Writing in the Invisible Real/The
errant texts of Michael McAloran
All great works of literature dissolve a genre or invent one in order to say what has never been said before/The author of retrocede/like Duchamp whose work encourages philosophical inquiry and a re-examination of reality itself/McAloran too has moved ahead of the Zeitgeist taken the best strategies of the concept of the anti-novel intimidating them to the extreme and fabricated a virtual code that sits astutely in a position to express the meta-physical move of semiotic potentiality into actuality/ Authorship is ambiguous knowledge dubious and the truth is unknown or relative/McAloran/s language operates on the molecular level of understanding/The molecular is about the minute/the fluid/and the constantly changing aspects of existence that can disrupt and destabilize larger molar systems like civilization and its masochistic subjects/ haunted by the ghost of the death of the finite/no scavenging for verisimilitude the narrational trajectory remains elusive in its interpolations of the digital Age/McAloran is really comfortable in the maelstrom of chaos while maintaining a degree of intentionality that drags the reader along despite the aesthetic tribal rivalries/
"The flay of tongues whispering/Blank spaces shattered fingers/the
meat of distance/the flayed carcass/ripped from the inside"/And again: "in
a swarm of carrion flies till seepage rot of putrid meat where sickness of till
dredge collapse of psychosis bleeding the corpus underbelly…"
As Deleuze states the artist attempts to create “a style of life/not anything at all personal/but inventing a possibility of life/a way of existing.”/
In essence/the molecular is about appreciating the tiny/often overlooked details that can lead to significant transformations and
new ways of thinking/It/s a way to understand the complexity and dynamism of
life by focusing on the micro-level processes that
drive change/a strategy of assessment [ethics] and invention
[aesthetics]/Most novels glacial pace isn/t remotely congruent with the speed
of our lives and our consciousness of those lives/McAloran is adept at
revealing elements of the eclectic flow of the words that invade his head each
second/there is a vital kinetic energy that he puts into work that attaches
itself to the reader/there is a sense of the visionary in the work/He puts new
meaning into how language can be apprehended with a membrane that is a thin
space as possible between art and life/taking all the raw data of the world
refusing to edit it and allowing it to finish when he has said everything he
wants to say on the themes he is dealing with/In the form of arbitrary
linguistic atrocities that take the form of narrative nihilism/highlighting
this inertia this drabness of time that marks the first decades of the Twenty
first Century/He achieves this while maintaining a degree of poetic harmony in
the work/
"the killer’s teeth mark the pathway to the knives edge/words
scattered towards the depth of a forgotten skyline/the lie of the flesh marred
by sycophantic absences pissing upon in vacancy"
Each paragraph can be apprehended as an entity unto itself if the reader finds the whole text too much to take in/it is a demanding read/He doesn/t suffer from prolixity though/He cleverly avoids the tidy coherence of the novel which implies a purposeful meaning to existence and belies the chaos and entropy that surround/ "inhabit and overwhelm us/paranoiacal exigency struck out by opiate discharge/spits out as words scattered towards/flesh to peel away the abject nullity the extol of concave evisceration"/
Retrocede is relatively short terse text and exudes a clarity of style that is suited to a digitalized world/The age of the blockbuster/movie conglomerate is gone/there is something that is compelling about the boldness of the words defying immediate interpretation by a consciousness dependent on a linear code of meaning/Innovation of style is another way to relay a message and the right words can express emotions way beyond the verbal a single message to resolve into a universal meaning/
...dead tones of echo-drought...no sun was ever of through warms no flesh forgotten/...not a bloody chance from outset once...it suffocates& tears the wings of the sky to pieces..."/
His work is not a description it is an imperative/It urges cerebral
action a perpetual departure/for wherever we start in the text it remains to be
done/McAloran constructs his word machine as an unfolding of complexity/a
fractal mechanics of exclusion of unwanted details adding greater clarity to
what was already there/telling all we need to know to keep reading/living/
"the eye of nothing as breakage upon a cold oceanic of tears of
shit of null & void collision breathe of dispel till lock alone as broken
silences reclaim the distances"
As we will see the work operates at the level of Lacan/s Real a
permanent revolution/an anarchist politics of the word/McAlorans word machine
shits and fucks and breaks bones and teeth all through the text and the reader
experiences the totality of techno paranoia at its most volatile/
"reek of spent lights of the dim forgotten as circus goes the razor roundelay the bones shattered till obsolete claim upon nothing ever of as was as if to nectar of silenced overtures of the membrane's kiss upon stone nothingness"
McAloran/s retrocede/to take back[again]/is writing at the forefront of the anti-novel/He frequently abandons the traditional beginning-middle-end structure with its contagion of symptoms of banality and privileging of the codex in literature/Instead he presents events with little reference to an overall narrative if at all/a chronological order avoiding a coherent timeline that disorientates the reader’s reliance on time as direction/McAloran uses a fragmented narrative/The storyline is often broken into disjointed pieces creating a sense of discontinuity as a way of reflecting the fragmented nature of post digital existence/
" it says yet dying all the while of which as if to having in the
corrupt light breakage as was sudden disavowal null it cannot broken by nothing
in the vague tense spillage of bile piss cum and retrospect a dense reclaim a
cracked jaw leaking the forgotten of the matter.."
McAloran seeks to discover what he can add to the aesthetics of literature/he disregards the works of others acting as a stylistic rebel not to resemble what has been written by another/he taps into the collective unconscious challenging the reader to piece together an individual narrative unique to themselves/Which is not to say the work is incoherent only that it requires a cerebral attentiveness to the passages to get the most out of the text/Words that exist within their own bespoke laws/
"Dead once it utters of the ever-breathing onslaught unto...
slashed out the gait is a silver glint a breakage point of nothing ever of
respoke wounds as if to tread where eye expel of taint of orchid distances..."
This passage evokes a sense of
relentless destruction and the crackle of restrained hostility/The
"ever-breathing onslaught" a continuous assault while "slashed
out the gait is a silver glint" of discursive volatility/ The imagery of "respoke
wounds" and "eye expel of taint" highlights the recurring nature
of trauma and expulsion and underlines the quandary of how can art make sense
when the world makes no sense/
"Not a bloody chance from outset once... it suffocates & tears
the wings of the sky to pieces... pissed upon in furtive stagnation where
viscous the air is of the lapse all night/s devour in the exigent of having
ever..."
Here/the language emphasizes the
futility and destruction inherent in the world of mutant contamination of
discourse/The sky being torn to pieces and the viscous/suffocating air convey a
sense of entrapment and despair/ The "night’s devour" suggests a
consuming darkness that engulfs the subject with ideas outside of community
standards/
"Walls to trace in the half-light candle-lit a cupped hand offering
forth is filled with maggot swarm the breakage lapse of catacomb desire... till
taste... irredempt of..."
This passage illustrates the
co-ordinates of this enterprise more a monologue than a dialogue isolating a
small cohort of words welded into lines/What does he mean?/Should the reader
try to explore the vagaries of life death and corruption the ambiguities of
that permeate the human environment/The "cupped hand offering forth filled
with maggot swarm" symbolizes the grotesque reality of corruption/The
"breakage lapse of catacomb desire" indicates a longing for something
lost or unattainable/ with the setting resembling a tomb filled with
unfulfilled desires/
"Till gutter tread spread-eagled across burning of the pale light
searing into nothing ever... trace dull tide of..."
The image of a "gutter
tread" spread-eagled across burning light underscores the loathing of
being abstracted by the "pale light searing into nothing"/a painful
illumination that ultimately leads to emptiness/ while the "trace dull
tide" a flow of lifeless words somewhere between knowledge and theory/a
repetitive cycle "echo- echo blind echoes light"/ The word echo is
repeated in the text as a semiotic feedback loop/
"Absolve collect breakage bones a vacuum of forgotten realms
scattering the eviscerated till lie alone in the vast the tread extract the
teeth of malady whereof till sky alone will never of a semblance a nocturne
a..."
This paragraph delves into
themes of isolation and despair/The "vacuum of forgotten realms" and
"scattering the eviscerated" suggest a desolate/ empty existence a
form of carnal self-hypnosis/while "the tread extract the teeth of
malady" highlights the pervasive stripping away to reveal the cracks in
the self/The sky is depicted as a vast/empty expanse/ reflecting the absence of
meaning or solace/
"A-breathe till shadow-form of spent sound corrosively tearing into breathless... the dead speech taking nothing from the nothing of... all sense devoured...skeletal breath a sickness of deliverance ripped from the inside out by some collapse of detritus a frozen picture postcard until unto…"
The final lines emphasize the corrosive/destructive nature of blind crisis inherent in language/The "shadow-form of spent sound" tearing into breathlessness signifies the exhaustion and depletion of contemporary life/ "Dead speech taking nothing from the nothing" suggests the futility of communication and the pervasive sense of exhausted intentionality/"All sense devoured skeletal breath a sickness of deliverance" encapsulates the total dissolution of meaning and coherence/Is this a prelude to the end of the world as we know it?/This is McAloran’s slogan/No creation without destruction/a void emerges as a soporific toxic inhumanity a creative ecstasy liberated from the limits of representational meaning left behind as McAloran marks out new territory/
"where to what sung a razor entity a silhouette upon the horizon as
bloodily the partaken of the silence of breakage of skeletal dense hollow close
till non-reflect in the it what seen as drag of carcass tears split the skin
the absent traipse through nothing ever in a sick sunk"
McAloran experiments with language and with punctuation or lack of it using unconventional syntax/wordplay and shifting perspectives/The language can be dense/abstract and sometimes intentionally difficult to decipher/he has devised a language that can be difficult to follow/He works almost intuitively with the paroxysms of chaos and the extremities of a finite text which contains infinity: a history of ideas that he draws on to create his existential landscapes/Retrocede avoids a clear overarching plot/Instead it focuses on moments/images/thoughts/partial disrupting fragments of text each one seeming to be disconnected to the one before or after/leaving much to the readers interpretation/This strange and unclassifiable work a shift towards words reflecting on themselves not concerned with creating an illusion of reality but rather establishing its own conventions/Demolishing meaning/giving birth to a new unstable category of text of non-sequential units/a semi-nonfictional semi fiction/cryptic yet full of interconnective syntax/
McAloran
works at freeing the oppressed text of the literary academic
intelligentsia/Language and grammar and punctuation are not frozen in that time
when language was born/The text is in transition and with that comes new images
and ways of seeing what is happening in the world/ Especially these decades of
the Twenty First Century with its constellation of flows of data and
algorithms/In this sense he is playing what Eric Alliez calls word games the
celebration of language denying the reader the consummation of the desire to
know/Matter becomes expressive enacting the Lacanian cut between the symbolic
and the Real/
"stitched across where broken sudden as if to nothing of the before
till in-dreaming of a bitter weight skinned what depth of razor solace a cool
clean burn a garroted throat bile vomit piss upon the obsidian flowers of it
till graven knocked from the tooth of spell"
As Guattari suggests perhaps the artists of today constitute the final lines along which the primordial existential questions are folded/Writing is a political act and is about freedom of expression and originality/ McAloran has the Cassandra curse in that he can see the future of text but no one yet has the foresight to be reading it/His words are fugitive ones caught on the edge of radical change in the Universe with AGI being the new beyond the limit of meaning/There is too much reverence for the history of the word/Beckett tried limiting words as a strategy/Burroughs tried to cut up the text of the collective unconscious/McAloran captures particular archetypes themes pertinent to our current times/power aggression horror and violence the symbolic expression of an inner life evoking primal emotions of wonder and awe/Retrocede is riddled with confrontation not so much about the present only but with insight into the future/It/s very hard to write something innovative and new the best you can hope for is an approximation/Words are used relentlessly in the marketplace and have restrictive meanings attached and the reader demands a coherent narrative especially in these days of short focus trained up on algorithms which demand short attention spans/McAloran tears into time saturating space with relentless strokes of harsh introspection/
"Cut of the bone in the palms of children lost to the night’s cascade": Innocence (children) is marred by violence and loss/cascading into the night—a symbol of obliteration in which words have lost their material base/
"Close the door there is no other route": This line conveys a sense of finality and entrapment/suggesting that once a door to darkness is opened/there is no turning back/
"The endless biting what closure closer sharp another room another frenzy": The repetition of "another room another frenzy" signifies a cyclical pattern of madness and chaos/ where each new space brings a fresh wave of turmoil.: "the endless biting what closure closer sharp"/Life is always on the edge always in peril and gripped by the closure of deaths intensity/the trapped individual grinds teeth grit against the lack of arrival of an emotional catharsis/
There is
a definite ambiguity with regards as to who is narrating the story/there is a
lack of human presence which confronts the reader/a total lack of characters to
identify with/the individual is isolated peering into a screen looking for
acceptance and validation/the words of the text serving more as vessels for
ideas than fully realized individuals highlighting the impersonal nature of
post digital life where the individual is defined by social media rather than
personal contact/ the uncontrollable agency of an unconscious series of memory
intrusions is implicit in every line dislocated and deviate in its consistent
intention to defy order/According to Foucault discourse always requires a
speaking position/a position from which power/knowledge is exercised/and a
spoken subject/McAloran ignores this advice and suspends the operation of the
body of a dominant narrator/which is absent/while maintaining a powerful
"written" text/
"Burning shit in crumpled black swan paper...dead of… never of what will throughout it spoken limbs to warp in some forgettable excise… till list of breakage...": This opening exorcises the word suspended in a meaningless discourse with itself as a failed cultural symbol/ The imagery of "burning shit" and "crumpled black swan paper" suggests a sense of feverish destruction and waste/ The "spoken limbs to warp in some forgettable excise" evokes a sense of physicaland emotional distortion/as if the very essence of being is being twisted and discarded / "Spill of fuck & the absent body licking the wounds till closure tabulet shattered to the marrow a corrupt night emblem lack nothing left to trace as the fingers search for promise of the abortive skyline suck it down like opiate smoke...": This section continues the theme of carnivorous decay and corruption of any value structure resonating with desire for connection to a life which has become background noise. The "spill of fuck" and "absent body licking the wounds" a futile attempt at healing or closure/regaining the vestiges of the dream/The "closure tabulet shattered to the marrow" indicates a deep/irreparable break between body as self and as object/ The imagery of "fingers search for promise of the abortive skyline" and "suck it down like opiate smoke" evokes a sense of the circling albatross ofaddiction/as if seeking solace in a world that offers none/
"Till laugh alone...alone is the word of ever in the midst the sarcophagus of being in where to be to too dissolve a frozen wound in the nothing of a closure null & voidal of till what...": Here/the passage coerces into being the themes of isolation and existential hollowness/ The repetition of "alone" emphasizes the sense of solitude and disconnection from the "sarcophagus of being" carries the inference of a tomb-like existence where life is reduced to a state of stasis and decay/The "frozen wound" and "closure null & voidal" highlight the futility of seeking resolution or healing what is trapped between the null and voidal/
"As spoken again as if to having spoken again as if to nothing ever..deadwhat once once more… a mirror peeling away to reveal as...eye asks of the never having...":These lines reflect on the cyclical nature of despair and the elusive search for meaning when there is none/ The repetition of "spoken again" and "nothing ever" underscores the sense of futility of a voice perverted by the chaosmic paradigm of cognitive malware/
The "mirror peeling away to reveal" a moment of self-reflection that reveals many things the face of digital exhaustion does not want to see/where the "eye asks of the never having" highlights the existential question of what has been lost or never attained is obliterated/
In essence/this passage captures the raw/fragmented nature of existential
despair/using vivid
and often confronting
violent imagery to
explore themes of decay/isolation/and the futile search for meaning/It evokes a powerful sense of disintegration and mental
dilapidation/reflecting the chaotic and often discordant nature of human existence/the
first casualty being the individuals loss of any hope of certainty/he is a lone
predator hallucinating an integument that shelters vulnerability that leaves a
taste of prohibitive silence/
Retrocede is a self-reflexive text drawing attention to its lack of construction the reader relying on similar images or words used through passages to construct some structure/an unnecessary task for the intention of the work is to be read carefully/we live in an image storm and how do we slow it down?/Long enough to grasp what is being communicated?/This text unfolds creating a hyper-narrative which creates a layer of provocative distance between the reader and the text/Reading retrocede leaves you with a sense of the writer as searching daring inventive self-expressing creature/disturbs upsets enlightens opening ways to better deal with the fact that things are incapable of being understood/There are those who will want to close the book but the writer says no!/there are more pages to be written and read/
to rust to bleached skin upon which to tread in sickness neither health nor otherwise"/highlighting a sense of the fracturing of the binary crisis between authenticity and the posture of exposed fragility of the skin that separates the inner from the outer/ The "bankrupt needle" suggests a futile attempt to mend or heal while again "bleached skin" and "sickness" emphasize the pervasive sense of vulnerability/
"Collapsing the get it over with the erase it to gutterize where the nonedoth flow in the
splendor of nothing less of being expelled" conveys a sense of being thrust into futility/The imagery of "collapsing" and "erase" a desire to escape or obliterate the painful reality/ while "splendour of nothing" underscores the emptiness and void that accompanies artificially mediated betrayal the of unattainable
and threatening state of anarchism/
"The splendor of nothing less of being expelled" reveals
the possibility of a paradoxical beauty in the very act of expulsion or exclusion/
There is a sense of grandeur in the state of being cast out or marginalized/highlighting the drama and intensity of this experience/
"Where broken is the forgotten endlessly unravelling" evokes the imageof fragments and memories that continuously fall apart/This speaks to the idea of unresolved past and lingering traumas that perpetually disintegrate/making it impossible to attain closure or a peace/
"Where to build is to fall distances all of merely of the surmise" indicates that efforts to construct or create inevitably lead to collapse/This implies a pervasive sense of loss in the debris of stagnation/where every attempt to progress or achieve something is met with a wall of blood and visceral rejection/ The phrase "all of merely of the surmise" indicates that these efforts are based on assumptions or conjectures/lacking solid ground or certainty/And again:"silence...words crack till speech eradicate nothing of the install into a bared to the sky whereof the bite the sheen till taint of nethertheless…"/ "Cold shoulder dread of the one thing" encapsulates the core emotion of the passage: a chilling fear or anxiety centred around a singular/ undefined concern/This "one thing" remains elusive/ adding to the overall sense of unease and existential dread/
The text is focusing on inner experiences/instead of external actions/Retrocede delves deeply into inner thoughts/perceptions subjective experiences tackling existential questions the limits of language and a reanimation of understanding/we are dealing with the personality and identity of the word a process of exploration rather than a homogonous narrative/leaving the reader with a very tenuous possibility of reconciliation with this errant text existing in an alienated meta universe/The rapport of the author with his text is precise without being opaque/Imaginative reading/to borrow a term from Barthes/is a kind of reading which suspends the law of the symbolic and as we shall see engages directly with the Real/
"Black vault of the shutter it down upon breaking from nothing ever into nothing once was" conveys a transition from one form of emptiness to another/The "black vault" symbolizes a closed-off/inaccessible space/ emphasizing the isolation and bleakness of existence/A certain pathology latent in co-existence with expropriating ghostly traces of transcendence decoupled from the wounded drives of the psyche/
"Extricated flow of listless blood throughout the exposed veins of/
given as of/not a trace of sky"/Here we are
dealing with a state of lifelessness and vivid torment a call
perhaps for cognitiveresuscitation/The imagery of "listless blood" and "exposed veins" highlights vulnerability and exhaustion with the absence of the sky symbolizing a lack of hope or transfixing the self to a corporeal identification capable of
surviving a cognitive catastrophe/
In a sense McAloran operates in a world that is beyond symbolism as we know it/According to Lacan The Real is what resists representation and cannot be fully captured by language or symbols/ It is the realm of what is impossible to express or Imagine because it exists outside of our conventional means of understanding/
Retrocede
is an investigation into a corpse and remains unmediated by its author/The Real is often associated with experiences that are
traumatic or overwhelming
because they disrupt our usual ways of making sense of the world/It is the raw/unfiltered reality that
confronts us with its sheer bloody existence/
There is
interplay with the Symbolic and Imaginary/While the Real is outside
of the Symbolic (the realm of language
and social structures
which expropriate the very body of the citizen)and the Imaginary (the realm of images and illusions
it interacts
with/ The Real can intrude into our lives/causing
disruptions and forcing us to confront its presence/
Lacan also links the Real to the concept of jouissance/a kind of excessive/painful pleasure that goes beyond the pleasure principle and
disrupts the subject/s sense of self/McAloran
is tapping into the Real the raw unmediated unconscious and making a successful
attempt at revealing what is impossible to express/He engages with the strategy
of counter-memory provides an
alternative approach to engaging with history and intellectual expression/
It recognizes the limitations and gaps in traditional
literary and art narratives and invites us to explore the fluid dynamic/and
always chaotic alternative layers of memory embracing ambiguity and the
multifaceted nature of past experiences projected into a future of possibility/
It/s a powerful concept that challenges us to rethink our relationship
with the past and embrace the complexities and
ambiguities that come with it/Pulling us into the depths
of a text without an anchor/without a specific location and no chronological progression/instead/the work fluctuates and transforms as
the subject/s perspective and context change/
"...it is undone...amphetamine overtures & the adrift of sudden shock
shadow-lapse… tone deaf the hollow skull bends into or never of close the lips
where circuits spasm is the beneath of animal foraging into
the meat cast off from the body vocal a broken
semblance...": This passage reveals an avuncular and disjointed experience/
The "amphetamine overtures" and "sudden shock shadow-" ripple
with the accelerated intensity of overwhelming sensations that disrupt
any semblance of order or coherence in a diseased consciousness/ The "hollow skull" and "circuits spasm" This imagery suggests emptiness and desolation within the mind/A
skull/typically a symbol of the human head or brain/being described as hollow
implies a lack of substance/ thoughts/or vitality/It/s as if the person is
mentally or emotionally vacant/devoid of meaningful content or presence/This
could represent a sense of numbness/disconnection/or even existential
limits/" a circuits spasm"/This phrase introduces a technological
metaphor to describe mental or neural activity/Circuits typically refer to the
pathways in electronic devices through which electricity flows/A spasm
indicates sudden/ involuntary contractions or disruptions/Thus/ "circuits
spasm" might suggest erratic/uncontrollable bursts of mental or neural
activity/akin to a malfunction/It conveys a sense of chaotic/fragmented
thoughts or actions/perhaps reflecting mental turmoil or psychological
distress/ a sense of physical and mental a cracking of bones breaking/mirroring the disruptive force of the Real as it intrudes upon the Symbolic and Imaginary orders/
"...it is of the undone till waver breakage nothing of the before
where the carousel of breathe is the sickness of haven rot
closed down nothing of a door made of sand an hourglass settlement
knock once it dissipate a shredded lung the break of desolate...": Here/ the imagery continues to explore themes of disintegration and impermanence/
The "carousel of breathe"
echo-echo of a cyclical
relentless pattern of
existence that leads to decay and
dissolution enclosed in isolated space/ "Haven rot closed down" and "a door made of sand" Sand is inherently unstable and easily shifted by wind or water/A door
made of sand implies that it can be easily eroded or destroyed/symbolizing the
transient nature of things/A door is typically meant to provide protection/
privacy/and a clear boundary/However/if it is made of sand it loses these
characteristics/Building a door out of sand highlights the futility of efforts
to create something lasting out of inherently unstable materials/ The "hourglass settlement" and "shredded lung
"emphasize the passage of time and the inherent vulnerability of life/
The passage as a whole mediates the Real/the
unutterable/by depicting a landscape where meaning deflates
and crumples and symbols fail to hold/It encapsulates the traumatic/unmediated aspects of existence that defy
rational understanding/embodying the raw
chaotic nature of the Real/
This confrontation with the Real disrupts the reader/s sense of attachment
to life/reflecting the fundamental challenge of grappling with what lies beyond the Symbolic/
In essence/the passage mirrors the Real/s intrusion/ presenting a disjointed/visceral experience that resonates with the existential dread and fragmentation characteristic of Lacan/s concept/
The opening lines, "to mockery is the hyenic laughter of the death-bearing tidal" radiate with a sense of derision and malevolence/ with "hyenic laughter" evoking a predatory/mocking tone/The "death-bearing tidal" a virtual memory of a dark empty life an overwhelming wave of destruction and decay fragmenting the body/if there is a body/ can only result in death or madness/
"Candied corpses mount in the cupped hands of the dawn" presents a stark contrast between sweetness and death/this juxtaposes the sweetness and allure of "candied" with the
macabre imagery of "corpses." The term "candied" suggests
something preserved/sweetened/and possibly beautiful in a grotesque
way/Meanwhile/"corpses" evoke death and decay and indicate that the
only human presence is dead/Together/they create a striking contrast/suggesting
bodies that are both enticing and dead/perhaps symbolizing a facade of beauty
masking underlying decay and the lure of necrophilia /The imagery of "nothing to feel with nothing to breathe through" portrays a state of emotional asphyxiation/where one
is emotionally numb and existentially suffocated/It captures a profound sense
of despair and disconnection from both internal and external sources of
vitality and meaning/This expression paints a vivid picture of someone who
feels utterly lost and devoid of hope or purpose/
The passage continues with "carved into the flesh into the meat into
the bones revealed"/highlighting a visceral surgical dissection of existence/cutting of the critical glance the flesh of the critical eye/ This line conveys a sense of exposure and vulnerability/where the very essence of being is laid bare/
"Dead tones of some silver intermezzo collision pulse seeking of the
out of reach" evokes a haunting/dissonant melody that underscores the futility of seeking meaning or connection with infinity/The "collision pulse" suggests a violent/chaotic energy that ultimately leads to nothing but radical abjection in the sense that Kristeva uses it/And
later.."hemorrhage of the onward step where to paralysis
is the arena of night broken by foreign till expel of Shadowing never
of...it"/"Eyes that cannot quantify bound limbs scattered in a winter orchard of denuded exigency" paints a bleak/dissolute landscape where even the ability to perceive and measure is lost/ The "winter orchard symbolizes barrenness and infertility/while "denuded exigency" implies a stripped-down/urgent need to make contact/to be a part of that which cannot be known/
McAloran’s work challenges narrative conventions through its fragmented structure and linguistic experimentation/embodying the anti-novel/s critique of traditional forms emphasize the continuous flow of thoughts and feelings without a clear structure or traditional punctuation/The work captivates the duplicitous reader with its visceral intrigue evoking memories of something integral that we have lost if we ever possessed it/Retrocede is a system of reduction to a divisive self/drowning in a state of oral retrogression/a complex intersection between the politics of seeing and telling/Avant-garde experimentation in anti-novels involves pushing boundaries of literary form/language/and structure/aiming to create a new and unconventional reading experience of the valances of the sign/Life is miserable and gives nothing unless it is snatched by force/ Retrocede is at the forefront of this continuing confrontation with language and expression and unconventional form and content/In a letter to a friend Samuel Beckett expresses a desire for a literature of the un-word/Condemning language as a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at things[or the nothingness] behind it/Beckett castigates literature for lagging behind the other arts/McAloran is certainly following this path of a reorientation of the word in his work and pits the microcosm against the macrocosm/depth against superficial surface/a literature riddled with questions rather than sealed off in facile solutions to the abstract threshold of thought/No matter how vivid the quality/Except for that rare individual who revels in absurdity and paradox there are no solutions to be found here/Only the place of the works productive pleasure/the [re]possession of the erogenous zones of language/a political aesthetic/s capable of creating a people yet to come as Blanchot states/
Lee Beckworth
The book itself is available to purchase or as a free download here
