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Affect
Affect is the surreal love story of a graduate student who, hyperaware of the absurdity of love in a universe where all is finite and death is inevitable, interprets the developing relationship through philosophy.
152 pages, Paperback
Published October 21, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 12, 2021
This book won’t be for everybody, I’ll say that. It’s experimental in terms of structure, form, plot, genre (conventions); basically most things. It’s highly subjective—my personal catnip—it’s cerebral and extremely engaging to read.
It’s about a philosophy student who meets a guy named Logan and hooks up with him, and the rest is a series of vignettes that depict the trajectory of their relationship, as it pertains to the narrators point of view. Her lens is very unique and often runs together with trains of thought that are how she reveals her character. Even when the random thought is a macabre or disturbing, it gets screen time. There’s not that much censoring, but simultaneously also an arrangement in which some it is it is rhyme and meter and legitimately just poetry. Not all the time, but a lot of it is interspersed.
It is phenomenal at conveying important character elements through action, even as it is relayed through the heavy philosophical component. What things feel like are sometimes literalized. What is imagined is as important as what seems to be grounded in the external. It does not differentiate between a rich internal world and how a particular conversation she is overthinking to try to fit in with strangers.
It’s othering while relatable, strange but alluring. It is a hallmark of excellent writers to produce a unique lens that, in its specificity, elicits thought and nuance and edification, while also, in its tightness, be instantly relatable and connecting for the reader.
This does that beautifully. It’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind within the mind of a philosophical student grappling with love and existential crisis in the commingling of identity as we attempt to understand another person, foreign as they are.
It’s about a philosophy student who meets a guy named Logan and hooks up with him, and the rest is a series of vignettes that depict the trajectory of their relationship, as it pertains to the narrators point of view. Her lens is very unique and often runs together with trains of thought that are how she reveals her character. Even when the random thought is a macabre or disturbing, it gets screen time. There’s not that much censoring, but simultaneously also an arrangement in which some it is it is rhyme and meter and legitimately just poetry. Not all the time, but a lot of it is interspersed.
It is phenomenal at conveying important character elements through action, even as it is relayed through the heavy philosophical component. What things feel like are sometimes literalized. What is imagined is as important as what seems to be grounded in the external. It does not differentiate between a rich internal world and how a particular conversation she is overthinking to try to fit in with strangers.
It’s othering while relatable, strange but alluring. It is a hallmark of excellent writers to produce a unique lens that, in its specificity, elicits thought and nuance and edification, while also, in its tightness, be instantly relatable and connecting for the reader.
This does that beautifully. It’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind within the mind of a philosophical student grappling with love and existential crisis in the commingling of identity as we attempt to understand another person, foreign as they are.
September 13, 2021
Elsby's writing makes my brain hum in a good way. It's such a good portrayal of how learning philosophy starts to distort reality through abstraction into a new clarity. It lends credence to those jokes and memes that studying philosophy is bad for your kids. It's true, protect your children from philosophy. This particular work employs darkly humorous characters prone to wild forays into logic about real world, often mundane, sometimes tragic, scenarios.
October 25, 2021
Video review to follow
November 7, 2020
I liked this but I'm not sure what it was that I liked except the writing is likeable and it kind of made sense and kind of didn't but it does sound like the inside of my brain at times so I liked it mostly.
I think it's a philosophical love story and I really enjoyed how everything is overanalyzed because I find that very relatable.
I think it's a philosophical love story and I really enjoyed how everything is overanalyzed because I find that very relatable.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews