In the Beggarly Style of Imitation

by Jean Marc Ah-Sen

Born on the twin backs of torpidity and obsession, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation is a voyage into the mind of one of the Canadian literary underground’s most unruly writers. Equal parts tribute to the historical genesis of the novel and the well-trodden subject of love, the exercises of imitation contained in this collection offer a brief survey through the illustrious forms and genres of literary expression: epistolary, aphorism, essay, picaresque, romance and satire culminate in a celebratory brand of fiction that proves with finality that imitation is truly the vilest form of flattery.

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 18, 2020

About the author

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur and In the Beggarly Style of Imitation. His writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean's, Hazlitt, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and The Toronto Star. The National Post has hailed his writing as "an inventive escape from the conventional."

Reviews

[Enid Wray]

The review in the Miramichi Reader references the value of having (needing) a dictionary at hand while reading this. I don’t want to work that hard at reading for pleasure.

The review at The Walrus refers to it as each of bewildering, subversive and extremely funny. I’ll definitely agree to the first, perhaps the second, but definitely not the third.

Clearly, as someone who really has no interest in post-modernist literature, this is not the book for me. I tried, I really did.

But when, on page 57, after reading page upon page of pithy aphorisms, I come to the statement that ‘A life spent composing aphorisms is a happily wasted one’ I recognised that I need not ‘waste’ any more of my time on this title - as happy I was not!

[Hollay Ghadery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like being dragged along in a riptide. An incredibly cool, rare, wonderful read.