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jortsmanor's review against another edition
5.0
Weaving a narrative that is both ethereal and concrete, T. Fleischmann lays bare the minute details of a relationship like an emotional puzzle, allowing the reader to slowly assemble the pieces until the love there is wholly visible, thrumming like a generator. It is not written as a
guidebook to writing technique, nor does it pretend that it has that intent, but it can be
argued that any essay can have lessons on craft, and for any aspiring writer, this book provides a lot of lessons. Syzygy, Beauty involves itself with the concepts of sincerity, truth and liminality; the past imagined and the future imagined, phrases borrowed from Jenny Boully, build layers to tell the story of a relationship, of a house being built, of artists like Méret Oppenheim and an exploration of gender expression. It's an easy read for pleasure but more importantly, it's a pleasurable read for the deeper meanings that haunt all of our lives, in dream and daydream. No wonder physical copies are so hard to track down.
guidebook to writing technique, nor does it pretend that it has that intent, but it can be
argued that any essay can have lessons on craft, and for any aspiring writer, this book provides a lot of lessons. Syzygy, Beauty involves itself with the concepts of sincerity, truth and liminality; the past imagined and the future imagined, phrases borrowed from Jenny Boully, build layers to tell the story of a relationship, of a house being built, of artists like Méret Oppenheim and an exploration of gender expression. It's an easy read for pleasure but more importantly, it's a pleasurable read for the deeper meanings that haunt all of our lives, in dream and daydream. No wonder physical copies are so hard to track down.
sunkissedkia's review against another edition
4.0
3.85, it was a bit weird but also kind of beautiful at the same time.
qinglanw's review
4.0
Interesting and so many questions unanswered in the first read that I reread it again a second time and enjoyed it more.
tala's review
3.0
Many thought provoking and interesting things said. I didn't get all the references though so I was confused most of the time. Filled with pure emotion and heart.
gerhard's review
4.0
'In physics, Mach’s Principle states that the movements closest to our bodies are controlled by all the mass of the universe. Absent the distant cosmos, I would reach for you with new motion. The neutrinos would float undetected through us in a different way than they float undetected through us now. Think of all our forgotten pasts, the trees we climbed that are still standing or that have fallen.'
The Argonauts author Maggie Nelson remarks that this book ‘shimmers with confidence as it tours the surreal chaos of gender, art, and desire’. To me it seems like she waxes lyrical as she really has no fricking clue as to what it is about. Neither do I, both before and after reading it. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Some books are there to be experienced rather than understood. Of course, the key to the meaning of this so-called ‘essay’ lies in the word ‘syzygy’ itself. Apart from being a killer Scrabble word, and the name of a 1996 X-Files episode, it refers to ‘a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun’, as in ‘the planets were aligned in syzygy’.
Indeed, there are a lot of references to planets, orbs and orbits and also conjunctions, which are perhaps better understood as binaries or opposites. Fleischmann also references artists Méret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Grayson Perry and Louise Bourgeois, all of whom I am unfamiliar with.
The book is organised into brief prose blocks, one per page, which raises the question of whether or not it is better understood as a collection of prose poems. I think that the dichotomy or distinction between poetry/fiction is one that the author deliberately challenges here, with mixed results.
Fleischmann himself comments: “I consider Syzygy, Beauty to be an essay, even as it draws from poetry and other genres. I’m attracted to the essay’s own relationship with truth, its kind of scandalous, drunk messing around with veracity … In figuring out my own experience, I have to be aware of my subjectivity, of my lies, and of those stories I omit through forgetfulness or intention.”
So what is it about? As far as I can tell, there is a relationship that is unravelling (I was unclear how many people were drifting in and out of said relationship, not to mention their gender), some kind of construction work going on (?) and much discussion of contemporary art. In terms of gender, which seems deliberately elided from the text, no fixed pronouns are associated with Fleischmann in his brief author bio either.
If you enjoy poetry, this is quite a conventional hybrid text, with a lot to admire in the writing. Albeit there are a couple of real clunkers along the way: “Form and content are two slugs fucking, their slime all over one another until they may as well be one big twisting slug. Someone stomped on form and content and now they are goo.”
The Argonauts author Maggie Nelson remarks that this book ‘shimmers with confidence as it tours the surreal chaos of gender, art, and desire’. To me it seems like she waxes lyrical as she really has no fricking clue as to what it is about. Neither do I, both before and after reading it. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Some books are there to be experienced rather than understood. Of course, the key to the meaning of this so-called ‘essay’ lies in the word ‘syzygy’ itself. Apart from being a killer Scrabble word, and the name of a 1996 X-Files episode, it refers to ‘a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun’, as in ‘the planets were aligned in syzygy’.
Indeed, there are a lot of references to planets, orbs and orbits and also conjunctions, which are perhaps better understood as binaries or opposites. Fleischmann also references artists Méret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Grayson Perry and Louise Bourgeois, all of whom I am unfamiliar with.
The book is organised into brief prose blocks, one per page, which raises the question of whether or not it is better understood as a collection of prose poems. I think that the dichotomy or distinction between poetry/fiction is one that the author deliberately challenges here, with mixed results.
Fleischmann himself comments: “I consider Syzygy, Beauty to be an essay, even as it draws from poetry and other genres. I’m attracted to the essay’s own relationship with truth, its kind of scandalous, drunk messing around with veracity … In figuring out my own experience, I have to be aware of my subjectivity, of my lies, and of those stories I omit through forgetfulness or intention.”
So what is it about? As far as I can tell, there is a relationship that is unravelling (I was unclear how many people were drifting in and out of said relationship, not to mention their gender), some kind of construction work going on (?) and much discussion of contemporary art. In terms of gender, which seems deliberately elided from the text, no fixed pronouns are associated with Fleischmann in his brief author bio either.
If you enjoy poetry, this is quite a conventional hybrid text, with a lot to admire in the writing. Albeit there are a couple of real clunkers along the way: “Form and content are two slugs fucking, their slime all over one another until they may as well be one big twisting slug. Someone stomped on form and content and now they are goo.”
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