Unwords

Andrew Gallix is the thinking punk’s intellectual, a vital voice at the forefront of literary criticism. He is eminently readable, an alternative national (and international) treasure. - Benjamin Myers

Unwords is a series of essays and reviews haunted by a phantom book the author never completed when he was in his twenties.

It contains essays on the highest form of intergloss (and everything having already been said), the death of the novel, the death of the author, the unwritten, the unread and unreadable, the International Necronautical Society, fictive realism, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s reality hunger, the Oulipo and literary bondage, René Girard and mimetic desire, literary prizes, Andy Warhol’s answer to Ulysses, the poetics of spam, the literati and digerati, the disappearance of 3:AM Magazine (and literature), umbilical worlds, the melancholy of Guy the Gorilla, the world without me, two interviews with philosopher Simon Critchley, and an after(un)word-cum-writing manifesto made up exclusively of quotations.

It also contains reviews of works by Jenn Ashworth, Zygmunt Bauman, Claire-Louise Bennett, Gavin James Bower, Kevin Breathnach, Michel Butor, David Caron, Joshua Cohen, Douglas Coupland, Tim Etchells, Jonathan Franzen, Dan Fox, Paul Gorman, James Greer, Len Gutkin, Isabella Hammad, Jean-Yves Jouannais, Alice Kaplan, Hanif Kureishi, Deborah Levy, Agustín Fernández Mallo, Ben Marcus, Tom McCarthy, Marc-Edouard Nabe, Joyce Carol Oates, Tony O’Neill, Russell Persson, Max Porter, Chris Power, Ann Quin, C. D. Rose, Lee Rourke, Tiphaine Samoyault, Kathryn Scanlan, Will Self, Christiana Spens, H. P. Tinker, Joanna Walsh, Damon Young.

Andrew Gallix has long been one our most astute, witty, and surprising critical thinkers. For a start, he understands how a modernist novel is put together. This is not to be taken for granted ― it is one of the many reasons to enjoy the spirit of this valuable and intellectually entertaining collection. - Deborah Levy