Figure It Out
Author: Wayne Koestenbaum
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
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Cover Description
“Toward what goal do I aspire, ever, but collision? Always accident, concussion, bodies butting together . . . By collision I also mean metaphor and metonymy: operations of slide and slip and transfuse.”
In his new nonfiction collection, poet, artist, critic, novelist, and performer Wayne Koestenbaum enacts twenty-six ecstatic collisions between his mind and the world. A subway passenger’s leather bracelet prompts musings on the German word for stranger; Montaigne leads to the memory of a fourth-grade friend’s stinky feet. Koestenbaum dreams about a hand job from John Ashbery, swims next to Nicole Kidman, reclaims Robert Rauschenberg’s squeegee, and apotheosizes Marguerite Duras as a destroyer of sentences. He directly proposes assignments to readers: “Buy a one-dollar cactus, and start anthropomorphizing it. Call it Sabrina.” “Describe an ungenerous or unkind act you have committed.” “Find in every orgasm an encyclopedic richness . . . Reimagine doing the laundry as having an orgasm, and reinterpret orgasm as not a tiny experience, temporally limited, occurring in a single human body, but as an experience that somehow touches on all of human history.” Figure It Out is both a guidebook for, and the embodiment of, the practices of pleasure, attentiveness, art, and play.
TL;DR Review
Figure It Out is an essay collection that I think will have something for everyone, even if not everything is for everyone. I was much more drawn to some than others.
For you if: You have enjoyed Koestenbaum’s other work or you have a lot of literary and/or poetic background knowledge.
Full Review
Thank you to Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book! It will be published May 5, 2020.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book, although they net positive. There’s no doubt that Wayne Koestenbaum is whip smart, astute, and well written. The book’s not long, but it features quite a few essays, divided into several smaller sections. They have lots of different formats and structures, ranging from critique of culture to journal observations to artistic exercise instruction.
I just don’t necessarily think I was this book’s best reader. I wasn’t very familiar with a lot of the people Koestenbaum referenced or critiqued, so those essays were hard for me. I was also glad to be reading on an ereader with a dictionary functionality, because he uses a lot of intense vocabulary words. And yet other essays drew me in and held me there; I particularly liked the ones where he provided writing exercises, the opening essay about chance encounters with two people in NYC, the one about his piano, and the one about words and grammar.
I think ultimately, this book is worth picking up for the moments that will shine for you — and there will be some. Just don’t be afraid to bounce around from essay to essay if you need to.
Trigger Warnings
None
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