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Polyamorous Love Song
From interdisciplinary writer and performer Jacob Wren comes Polyamorous Love Song, a novel of intertwined narratives concerning the relationship between artists and the world. Shot through with unexpected moments of sex and violence, readers will become acquainted with a world that is at once the same and opposite from the one in which they live. With a diverse palette of vivid characters--from people who wear furry mascot costumes at all times, to a group of 'New Filmmakers' that devises increasingly unexpected sexual scenarios with complete strangers, to a secret society that concocts a virus that only infects those on the political right--Wren's avant-garde Polyamorous Love Song (finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose) will appeal to readers with an interest in the visual arts, theatre, and performance of all types.
192 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2014
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516 people want to read
About the author
Jacob Wren
15 books421 followersJacob Wren makes literature, collaborative performances and exhibitions. His books include: Polyamorous Love Song, Rich and Poor, Authenticity is a Feeling and Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim. As artistic director of the interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created performances such as: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, Every Song I’ve Ever Written and Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition. He is co-founder of the orchestra The Air Contains Honey whose first album is forthcoming in 2026. His internet presence is often defined by a fondness for quotations.
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October 28, 2025People often ask me about the title: http://radicalcut.blogspot.ca/2016/12...
And another perspective on the title: http://radicalcut.blogspot.ca/2015/06...
*
“What if you were to fight fire with fire, money with money, belief with belief? Would it be possible to get rich in some way that, at the same time, could decimate the Right, disgrace power? To form a religion that could undermine their strength? What business plan, what church, could set the foundations for such an attack? (...) A church that is also a business. Because religion is like a fantasy, a dream, and maybe money is also a kind of fantasy, they belong together. So then a religion in the form of a dream that hurtles forward towards the future, because money is an energy stored away for what comes next, but also a dream for now, because there's no living without cash. A dream for the future and a dream for now.”
― Jacob Wren, Polyamorous Love Song
.
And another perspective on the title: http://radicalcut.blogspot.ca/2015/06...
*
“What if you were to fight fire with fire, money with money, belief with belief? Would it be possible to get rich in some way that, at the same time, could decimate the Right, disgrace power? To form a religion that could undermine their strength? What business plan, what church, could set the foundations for such an attack? (...) A church that is also a business. Because religion is like a fantasy, a dream, and maybe money is also a kind of fantasy, they belong together. So then a religion in the form of a dream that hurtles forward towards the future, because money is an energy stored away for what comes next, but also a dream for now, because there's no living without cash. A dream for the future and a dream for now.”
― Jacob Wren, Polyamorous Love Song
.
May 25, 2022
Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.
August 15, 2014
“We though the new filmmaking was about blurring the line between what’s scripted and real. And there’s nothing more real than sex.”
“Death is more real.” It just slipped out. It was absolutely the last thing she meant or wanted to say. She was nervous, uncomfortable, it was unlike her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that anyone should die.” It was unlike her to apologize.
“But that’s what’s so powerful about the new filmmaking,” Steve was really trying to persuade her. “When you fuck you really fuck, when you die you really die.”
“I suppose.” She was being evasive. She didn’t like this line of reasoning. This wasn’t what she had meant. She had only been searching for ways to make her life more vibrant, more alive, and to make this very vibrancy her art. Fucking and dying didn’t feel alive, at least not in the way she had meant.
“You don’t seem convinced.”
“I don’t know.” There was always some way out. “When you’re an artist, if you’re a real artist, in some sense you always have to kill the father. That’s our legacy: the modernist break.”
***
The last paragraph of the segment quoted above is both fantastic and maddening. The idea of there being a definition or defining set of characteristics for who is or isn’t a “real” artist has been a perpetual thorn in my side. In my younger days it was something I lusted after—to do or create something that would somehow instantly elevate me into the pantheon of “real” artists. When I was in the thick of it during my twenties, producing and exhibiting with some regularity, I did my best to shove the idea of the “real artist” out of my brain—it wasn’t something to strive for, after all, it was something to be (or so I tried to convince myself, but being someone with a great deal of anxiety and self-doubt… well, let’s just say I didn’t always succeed along that line of thinking).
Now, several years and at least one major career shift away from all that—specifically the visual and performing art world—I can step back and, with some clarity, see the modern art world for all its insecurity and inability to think for itself. It’s a reactionary world, one that at least on an academic level takes a look at its immediate surroundings and says “nope, not me, I don’t like this,” and then purposefully diverges—sometimes to great social commentary, sometimes in ridiculous, even immature ways.
I realize I’m being a bit unfair in this assessment, but it’s an unfortunately true stereotype of the avant-garde mindset: that in order for art to matter, it must divest itself from anything approaching social norms or acceptance. Because art needs to constantly challenge and be challenging. But while I agree that art is essential in forcing audiences to stop and second guess their established social order instead of simply taking things at face value, the placement of the avant-garde at the top of the elitist hierarchy, with all others creators of art subservient to this ideal, is horseshit. Art is art—whatever your reasons, political or personal, commentary or beauty, if you make art, you are an artist.
This is why I so thoroughly enjoyed Jacob Wren’s Polyamorous Love Song—it simultaneously analyses, exalts, and condemns the strange reactionary madness of the art world. And it does so by constantly questioning and satirizing the notion that once an artist’s season has passed, so too has their purpose.
Wren’s novella is a post-postmodern book. It is a continuous thematic story told in nine short vignettes that jump between time, place, and style, revisiting a specific set of characters from a variety of perspectives. The characters themselves are thinly drawn, in many ways existing more as ciphers for the discussion of ideas. There’s Filmmaker A, who seeks to expand the definition of filmmaking by removing the cameras and having day-to-day existence become the film, where everyone is simultaneously acting in and viewing the works of others at all times; there’s the artist seeking to gain the trust of the Mascot Front—a group of militant furries who exist in many ways as a counter to the new filmmaking, hiding beneath plush characters and products anathema to the authenticity the new filmmaking seeks to promote—in order to do a piece about them; and Paul and Silvia, authors, the former writing about Hitler fucking a dog—because no postmodernist story would be complete without talk of a generously lubed Aryan erection. Naturally.
That the characters feel thin, however, is not a criticism; this isn’t a narrative in the traditional sense, but, as previously stated, a collection of ideas meant to rile expectations. That there’s even a loose narrative to it at all feels like a bonus. In many ways, Wren’s book is a natural extension of Janet Wolff’s The Social Production of Art, which presents art and artists as being wholly reliant on externalities to provide them with meaning and/or relevance. In Wren’s world, the art, artists, and audience are one, an Ouroboros both devouring and providing constantly: the Mascot Front forms to provide resistance to the new filmmaking, which exists to catalogue the “real lives” of its subjects—in other words, all of us, because the only way to subvert a style of filmmaking that both exists at all times and in all places by virtue of its actual non-existence is to live an “unreal” life, masked, hidden in some way.
The success of Wren’s book is that it manages to straddle the thin line between satire and possibility: the new filmmaking is, conceptually, aggressively postmodern. It is hilarious in its total absurdity, yet also totally believable, and more than likely an idea at least one avant-garde filmmaker has already had at one time or another. Similarly, there’s the cocktail, “the drug to remember phone numbers, the drug to supress jealousy, the drug to keep you hot and bothered and a little something extra to keep you going all night.” Like the new filmmaking, the cocktail is an artificial X factor introduced into this all-artist world to transform every interaction into a form of performance art.
While I thoroughly enjoyed Polyamorous Love Song, it will more than likely frustrate many readers. It’s not a difficult book to read, but it does require a willingness to dig deep and pull apart the layers of what is and isn’t satire. Between the novella’s many absurdities is rather deft commentary on the art world’s own demand for newness, for the avant-garde, and for the conflicts that spring forth naturally when society is pushed beyond established norms and boundaries.
“Death is more real.” It just slipped out. It was absolutely the last thing she meant or wanted to say. She was nervous, uncomfortable, it was unlike her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that anyone should die.” It was unlike her to apologize.
“But that’s what’s so powerful about the new filmmaking,” Steve was really trying to persuade her. “When you fuck you really fuck, when you die you really die.”
“I suppose.” She was being evasive. She didn’t like this line of reasoning. This wasn’t what she had meant. She had only been searching for ways to make her life more vibrant, more alive, and to make this very vibrancy her art. Fucking and dying didn’t feel alive, at least not in the way she had meant.
“You don’t seem convinced.”
“I don’t know.” There was always some way out. “When you’re an artist, if you’re a real artist, in some sense you always have to kill the father. That’s our legacy: the modernist break.”
***
The last paragraph of the segment quoted above is both fantastic and maddening. The idea of there being a definition or defining set of characteristics for who is or isn’t a “real” artist has been a perpetual thorn in my side. In my younger days it was something I lusted after—to do or create something that would somehow instantly elevate me into the pantheon of “real” artists. When I was in the thick of it during my twenties, producing and exhibiting with some regularity, I did my best to shove the idea of the “real artist” out of my brain—it wasn’t something to strive for, after all, it was something to be (or so I tried to convince myself, but being someone with a great deal of anxiety and self-doubt… well, let’s just say I didn’t always succeed along that line of thinking).
Now, several years and at least one major career shift away from all that—specifically the visual and performing art world—I can step back and, with some clarity, see the modern art world for all its insecurity and inability to think for itself. It’s a reactionary world, one that at least on an academic level takes a look at its immediate surroundings and says “nope, not me, I don’t like this,” and then purposefully diverges—sometimes to great social commentary, sometimes in ridiculous, even immature ways.
I realize I’m being a bit unfair in this assessment, but it’s an unfortunately true stereotype of the avant-garde mindset: that in order for art to matter, it must divest itself from anything approaching social norms or acceptance. Because art needs to constantly challenge and be challenging. But while I agree that art is essential in forcing audiences to stop and second guess their established social order instead of simply taking things at face value, the placement of the avant-garde at the top of the elitist hierarchy, with all others creators of art subservient to this ideal, is horseshit. Art is art—whatever your reasons, political or personal, commentary or beauty, if you make art, you are an artist.
This is why I so thoroughly enjoyed Jacob Wren’s Polyamorous Love Song—it simultaneously analyses, exalts, and condemns the strange reactionary madness of the art world. And it does so by constantly questioning and satirizing the notion that once an artist’s season has passed, so too has their purpose.
Wren’s novella is a post-postmodern book. It is a continuous thematic story told in nine short vignettes that jump between time, place, and style, revisiting a specific set of characters from a variety of perspectives. The characters themselves are thinly drawn, in many ways existing more as ciphers for the discussion of ideas. There’s Filmmaker A, who seeks to expand the definition of filmmaking by removing the cameras and having day-to-day existence become the film, where everyone is simultaneously acting in and viewing the works of others at all times; there’s the artist seeking to gain the trust of the Mascot Front—a group of militant furries who exist in many ways as a counter to the new filmmaking, hiding beneath plush characters and products anathema to the authenticity the new filmmaking seeks to promote—in order to do a piece about them; and Paul and Silvia, authors, the former writing about Hitler fucking a dog—because no postmodernist story would be complete without talk of a generously lubed Aryan erection. Naturally.
That the characters feel thin, however, is not a criticism; this isn’t a narrative in the traditional sense, but, as previously stated, a collection of ideas meant to rile expectations. That there’s even a loose narrative to it at all feels like a bonus. In many ways, Wren’s book is a natural extension of Janet Wolff’s The Social Production of Art, which presents art and artists as being wholly reliant on externalities to provide them with meaning and/or relevance. In Wren’s world, the art, artists, and audience are one, an Ouroboros both devouring and providing constantly: the Mascot Front forms to provide resistance to the new filmmaking, which exists to catalogue the “real lives” of its subjects—in other words, all of us, because the only way to subvert a style of filmmaking that both exists at all times and in all places by virtue of its actual non-existence is to live an “unreal” life, masked, hidden in some way.
The success of Wren’s book is that it manages to straddle the thin line between satire and possibility: the new filmmaking is, conceptually, aggressively postmodern. It is hilarious in its total absurdity, yet also totally believable, and more than likely an idea at least one avant-garde filmmaker has already had at one time or another. Similarly, there’s the cocktail, “the drug to remember phone numbers, the drug to supress jealousy, the drug to keep you hot and bothered and a little something extra to keep you going all night.” Like the new filmmaking, the cocktail is an artificial X factor introduced into this all-artist world to transform every interaction into a form of performance art.
While I thoroughly enjoyed Polyamorous Love Song, it will more than likely frustrate many readers. It’s not a difficult book to read, but it does require a willingness to dig deep and pull apart the layers of what is and isn’t satire. Between the novella’s many absurdities is rather deft commentary on the art world’s own demand for newness, for the avant-garde, and for the conflicts that spring forth naturally when society is pushed beyond established norms and boundaries.
January 8, 2025
I usually avoid literature about "the art world" because I find it to be full of clichés and the writers to be self-absorbed. But the title of the first chapter is "Artists Are Self-Absorbed" so I knew this this book to some extent would touch exactly that. A clever commentary. So intertwined, twisted - a true polyphony. While touching the topic of documentary and fictional cinema the book itself combines documentary and fiction within it, at points making me wonder what exactly is it I'm reading.
Truly amazing. Nerve-wracking, exciting, sad, scary and real.
Truly amazing. Nerve-wracking, exciting, sad, scary and real.
Read
July 14, 2017Un coup de coeur. C'est brillant, simple, tordu, étrangement cohérent et vraiment très drôle.
January 24, 2024
Last night was a movie.
A novel length dream sequence, a commentary on what it means to sell out, what it means for revolutions to do what they all end up doing (failing), what it means to love. Very 2010’s.
A novel length dream sequence, a commentary on what it means to sell out, what it means for revolutions to do what they all end up doing (failing), what it means to love. Very 2010’s.
May 15, 2014
If you want your social commentary and existential crisis with a side of Furries and a healthy dollop of Free Love, this is the novel you've been waiting for.
October 23, 2021
"What if you were to fight fire with fire, money with money, belief with belief? Would it be possible to get rich in some way that, at the same time, could decimate the Right, disgrace power? To form a religion that could undermine their strength? What business plan, what church, could set the foundations for such an attack? (...) A church that is also a business. Because religion is like a fantasy, a dream, and maybe money is also a kind of fantasy, they belong together. So then a religion in the form of a dream that hurtles forward towards the future, because money is an energy stored away for what comes next, but also a dream for now, because there's no living without cash. A dream for the future and a dream for now."
Absolute loved this book, from cover to cover. A sexy, smart, self-conscious hybrid of satire, criticism, porn, revolution and remorseless love.
Absolute loved this book, from cover to cover. A sexy, smart, self-conscious hybrid of satire, criticism, porn, revolution and remorseless love.
September 13, 2015
A professor who doesn't like me much gave this book to his son to give to me for a work-based gift exchange, and I really loved the book, I mean, too much almost, and I told the son how great it was, and he said in response his dad cackled and said 'figures,' which I think is really great: that from sabbatical my teachers can still prove themselves relatively narrow-minded and weep-worthily super-subjective in their own tastes to approach work with an open heart. For me to read all the colonial patriarchal subpar garbage in the canon to learn what 'literature really is, to have a foundation,' despite its clear flaws, I had to be open, and I had to reinvigorate each text with my own energies so I wasn't just regurgitating. To think, this professor was asked to write a review on the book and thought himself beyond that, and hands it to me almost as a joke, and I want to write so much on it, on messy palimpsestuous futures, on our fears of our own part in these futures, and our very alive and well sense that the next generation is already sharpening its knives to 'kill the father' like we somehow did too—but of course can't quite seem to remember when or how. I want to write about how this book makes me breathe better, right alongside Jasper Bernes' "We are nothing and so can you," and I am so grateful it came to me, like a disease, or maybe a satisfying panel in the middle of a cozy quilt. Thank you Jacob Wren for writing this. Thank you PB for giving me this. Thank you Bookthug for publishing this (a real shame you mostly publish bad poetry though). To quote the blood brothers: "sing! your voice just won't stop blooming!"
July 16, 2021
I first knew about this book from audiobook playlists on Spotify. The cover intrigued me, but I was seriously put off by the narrator. I gave it another try in written form. Avant-garde and filled with flair, it certainly was.
I was fascinated by the intertwined stories and blurry lines between "fiction" and "reality," but I wondered how much of it made sense to me in the end. It gave me a few things to think about later, for sure, but that seems too little to take away from something so ambitious. I found myself unsure of the writing starting from Chapter 5, gripped but then confused by lots of things coming afterwards.
I could see people loving this though, as proven by the many good reviews here, and maybe, I was not the target audience. Still hope to revisit this in the future, and take away more from it than now.
I was fascinated by the intertwined stories and blurry lines between "fiction" and "reality," but I wondered how much of it made sense to me in the end. It gave me a few things to think about later, for sure, but that seems too little to take away from something so ambitious. I found myself unsure of the writing starting from Chapter 5, gripped but then confused by lots of things coming afterwards.
I could see people loving this though, as proven by the many good reviews here, and maybe, I was not the target audience. Still hope to revisit this in the future, and take away more from it than now.
November 3, 2014
I haven't been this affected by a book in a very long time. Just, wow.
November 9, 2017
A truly original novel. Makes you ponder on the importance of blurring the lines of reality in an increasingly formatted world. Also a good reflection on what it means to be an artist, a creator. Wren’s style is original, witty and confident. Highly recommended!
June 2, 2016
I'd be willing to bet Polyamorous Love Song is as good as anything else being written on the planet right now. It's simple, clear writing--with a curious compelling quality not so much related to plot or character as the novel's even, methodical and non-linear structure (it's close to a "linked short stories" concept, but even then the re-appearing plots/characters are not most of what makes it compelling.) The book is, to my mind, refreshingly free of 'backstory' of character. Personally, I find this braver than dreary "histories" of characters and their eventual and inevitable triumph, etc...
May 14, 2014
YES YES YES
May 7, 2015
There comes a time in every man's or woman's life when one needs to decide whether to plead allegiance to the Mascot Front or to the Center for Productive Compromise.
Read
June 2, 2019Philosophical first person literary avant garde work from Canada. The observer of his own time and heart.
July 16, 2014
Brilliant.
May 7, 2025
bizarre, playful, darkly humorous - reading it i had the impression i was reading a kind of adult version of lemony snicket's series of unfortunate events, with secret societies and jumps across time and space and seemingly disparate characters/moments ending up being connected in some way and the ambiguous presence of the author / "I" and - and - ultimately i thought this was really thoughtful (maybe surprisingly so) and truly artistic
"I thought that perhaps all of my stories, my writings, my so-called works of literature, were exactly like this one: little tales to distract myself from something I actually didn't want to look at too closely within the strictures of the present moment." (118)
"'It is unfashionable to speak of revolution. Much like yourself, we care little for passing fashion. The point is to make a decision and then to act.'" (125)
"I thought that perhaps all of my stories, my writings, my so-called works of literature, were exactly like this one: little tales to distract myself from something I actually didn't want to look at too closely within the strictures of the present moment." (118)
"'It is unfashionable to speak of revolution. Much like yourself, we care little for passing fashion. The point is to make a decision and then to act.'" (125)
July 10, 2018
This book came out a few years ago. Just a few days ago I found it on the dollar shelf at a great used book and record shop in Montreal (Cheap Thrills). I never bother with stuff from the dollar shelf because it's usually about as good as the price suggests.
But.
The title & cover grabbed my eye. Then I stood and read the entire first chapter, not because I needed that much to erode any skepticism but because it gripped me. Your mileage may - nay, will - vary, of course. For me, the contents of this book were exactly what I needed. It might be what you need too, especially if you are someone who creates any kind of art and is struggling with it in the face of an increasingly rabid world.
But.
The title & cover grabbed my eye. Then I stood and read the entire first chapter, not because I needed that much to erode any skepticism but because it gripped me. Your mileage may - nay, will - vary, of course. For me, the contents of this book were exactly what I needed. It might be what you need too, especially if you are someone who creates any kind of art and is struggling with it in the face of an increasingly rabid world.
June 26, 2018
I get sucked in this book like a child, forgetting what is reality, what fiction. (At some point I googled the Mascot Front.) I get sucked in this book because I fuck and cry and bleed and love, because I exist as a piece of art. Still. It's never been a decision.
Some associations:
- T.C. Boyle, Sarah Kane, Samuel Beckett, Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil, Joe Hill, Fight Club
- absurdity, art, enlightment, on the edge, darkness, kink, time-less-ness
Some associations:
- T.C. Boyle, Sarah Kane, Samuel Beckett, Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil, Joe Hill, Fight Club
- absurdity, art, enlightment, on the edge, darkness, kink, time-less-ness
Read
December 11, 2025Totally off the rails. Militant furries. Politically targeted viruses. Filmmaking without cameras. Kidnapping as art.
The plotlines snake around each other and characters show up in fun and unexpected ways. You never know who is going to be connected to who. Much like the orgies described in the book.
Pynchon-esque unlike almost anything I've read outside of Pynchon.
The plotlines snake around each other and characters show up in fun and unexpected ways. You never know who is going to be connected to who. Much like the orgies described in the book.
Pynchon-esque unlike almost anything I've read outside of Pynchon.
September 4, 2024
This a book I totally picked up for the title- it took until the last 25% before I figured out how the title fit in. I find the style of writing a bit too abstract for me but I love some of the ideas, relationship and dialogue which keeps me in.
June 22, 2025
the thing is, they said novel but i see connected short stories though i think i have to broaden my definition of what a novel is, much like how narrow my definition of what a film is (not life).
January 28, 2021
A triumph in storytelling.
May 30, 2022
It feels like a DeLillo novel if DeLillo got everything slightly wrong, with a dash of misplaced David Foster Wallace arrogance.
February 14, 2024
feels a bit ironic to have read this book on saint-valentines day as it is quite like a celebration of monogamy in my opinion
March 1, 2024
An interesting and unexpected read. Short but packed a punch.
February 16, 2025
"How would we experience love if pop culture did not exist?"
April 29, 2015
Reading this I understand why a lot of people seemed to love it so much - I just didn't.
October 10, 2014
A very smart and funny and sad and beautiful book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews