In thirty-one vertiginous meditations, A.B. West reflects on the planet, the universe, dying, living, and what it means to be a being-in-time, all sorts of time: wide time, quick time, pure time. West attaches time to everything tangible, from procreation to Bach, from martians to relativity theory, and from the fifth dimension to the palindrome moth. Magically, this spinning text moves and clarifies. Simply. Cleanly. Wakenight Emporium holds much for the philosopher, much for the poet, but there are also boundless riches here for the physicist, as West fascinates us with force, motion, velocity, and gravity. Her writing is the love-child of Einstein and Heidegger, obsessed with clicks of the second hand, the intricacies of now, the visible penetrations of genius. And in the midst of all, this book wants to blow the reader's head open. What remains in the half-state between dreams and waking is a universe of stars.
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"These thirty-one rhetorical riffs are almost literally spell-binding; West's Wakenight Emporium is a magicked work of words. Both abstract and specific, far-ranging and precisely, the voice of the speaker here dazzles---and it does so with power and wit. A startling tentative as well as high-gloss finished product, this stay against confusion feels ambitious as well as achieved. 'Watchwoman, what of the night'" --Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains
"A moody, intimate and lucid meditation on time, space, and mortality, Wakenight Emporium mysteriously awakens in the reader deep, primordial, shadow longings. It is rare to experience a work of prose that inspires such wishfulness and hope, that suggests such option and possibility and at the same time such limitation. A beautiful, moving and ineffably sad book. I feel lucky to have read it." --Carole Maso
About the Author
A. B. West lives in Belgium, where she has worked with the avant-garde theater company, Théâtre Laboratoire Vicinal. She performed and collaborated on the original plays Tramp, Lunapark and Chaman Hooligan. She was the director and sole actress of the play "I"- with a text by Frédéric Baal, and 7 sculpture/stage-properties by Belgian sculptor Olivier Strebelle, which toured worldwide, including performances at the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Academy, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art among other venues. West has also been an agent, an editor for Wall Street Journal Europe, a free-lance translator and a copywriter.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smart, Mystical Meditations on Space and Time.,
By Michael Saul "shut up" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wakenight Emporium (Paperback)
My first contact with A.B. West occurred about a year ago during a reading by Fiction Collective 2 authors at Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago. Brian Evanson read from his recent collection, "The Wavering Knife," and Lucy Corin read from her book, "Everyday Psycho Killers." It was A.B. West's reading of her "Wakenight Emporium" that had the greatest impact on me by far.
Fresh off a plane from Belgium, West's tall thin frame glided up to the podium. She seemed to be dazed or in some half-dream state. She began her reading by apologizing for her English speaking abilities which were, she explained, a bit rusty from lack of use. This seemed all the more astonishing once I discovered her skill as a writer in English. She began to read from the first section of her book where we learn about the peculiar aspects of Martian foreplay. It is probably safest to call this work a collection of meditations because each small "chapter" seems to tread the line between prose and poetry. There are, at times, characters and scenes, but, more often, we get cosmic theories explained through sharp, charming wordplay. There is no proper plot but instead a set of emotional and intellectual motives that draw the work together as a whole. If you are at all interested in this book I highly suggest you visit the Fiction Collective 2 website (fc2.org) and read an excerpt (since one is not currently available here). This is the first book I have felt passionate about recommending to people for quite some time.
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