and magazines. She is the proprietor of Social Disease<\/a> and is a recipient of the Sophie Warne fellowship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"hwa.jpg\"The Human War<\/em> — a short book written as a combination of prose poetry\/dialogue, which therefore gives each and every sentence an elaborate, rhythmic yet dissonant weight. This significance to each staccato line betrays the protagonist’s adolescent angst as a meagre hysterical rant that rebuffs the reader’s close attention (perhaps intentionally), whilst mirroring the narrator’s alienation.<\/p>\n

\nHeidi James<\/b> takes a dissenting line on Noah Cicero<\/b>‘s The Human War<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494","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\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}