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screen_memory's review
4.0
My favorite local bookstore, Myopic Books, has a section near the register consisting of Open Letter and Archipelago books, among other small presses, and this unknown title by an unknown author seemed promising - described as surreal and absurd with a comparison to Beckett, although I noticed more distinct ripples of Chejfec and Ugresic's novelistic essayism in her Museum stretching across the narrative pond. Echoing the Ugresic comparison, this brief novel is a sort of museum of *prehistoric* sorts - an archaeological excavation site; a cave turned museum full of paintings and earthenware centuries old, objects which prompt the narrator to ruminate over man's seemingly lifelong endeavors to document and archive his own existence - "Man will only ever address himself to man, in a closed circuit, man finishes in man. Let us add that the permanence of his fictive identity relies on a conscious effort that must not slacken at any cost, nothing objectively establishes it, it will remain fragile and contestable until the end."
The narrator contemplates particular paintings and the techniques and materials that have allowed them to be preserved for thousands of years. Rock formations are analyzed as well; the centuries-long evolution of the world and its geographical features alongside man's evolution as told through the gradual union of stalagmites and stalagtites forming a single unbreakable column.
The narrative is one of digression which interrupts the main theme (which is...?) told by a migratory mind who offers no clear thread to follow, although this isn't quite like Carole Maso's frustrating and directionless Mother & Child; the thread at some moments shimmers by light of Chevillard's flickering torch, promising to lead us deeper into the narrative cave.
The narrator contemplates particular paintings and the techniques and materials that have allowed them to be preserved for thousands of years. Rock formations are analyzed as well; the centuries-long evolution of the world and its geographical features alongside man's evolution as told through the gradual union of stalagmites and stalagtites forming a single unbreakable column.
The narrative is one of digression which interrupts the main theme (which is...?) told by a migratory mind who offers no clear thread to follow, although this isn't quite like Carole Maso's frustrating and directionless Mother & Child; the thread at some moments shimmers by light of Chevillard's flickering torch, promising to lead us deeper into the narrative cave.
kingkong's review
4.0
The best book on cave paintings from a deranged archaeologist you'll read this year
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