Research: A Novel for Performance

by Joseph Riippi

"It's a rare thing to come across a work of art so entirely original. Rarer still for it to be this good. Someone said this, and I have stolen it. To read A Novel For Performance is to get taken to language with new eyes, tunneled into the brain's language caves by the brilliance of Joseph Riippi's attention to language, by his every word and turn of phrase, taken to an investigation of language and its impacts, I must say it is most original in form and yet in the work I hear Beckett's long sighing, I hear Thornton Wilder and his characters speak, I hear Gordon Lish languaging, I hear Gertrude Stein moving phrases around and around, I hear so many minds paying attention to each sound, to each word, to each turning of word to meaning to longing to impossibility back to possibilities. It's a rare thing to come across a work of art so entirely original. Rarer still for it to be this good." -Luke B. Goebel, author of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

About the author

Joseph Riippi is the author of 5 books, including RESEARCH: A NOVEL FOR PERFORMANCE and BECAUSE. He lives with his wife in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely something different, and intriguingly so. I haven't seen a book structured like this before, being reinvented as it goes and as it is read, then more and more afterward. I love the way that the text is presented side by side with the play, giving even more as an interplay between the two. It's hard to talk about frankly, even as approachable as it is. It's just too slippery for more, which is it's charm. Regardless, it has some serious pull and I was captivated the whole time. At least, that's how I remember it....