Review: ‘The Screaming Paper’ by Nathan Anderson

A painting with words vast echolalia of abstraction. This book lingers on the edge of reading almost making sense then pulling back into the abyss. A host of almost phrases cut short the avenues of understanding and leave the reader floundering in a sea of almost.

This is not to say this book is inaccessible. Merely that it is not to be read in a conventional sense. This book is to be read like a Tibetan mantra running on and on till the words run together and the trance of language takes hold. Impressions appear and paint the sky in a bold array of colours. Just like the twenty-seven paintings detailed in the book, each page is a look into a gallery frame opening up onto vistas and plains of sense.

I really enjoyed this book, read it in a single sitting. It’s perhaps the furthest from reason that Anderson had put out so far, but what it lacks in clarity it makes up in painterly brilliance. Visually too it makes a statement as a sort of rehearsal for the themes that will appear in the soon to be released Music (for your teeth). Each page batters the eyelids leaving faint impressionsc of something that might have been.

I highly recommend this book, and you can get a copy right here. Or, if you can’t afford a copy right now, you can download a free pdf over at the c22 website.

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Full disclosure: this book was put out by the c22 collective of which I am a member. I received an advance pdf of this book before it was released and have loved it ever since. My opinions are my own and are not swayed by friendship.