Captagon

by Philip Best

Genres: Surreal, Fiction

60 pages, stapled booklet

First published October 1, 2017

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leave your humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold.

[Josiah Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Digging to the other side of the world through language. Spirit of Ballard reembodied.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captagon is a short, forceful mashup of assorted texts detailing instances of wartime cruelty and institutional malfeasance. Broken up into brief chapters whose characters come and go across eras and continents, their whereabouts handily mapped out in an index at the back along with a list of all the author’s wide range of sources. Taking in art, music and literary criticism, the Philip Best worldview is consistently compelling but be aware, pretty it ain’t.

[Ryan Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

A photograph. Explosions. Bodies in states of decay. A gang of vultures circling over an obscure, crimson mass in a sunscorched field. The cost of war, the greed of those in power, and the consequences and death toll that arise, all displayed in the fragmented narratives within this chapbook. Very well done.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

With its myriad perspectives on the chaos, violence, stupidity and entropic forces governing and engulfing everything, Captagon is a bleak as hell, fast-paced, fractured cruise through what may be a possible dystopian near-future but which actually reads more like an only slightly caricatured and exaggerated version of our increasingly conflict-ravaged present times. Harsh reading, but excellent and recommended.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a fan of Best's lyrics this was no giant surprise, it's a bricolage of written fiction and found texts, fiction and non-fiction composing a brutal narrative of war crimes, death and destruction, etc. are not to far afield from Peter Sotos, though there are some more moments to breathe. That said I wish there were more of the visuals in the photo collage books that Best has done.

[Full Daffy · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shameless plagiarism. The accomplishment here is his ability to plagiarize so many artists in so few pages.

[Emily K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me feel awful because power is awful and its breakdown is even worse for the people in its wake.

[Lone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes! This one flows beautifully, rips sudden, little pieces off me as I read, burns, and opens up in every direction. I want so much more of this.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

adolescent