Newcomer Can't Swim

by Renee Gladman

Written as seven loosely connected pieces, Renee Gladman's NEWCOMER CAN'T SWIM blurs boundaries between poetry and prose. In languages of elegy and splintered consciousness, the book recreates life for the twenty-first century flø¢neur in urban America amid a confusion of aims, identities and street life of people connected to ipods downloaded with personalized mixes and sets. In a contemporary world of signs that crisscross a global culture, how can one maintain a firm existence and make human connections? Gladman posits a fluid self and parallel existence attuned to being lost. The / body moves away from living, from the flesh and bone of life, / and becomes regions. I take on / water. I look outward." A tension holds all frequencies together, keeping the contradiction of a life that animates the "I" of this book at the same time that it goes on without her.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

104 pages, paperback

First published December 15, 2007

About the author

Renee Gladman is an artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of writing, drawing and architecture. She is the author of numerous published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians—Event Factory (2010), The Ravickians (2011), Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (2013), and Houses of Ravicka (2017)—all published by Dorothy. Her most recent books are My Lesbian Novel (2024) and a reprint of her 2008 book TOAF (both also from Dorothy). Recent essays and visual work have appeared in The Architectural Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and e-flux, in addition to several artist monographs and exhibition catalogs. Gladman’s first solo exhibition of drawings, The Dreams of Sentences, opened in fall 2022 at Wesleyan University, followed by Narratives of Magnitude at Artists Space in New York City in spring 2023. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies from the Menil Drawing Institute, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among others, and received a Windham-Campbell prize in fiction in 2021. She makes her home in New England.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

A bit wispy and willowy for me to be able to find much to say. But I like it. And I'll be in for more of Gladman.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, I can't even tell you exactly why. Go get it, read it right away. It is beautiful and strange and violent, it breaks open boundaries and reassembles them, it builds images and destroys them and you never know quite what is happening but you feel it in your stomach and think about it long after and I loved it.

[Eugene · Rating 4 out of 5]

who's aiming higher than Renee Gladman? her wrestling with the basic ideas of fiction--and its osmotic border with poetry--can lead to spectacular instances of art, passages at home in strangeness, maneuvering with uncanny grace in fields of indeterminacy and unknowing.

i knew her mainly from reading JUICE, a strong, sustained meditation where she stretched the connections that mended sentences' semantic gaps to their limit... this latest, NEWCOMER CAN'T SWIM, is a collection of "installations" and i found myself taking a shine to some more than others. i liked those with a stronger narrative momentum than those that constellate various portraits or scenes (but it's pretty radical stuff and i may be too poorly equipped to apprehend some of these seriously new approaches.) ...in any case i thought "Untitled, Woman on Ground" was awesome, heartbreaking, and completely new. it might be a breakup story, it might be a story about rubbernecking around an accident. it repeats a theme of the book--the various ways we fail to communicate or only communicate in desperate and blunted ways. another favorite was "kingdom in three panels," especially louie's dog-mind...

some came up short nonetheless, where i both emotionally and intellectually couldn't connect. but i did think what she's going for is some incredible place that requires real inspiration each time. and it's pretty hard to hit that every outing. people get blamed for that much ambition, and i'm not sure wrongly--but when she connects the transport's pretty phenom.


[i was thinking innovative (or whatever you want to call it) fiction might be enjoying a rare state of health... great books: this gladman plus [book: zachary mason's LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY] and gary lutz' PARTIAL LIST OF PEOPLE TO BLEACH and oisin curran's MOPUS --all in the past twelve month. home team's having a run... ]

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of my favorites of RG's, though honestly I've read four of her books now and I don't think she's got a bad one in her. Text for Moving I think is one of the most perfect stories I've read anywhere. I want to reread this soon. There were so many things I noticed later on that I didn't pick up on at first. I want to think more about how these pieces connect, about how the recurring names, characters function. There's so much here.

[Shakarean · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't know what i read which is the best part

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this today right now immediately.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Renee Gladman writes:

"When you begin a courtship such as this one you must give up comfort for a time. I knew the thing to do was wait. Before I walked into the room, I dreamed of walking into the room, and before I dreamed, I configured algebraically on paper. First the numbers said do it, then the dream images.

You’ve got to go somewhere with someone, the equation said."

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

my heart is palpitating after reading this. beautiful language threading confusion and apocalypse ~ gray fish world. "i am running away from the territory. i am in it."

[Felix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great what a piece of art!

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 leaning towards 4-- this was interesting, but I liked some "stories" better than others in this brief, hybrid-genre collection. Some stories were too vague for me. The clearer ones, I liked better. I suppose when I am reading something that seems to have narrative, it's hard to switch over to a story with a similar voice that does not. The writing/style was intriguing though, and the "Weirdness" of these stories truly appealed to me.

[Ida · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm enjoying this so far. like a walk in the dark.

[Paul Klinger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nope. Not having it. Lydia Davis. 30 love.

[Mills College Library]

811.6 G5421n 2007

[Kevin]

i need to learn how to read abstract stuff again