Furniture Music

by Gail Scott

In Furniture Music , Montreal luminary Gail Scott chronicles her years in Lower Manhattan during the Obama era, in a community of poets at the junction between formally radical and political art. Immersing herself in a New York topography that includes St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club, Scott writes from a ‘Northern’ awareness that is both immediate and inquisitive, from Obama’s election to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy. Here, readers are situated in conversations around citizenship, gender performance, class, race, feminism and what it means to write now. Scott’s project is polyvocal, also resonating with the voices of a host of earlier writers and philosophers, notably, Gertrude Stein, Viktor Shklovsky, Walter Benjamin. The result is a staggering work of insight and hope during a critical time in American politics and art. 

256 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2023

Reviews

[Ryan Madden]

Furniture Music is a memoir by Montreal author Gail Scott. I chose to read this book because it won the QWF Non-Fiction prize for 2024. I recommended the Montreal public library order it so that I could read it, and they did, so the copy was waiting for me in the hold shelf several months later.

I was initially quite worried about the memoir. I worried it would be too full of politics and academic jargon, and be lacking any sort of substance. That was my initial impression after reading maybe two pages, and I came very close to abandoning it. However, I decided to persevere, and I found, somewhat to my surprise, that I actually quite enjoyed the author's prose, which is both dense in form, but often quite light in tone.

The book is challenging to read because the prose is not written quite as directly as one might be used to, and is disjointed by the punctuation. However, I found it quite playful in style, and I found Ms. Scott's narrative voice a delight to read. While I don't agree entirely with all of her political views, I found that I quite enjoyed following the author in her wanderings in and around NYC, often to various poetry readings.

There are larger arguments in the book, especially in regards to the form of poetry and prose writing, some of which I probably did not fully grasp, but the author pleasantly juxtaposes them within her own subjective experience. As a result, I felt that I could follow the author's journey, and that I had the distance to follow along to the extent that I wanted to, but also to place her experiences within the historical moments and experiences she was referring to (which BTW was NYC between 2008 and 2012).

I really ended up enjoying the book quite a bit. I've already recommended it to a poetry friend I know. A deserved award winner in my opinion. Quite a feat to write a book that is both avant-garde and speaks to many different movements and ideas, AND have it be a fun read. Bravo!!

I'm giving this book 5 stars based on the goodreads scale where 5 stars = it was amazing. In terms of the pleasure of reading the book, I would say for me it was 4 stars, which = I really liked it. Why I am giving it 5 stars is that the technical skill of writing such challenging, dense, and unconventional prose, and making it both beautiful and fun to follow is pretty amazing, I feel. Cheers!

[Karen Ocana]

4.5 Furniture Music certainly deserves a review.
The music (furniture music?) jumps off the page via the queer syntax - semi-staccato, quasi-rumbato, pseudo-devergonato. & always always politico. Happening. Always happening.
This strangely titled book, a sliver of which I heard at Paragraphe Books Montreal at the launch of The Poetics of Translation (Genevieve Robitaille, Queen's University Press) is a Gail Scott memoir. The thoughts of Gail in "The Village" revelling / revealing many things, among which Obama's ascendancy to President of the USA.
Quote from random page:
"Sitting. Leafy Tompkins Square Park. Having only last night been sitting with women on leather sofa. In leafy Mile End. Montreal, QC. Jesting how -- by multiple outrageous means of vigorous boosterism or uncouth or shocking performance. To make success of our refusal to produce accommodating art. You asking: 'Does not being unaccommodating by definition = failure?'
R not yet appearing. In goldy light of prickly-heat dusk. Glazing crowns of people coming, going... ..."
2008, is followed by 2008 bis, which is followed by 2010 and 2011, and then tragically the 2012 Coda, of
NOT MY PRESIDENT!
I still haven't figured out why Furniture Music. The music part, sure. The furniture might just be referring to the objects, percepts, affects, and subjects that furnish a writer's mind.
Worth a read, for sure!
Maybe multiple reads.

[Klara Plessis]

Extraordinary and luxurious.

[Mic Jones]

Thank you Gail for teaching me how to read anew.