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Adjunct: An Undigest (2004)

by Peter Manson(Favorite Author)

3.2 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1859332226 (ISBN13: 9781859332221)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Edinburgh Review

review 1: You know when you open you computer, ostensibly to start working, but first you need to check your email, which leads to some sort of get this now deal site, and restaurant reviews, and facebook, and buying a wedding gift, and somehow three hundred clicks later you’ve been on a Wikipedia (or Goodreads) binge with no recollection of the previous half hour? Such is the age of endless, instantaneous information. And the waste that comes from its indiscriminate consumption was all I could think about as I read these 100 pages of discombobulation.This Undigest contains many useful tidbits - a list of dead people, Manson’s to do list, a short story, bizarre news headlines - but it’s all so hopelessly mashed together that one can’t possibly make sense of it. The anecdotes... more and half-phrases that pelt the reader throughout the book are at turns hilarious, disgusting, and bizarre. But these gems fade into the din of context-less reading as it becomes increasingly difficult to do any more than recognize the string of words on the page. And good luck finding your place if you’ve forgotten to mark it! “Does the piece feel whole? Or is it a series of barely-connected anecdotes and random thoughts? Sonny Bono is dead. Private Finance Sludge Disposal Schemes. Policeman Killed in Abortion. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has announced a package of measures designed to deliver a “first class Tube for everyone.” Mug furiously at slight acquaintances until they start doing it back.”
review 2: One of the great things about Adjunct is that there is this kind of faint underlying presence, a bit like distant music or some neighbours arguing behind a wall, and sometimes when you're straining after it you discover you have these weird aptitudes you didn't know about and have difficulty naming. Walking around after having read Adjunct for a bit can feel like walking around after having spent too long in a gallery. You keep spotting things and hearing things as though they were sentences in Adjunct. It gradually fades so I don't think the book is ultimately dangerous or for that matter beneficial.While it lasts, though, sometimes you start seeing the funny side of things in a way that is so delicate and slight it implies they must have many, many more sides to them than the ones you saw before (plus this new funny side), a bit like the little crystalline dice they use in RPGs.I don't think Adjunct is a difficult book because I think it lets you know it's alright to read it in any way you like. Reading every bit, start to finish, is one way. Lots of people will probably sort of browse it like a magazine they never quite throw away for some reason. But for readers who do find it difficult, two tips would be: (a) try to think of every statement as something that was already there, which the book has just sort of pointed out to you, sort of as a joke; (b) as a default, let each statement exist by itself, as if it wasn't in a book, but written in the centre of an otherwise blank page. But sometimes play around sometimes with letting the statements interact with the statements beside them or near them.Stem Records released a CD of Peter Manson reading Adjunct a few years ago. Hopefully it's on that cloud and everything now. less

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