Kill Manual

by Cassandra Troyan

Cassandra Troyan's Kill Manual plunges the reader through a series of bizarre exchanges and extreme situations in an intense examination of schizophrenic desire. The residual effects of pleasure, shame, and pursuit of capital pervade its contortions, at once brilliant achievements and a formal nightmare.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

178 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2014

About the author

Cassandra Troyan is a writer, scholar, and ex-artist whose work uses a materialist feminist lens to demarcate space for interventions in the spheres of theory, politics, and culture. They are the author of several books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently A Theory in Tears (ANNOTATIONS & CASES FOR FREEDOM & PROSTITUTION) (Kenning Editions 2016), and have presented, performed, or screened their work at venues such as the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASSMoCA); New York Art Book Fair at MoMA/PS1; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA); The University of Toronto’s “Sex Salon” at the Mark Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies; Poetics: (The Next) 25 Years at SUNY-University at Buffalo; Capitalism, Crisis and Ideology lecture series at Cardiff University; Casco: Office for Art, Design & Theory in Utrecht, NL; Stanford Humanities Center at Stanford University; Perdu in Amsterdam, NL with retrospectives at Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, NY and at Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco, CA. They live in Kalmar, Sweden and teach as a Senior Lecturer at Linnaeus University in the Department of Design.

Troyan’s work explores the terror of becoming female amidst the accelerated haze of contemporary culture, deriving pleasure and power from interrogations of submission, violence, queer desire, sex work, horror, and capital. By engaging a practice of radical alterity, Christopher Higgs writes in a review at The Collagist, “The question Throne of Blood seems interested in provoking is not the basic ontological question, "what does it mean to be," but rather a more rabidly black and potently nihilistic question: who gives a fuck about being? Or, put in the form of a statement rather than a question: to be is not to be, forget the question.” At Vice, Blake Butler evinces another notion of being in Kill Manual, as “Troyan infects the struggle of the self into a living, breathing language-system, spitting and shrieking and cackling rather than just whining and worshipping, using reality's death threat against itself.”

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Form greatly enhances coherence. Alone, these fragments in and around the psychological and emotional content of BDSM would have their undeniable innate impact (even a highly visceral one at times) but might fall away into disconnected thematic repetitions. But through careful alternation of elements, Troyan builds rhythms, cadences, an overriding momentum driving this out to its furthest extents. With just, say, the poetic blood-shed without the vaguely predatory personal ads (and their gradual colonization by the language of religion, possibly my favorite part here), there'd be much less impact, I might actually lose interest. But then, I expect that though collaged-feeling, this was always conceived as a multifaceted whole. Perhaps leaving one side out would be like reading only the odd pages of any novel. Regardless, the cohesively disconcerting sum is much more than the violent, chaotic parts. There's a Solar Luxuriance flier right here where M. Kitchell says "Really thinking about a book--what makes a book, how texts work as a book--tends to radically change the way said books are both written and read." Actually a key point here, and more than an idle point of comparison since Troyan is a Solar Luxuriance alumn and M. did all the design/layouts in Kill Manual, which honestly play a significant role in leading the reader through the various ambiguous narrative threads which compose the work.

Incidentally, I was prompted to pick this up when I got excited for a screening of Cassandra Troyan's films at a theater I'm involved in. Mixing up Chicago artists, I believed incorrectly that I knew her work. Turns out I was thinking of someone completely different, and the films didn't quite hit the space I was expecting or seeking just then, though they do have their peculiar power. This book, however, is excellent and much more what I was pursuing.

Also, I need a shelf for these kind of breaking, genre-slashing prose/poetic experimental diy works. This relates to what people were calling New Brutalism for a little while, but that seems over-specific. Not that any of this needs to be penned in by labels, though, so perhaps I should continue to have no idea. (For my own purposes I've invented another category, however.)

[Téa Jones-Yelvington · Rating 5 out of 5]

cassandra paddles my stud cunt and makes me squirm DEAR GODDESS deliver me into shame

[Victor Giron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will blow you away

[Joe]

moves the reader thru the flux between suffering/pleasure that define and intensify/give meaning to each other in almost 200 pages of accounts of BDSM (& digital exchanges between practitioners) & degrees of own pleasure/repulsion in such descriptions and confessions of sadomaochistic desire. / I failed the test on Kristeva but will write anyway that this text puts the language of abjection at play in intense, necessary ways. the text is echoing strangely as I turn to others that describe violence outside the parameters of consent -- has me thinking more critically about what kind of work those descriptions are doing and what I want out of them. // a potent book.

[jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Purely a cover buy. In retrospect I was never going to enjoy this, definitely not my thing!

[M G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not enjoy until I was 92% through and then I Got It. Consistently good mouthfeel

[June Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me core

[John Schlotfelt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Musical Pairing(s): Jean-Michele Blais - II; Sun Ra Arkestra - Strange Strings; Julianna Barwick - Will

I think the last time my notions of 'good writing' were so thoroughly challenged was Ulysses. That is one of the few things those books have in common.

Troyan's poetry is devastatingly beautiful, raw, and brutal. I have been grasping for days, as I've neared the end of this book, for words to describe this book without sounding trite, missing significant thematic elements, or dismissing my own relationship with the book. I have, inevitably come up short but feel compelled to attempt to collect my thoughts...

I purchased Kill Manual because it sounded so far afield from both my normal (but still fairly broad) reading palette and from my own experience as a person. It is most assuredly both of those things.

Troyan's exploration of BDSM through excerpts of Instant Messenger conversations, personal ads, poetry (often featuring very hard enjambment, creative spacing of both lines and words, and some wonderful experiments with sound), and a narrative or series of narratives paint a picture that most would see as horrific. Troyan finds the beauty in this world of slaves and dominatrixes, blood and orgasms, pain and pleasure. She doesn't apologize (nor should she) for who she is or, rather; the narrator(s) make no apologies for who they are.

The pieces seem to be in conversation with one another. A series of poems all entitled 'Re:' follow and seem to dance around and play with the language of personal ads. The narratives or prose poems provide a richly detailed counterpoint to the sometimes disconnected Instant Messenger conversations. The book is fabulously designed with each thread getting its own font and layout scheme. It looks jarring and at times reads as such, but taken as a whole, it is deeply complex and complete without ever spelling anything out.

This is as far as I can comfortably wade out on this book.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A unique blend of poetic styles, but readable none the less. A taboo topic gracefully addressed, and explored. Following the protagonist through the poetry narrative was easier than expected and the resolution was clever and profound.

As an outsider to this type of sexual activity, I thought the content would be more shocking. But as with any well written and carefully constructed poetry, the intensity of the message was through emotional imagery and not just detail.

Those with similar tastes will get more out of this writing, but I did enjoy the universality of the majority of the content. Especially the online persona and interplay.