MAG NETS by M Magoolaghan, 20pp, PaperBrainPress1860 Pacific Beach Drive
#4, San Diego, CA 92109,
Tiles pulled randomly from packaging, loose letters and uncropped
combinations arranged as they were found provided the method of composition
used in this text. The result is an extremely fractured sequence which,
beginning in near gibberish, gradually establishes its own idiom. An idiom
which mirrors beautifully the abundance of textual fracture with which we
are surrounded as each day offers its selection of billboards, packaging,
headlines, notices and tickets. The author's decision to minimise editing
puts it up to the reader: are you going to look for significance? does it
hold together? is it fun? Yes to the last anyway, for the rest you're on
your own. There is a pleasant suggestion underlying this assembly of
relics, that "this too will pass' and in places a hint of the process of
language change as the jumps and truncations assert an odd but
self-consistent syntax.
<c>a s
a r
put egg
out
fast
swim
arm is beat
leg do lazy
day flood
ing black
spring <c>
The design of the book is charming, size 106 mm x 221 mm just right for the
drawing of the double doored fridge which takes up the cover (the theme
continues on the back cover with a drawing of all those loops for pumping
out the heat) . The title and author's name are tricked out as fridge
magnets. I didn't mention that after pages of short lines as in the example
above there's a block of text about a third of a page long that in that
context has the effect of a choir bursting out from behind a bush at a
picnic. Long live PBP.
Randolph Healy
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