Appendix Project
Talks and Essays
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
On the ongoing project of writing about grief; Zambreno's addendum to Book of Mutter.
“I came up with the idea of writing these notes, or talks, out of a primary desire to not read from Book of Mutter, and instead to keep gesturing to its incompleteness and ongoingness, which connects, for me, to the fragmentary project of literature, and what I long for in writing."
—from Appendix Project
Inspired by the lectures of Roland Barthes, Anne Carson, and Jorge Luis Borges, Kate Zambreno's Appendix Project collects eleven talks and essays written in the course of the year following the publication of Book of Mutter, Zambreno's book on her mother that took her over a decade to write. These surprising and moving performances, underscored by the sleeplessness of the first year of her child's life, contain Zambreno's most original and dazzling thinking and writing to date. In Appendix Project Zambreno thinks through the work of On Kawara, Roland Barthes, W.G. Sebald, Bhanu Kapil, Walter Benjamin, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Marguerite Duras, Marlene Dumas, Louise Bourgeois, Doris Salcedo, Jenny Holzer, and more.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Presented as a series of appendices to novelist and memoirist Zambreno's previous work, Book of Mutter, this collection of 11 talks and essays reveals her anew as a master of the experimental lyric essay. In an allusive, fluid style worthy of Susan Sontag or Virginia Woolf, Zambreno roves wildly over what seem disparate reference points, but never fails to center the essays around approachable themes most prominently, her mother's death, also the subject of Book of Mutter. In one entry, Zambreno blends critical theory, philosophy, and memoir, moving from analyses of paintings by On Kawara, to musings on how Roland Barthes captures the "looping character of mourning, as it attempts and fails to be rendered into language," and on to experiences of new motherhood. In another piece initially devoted to her thoughts on turning 40, Zambreno ends by considering how to preserve one's privacy even in personal writing, reflecting on why she omitted a revealing anecdote about her mother from Book of Mutter, but considered including a section about Marilyn Monroe's death. For some, her book may seem esoteric and overly diffuse. But for most, the calm inquiry, wise voice, and poignant urgency behind every sentence will coalesce into a deeply reflective meditation on art, loss, and how "time makes the intensity of mourning pass and yet, nothing is soothed."
