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Safe Mode
Fiction. SAFE MODE is Sam Riviere's first book-length prose text. Framed as an 'ambient novel', a term coined by the American writer Tan Lin, SAFE MODE abandons the traditional novel's temporal logic in favour of spatial and atmospheric dispersal, combining intensely personal material with unacknowledged appropriated content to explore the narratives made possible by mood, or the moods made possible by narrative. Which is which? Does it even matter?
128 pages, Paperback
First published June 21, 2017
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 20, 2018
I bought this book primarily because of its beautiful design by Matthew Stuart, but at a close second because I greatly enjoyed Kim Kardashian's Marriage. It's well written and tells a story in an interesting (self-proclaimed "ambient") style. It strongly reminds me of Patrick Keiller's Robinson films, in its reclusive, melancholic narration, shaggy-dog story and ambiguous series of illustrations. It seems to me that the primary intention of this book is to creative an atmosphere, which it does successfully.
The book is also mirrored (making both covers front covers, opposite ways up, both ending in the middle); the text is rewritten with oppositely alternating perspective (the paragraphs are alternately 1st person then 2nd person throughout) but otherwise each half is identical throughout, with the exception of a small number of unique paragraphs in each half.
I found this very physical concept interesting (and enjoy its celebration of the materiality of the book as an art object), yet I suspect it includes a measure of intentional ambiguity. The latter issue left me with a slightly bitter aftertaste, as it seems to me an affectation of intellectual elitism in which an author (or any other kind of artist) intends to make their audience feel they are "missing something" (that may not actually be there) and trick them into believing the author is more intelligent than they are because their work "went over their head".
This suspicion could be untrue for this particular work, though, as it could equally be unselfconscious experimental storytelling. It's impossible to say for sure, but either way the potential negative is outweighed by the positives in this case.
The book is also mirrored (making both covers front covers, opposite ways up, both ending in the middle); the text is rewritten with oppositely alternating perspective (the paragraphs are alternately 1st person then 2nd person throughout) but otherwise each half is identical throughout, with the exception of a small number of unique paragraphs in each half.
I found this very physical concept interesting (and enjoy its celebration of the materiality of the book as an art object), yet I suspect it includes a measure of intentional ambiguity. The latter issue left me with a slightly bitter aftertaste, as it seems to me an affectation of intellectual elitism in which an author (or any other kind of artist) intends to make their audience feel they are "missing something" (that may not actually be there) and trick them into believing the author is more intelligent than they are because their work "went over their head".
This suspicion could be untrue for this particular work, though, as it could equally be unselfconscious experimental storytelling. It's impossible to say for sure, but either way the potential negative is outweighed by the positives in this case.
Displaying 1 of 1 review