Nature Studies: A Novel - Softcover

Ryskamp, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573660396 ISBN 13: 9781573660396

Publisher: Fiction Collective 2, 1998

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Yeats, Joyce and Eliot made use of the most disparate elements, but resolved these elements into a pattern. Indeed, this is the dominant modus operandi of twentieth-century literature. I want the disparate elements, but no pattern, thank you. There is no that is the new thought (neue Gedanken). There is only exfoliation, efflorescence. A later example of this is a work of mine titled Six Books.
John Ryskamp, the author of Nature Studies, November 30, 1998

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Reviews

With affinities to the 1980s phenomenon of appropriation art, journalist and critic Ryskamp puts himself into his novel, much as Cindy Sherman poses in her own photography. Layered upon musings of hunting patterns of eagles and the geographical makeup of the Midwest are metatextual reflections on Crime and Punishment and Jane Eyre, among other books. The text proceeds at blender speed, dizzily mixing together famous names and quotes, such as those by Einstein, Ryskamp's "grandfather" and Bartok, who both in turn quote Wittgenstein and Nietzsche. Ryskamp leavens his pastiche with numerous reflections about his own role in the dawning of modernism (one favorite method is to relate his "dreams," in which he encounters Freud, Picasso and others), though the best sections are tongue-in-cheek descriptions of how the novel happens to be created from additions made to two essays, one on AZT and one on the New Bill of Rights. Overall, the book resembles the sort of nightmare one imagines having after reading too many issues of Art Forum successively. One suspects that the novel's audience will be limited to critics who will recognize obscure references to avant-garde esoterica.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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