What do you think?
Rate this book
Voices
Taking place in a kind of "internal space," populated by living ideas, Voices utilizes broken typography within the context of an equally broken narrative to examine an existence in which identity and self have become, themselves, imaginary, but have allowed human thought and feeling to reshape the very nature of perceptual reality. Language is given a new, unfamiliar complete freedom to explore the framework of an intricate semiotic landscape.
156 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 2010
3 people are currently reading
218 people want to read
About the author
Kyle Muntz
7 books121 followersKyle Muntz is the author of "The Pain Eater", a literary horror novel published by Clash Books in July 2022.
Check out "The Pain Eater" here:
https://www.clashbooks.com/new-produc...
He's also the writer and designer of "The Pale City," a dark fantasy RPG released on PC in 2020.
Link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/11...
Check out "The Pain Eater" here:
https://www.clashbooks.com/new-produc...
He's also the writer and designer of "The Pale City," a dark fantasy RPG released on PC in 2020.
Link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/11...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 19, 2012
I agree with some of the other reviews about this book that I've seen which suggest that this is a difficult book to talk about, though one that is almost impossible not to enjoy. It is an amazingly complex book, but one that interacts with the reader on an extremely consistent emotional level. It's almost like it operates at such a level below concrete communication that trying to restrict it to such just doesn't work. The real impressive aspect of the book is how well Muntz maintains this and makes it work for the reader. I just can't see how he manages it, or explain it, but he does. Like the language itself, which cannot reasonably be classified as either poetry or prose, this book is not easily understood in any other words than the ones in which it is written. Reading my thoughts is nothing like reading the book, so I guess you'll just have to go read it.
February 28, 2015
There is a powerful, inherent beauty in the prose of this book. The broken narrative also made it a unique experience. This book is a bit more difficult than most for me to rate, review or relay my opinions successfully, as it kinda operates on another level. I am very interested in reading Muntz's later works.
December 18, 2013
Really dig it. Lots of strangeness and an interesting take on human emotion. It's less direct with what's being felt or how it's being felt and the language makes it almost inhuman, which, oddly, makes it all the more emotional.
July 19, 2010
I need to state at the outset that I don’t read much experimental fiction, so it was at first difficult to pull away the lens of more traditional plot and character structures when reading Kyle Muntz’s poetical prose novel Voices. But once I’d accomplished this, there is SO much to admire in this book.
For starters, Muntz is a hell of a good writer.
The prose is electric, vibrant, thrumming with vitality and interest. The theme of “voices” runs throughout the work — voices in the narrator’s head, voices in your head as you read and the phonation of Muntz’s poetry in prose form. The story, as much as I can speak of it, follows a narrator who is strangely absent. He is a poet, a would-be wanton, and a wanderer in a surreal city-scape with his friends.
The narrator’s voice is consistent, but as I say, it is almost as though the brilliant observations and music of his language is his only way to maintain his existence. Without it he would simply vanish into the singularity that is his soul.
Muntz’s work is intense. It’s clearly designed by a great intellect, which is why I found it so strange to have such an emotional reaction. The text can vary wildly, from incredibly vivid scenes of beauty to images that are filled with existential horror, particularly whenever he visits his friend Jacob. It seemed to me that some of the best scenes were of intimate encounters like this one:
“We kissed
on the veranda. It was her arms and mine, sanctified: soft smooth skin, running hands down her back running them up. The night didn’t call to us, because the night couldn’t call, but we were there and we were really there. She tasted like something that wasn’t moonlight. Scent and oranges, color, ellipsoid racing, we kissed. It started to rain. She didn’t pull away. The rain matted her hair to us, a fall of water. We kissed. Her essence and the rain, gorgeous,
she didn’t
pull away.”
Now, I have an intimation of another way that “voices” influences this story, but I won’t share it here and spoil the chance for you to find it yourself.
So IF you’re into beautiful writing, and not afraid to stretch your understanding of narrative, you should definitely give this a go.
For starters, Muntz is a hell of a good writer.
The prose is electric, vibrant, thrumming with vitality and interest. The theme of “voices” runs throughout the work — voices in the narrator’s head, voices in your head as you read and the phonation of Muntz’s poetry in prose form. The story, as much as I can speak of it, follows a narrator who is strangely absent. He is a poet, a would-be wanton, and a wanderer in a surreal city-scape with his friends.
The narrator’s voice is consistent, but as I say, it is almost as though the brilliant observations and music of his language is his only way to maintain his existence. Without it he would simply vanish into the singularity that is his soul.
Muntz’s work is intense. It’s clearly designed by a great intellect, which is why I found it so strange to have such an emotional reaction. The text can vary wildly, from incredibly vivid scenes of beauty to images that are filled with existential horror, particularly whenever he visits his friend Jacob. It seemed to me that some of the best scenes were of intimate encounters like this one:
“We kissed
on the veranda. It was her arms and mine, sanctified: soft smooth skin, running hands down her back running them up. The night didn’t call to us, because the night couldn’t call, but we were there and we were really there. She tasted like something that wasn’t moonlight. Scent and oranges, color, ellipsoid racing, we kissed. It started to rain. She didn’t pull away. The rain matted her hair to us, a fall of water. We kissed. Her essence and the rain, gorgeous,
she didn’t
pull away.”
Now, I have an intimation of another way that “voices” influences this story, but I won’t share it here and spoil the chance for you to find it yourself.
So IF you’re into beautiful writing, and not afraid to stretch your understanding of narrative, you should definitely give this a go.
March 11, 2012
This is a hard book to review. It's very good, but it is the type of book that is difficult to find anything meaningful to say about it. By this, I mean it fits into no ordained categories and in some ways defies being summarized. Like Joyce or Raymond Queneau. Nevertheless, read it. Read it now.
May 20, 2025
I may sound pretentious in saying this, but the average reader simply wouldn’t understand the creativity behind this book. The same person would not be capable of appreciating the vague nature of art in a museum—the conglomerate of textures and colors, of themes and motifs, seemingly splattered at random upon a canvas.
It is incredibly difficult to accurately describe what this book was about. It had a very fluid narrative up for interpretation depending on the mental state of the reader. It attacks our human nature in a way that breaks down who we truly are and how disjointed our thoughts and realities may be. Life itself does not follow a plot and neither does this.
I found this book after I saw someone give “writing advice” stating that all writing should be clean, clear and conscience, lest it become unreadable slop. I went on an impassioned rant about an entire branch of literary criticism being devoted to “stream of consciousness” writing, then proceeded to look up books that followed this mode of writing. This book came up, and though the description was vague enough it was intriguing. What I’d gotten was something much better.
If you are a fan of books that push the boundaries on how the English language can be used and utilized, this is a book I’d highly recommend. If you need a book to have an identifiable plot with characters you could make a police sketch out of, this book is not for you in the slightest.
It is incredibly difficult to accurately describe what this book was about. It had a very fluid narrative up for interpretation depending on the mental state of the reader. It attacks our human nature in a way that breaks down who we truly are and how disjointed our thoughts and realities may be. Life itself does not follow a plot and neither does this.
I found this book after I saw someone give “writing advice” stating that all writing should be clean, clear and conscience, lest it become unreadable slop. I went on an impassioned rant about an entire branch of literary criticism being devoted to “stream of consciousness” writing, then proceeded to look up books that followed this mode of writing. This book came up, and though the description was vague enough it was intriguing. What I’d gotten was something much better.
If you are a fan of books that push the boundaries on how the English language can be used and utilized, this is a book I’d highly recommend. If you need a book to have an identifiable plot with characters you could make a police sketch out of, this book is not for you in the slightest.
May 3, 2012
What begins as a young poet's journal of entries about the friends, the dark, desperate spaces they inhabit, and world around him quickly morphs into a journey that dissolves the boundaries between himself and the things he records—one that reveals the true sources of the "voices." The title is a clever one, as the narrator documents many voices: those of his friends, lovers, and associates; the urban world; and, in doing so, his own.
The protagonist's camera also plays a crucial part and reinforces the distance between him and his subjects, which alternately serve as muse, menace, and mirror. The photographic angle is particularly relevant when you consider the job of an SLR (single lens reflex): a semiautomatic moving system that allows the photographer to see what will eventually appear on film.
Sometimes the pictures are clear--painfully so; at others, the lack of focus speaks clearly to a perspective blurred by the voices. The concept of the shutter goes a long way toward explaining the length--or brevity of certain passages (click!). Cliche has it that the camera never lies; the photographer, on the other hand, always does--through framing. It is he who decides what to show and what to ignore/obscure. Interestingly enough, the edges of said frame/s converge to distort the distance between shutterbug and subject.
Before the picture, however, there are the words. Without them, the reader would have no idea what the narrator's one-man exhibition looks like. Muntz uses them to great effect, masterfully bending them to his will. His lush prose merges with poetry that wrestles, resists, and fuses into a language all its own. The combination of clever wordplay gives way to cinematic passages that pull the reader beyond the word, through the lens, and into the visceral realities of the narrator.
Before long, the reader, too, is forced to reckon with the voices and their prescient transience. (I use the term "prescient transience," because: [a] they set the stage for the crisis to come and; [b] like urban life, people, places, and things come and go, reappear and vanish yet again.) Certain phrases and rhythms repeat themselves, giving the effect of a literary dementia that allows little room for objectivity. One begins to wonder if the voices are the narrator's—or the reader's.
As the end draws near, so too does all the narrator seeks and seeks to avoid. The demarcations of self and other, urban and rural, artist and inspiration, objectivity and immersion are gone. All falls down and creates a space for the death required to break through.
Voices is more than a book; it's the literary equivalent of multimedia sculpture—and like any work of art, is deserving of more than one reading to capture the many facets of its prism.
The protagonist's camera also plays a crucial part and reinforces the distance between him and his subjects, which alternately serve as muse, menace, and mirror. The photographic angle is particularly relevant when you consider the job of an SLR (single lens reflex): a semiautomatic moving system that allows the photographer to see what will eventually appear on film.
Sometimes the pictures are clear--painfully so; at others, the lack of focus speaks clearly to a perspective blurred by the voices. The concept of the shutter goes a long way toward explaining the length--or brevity of certain passages (click!). Cliche has it that the camera never lies; the photographer, on the other hand, always does--through framing. It is he who decides what to show and what to ignore/obscure. Interestingly enough, the edges of said frame/s converge to distort the distance between shutterbug and subject.
Before the picture, however, there are the words. Without them, the reader would have no idea what the narrator's one-man exhibition looks like. Muntz uses them to great effect, masterfully bending them to his will. His lush prose merges with poetry that wrestles, resists, and fuses into a language all its own. The combination of clever wordplay gives way to cinematic passages that pull the reader beyond the word, through the lens, and into the visceral realities of the narrator.
Before long, the reader, too, is forced to reckon with the voices and their prescient transience. (I use the term "prescient transience," because: [a] they set the stage for the crisis to come and; [b] like urban life, people, places, and things come and go, reappear and vanish yet again.) Certain phrases and rhythms repeat themselves, giving the effect of a literary dementia that allows little room for objectivity. One begins to wonder if the voices are the narrator's—or the reader's.
As the end draws near, so too does all the narrator seeks and seeks to avoid. The demarcations of self and other, urban and rural, artist and inspiration, objectivity and immersion are gone. All falls down and creates a space for the death required to break through.
Voices is more than a book; it's the literary equivalent of multimedia sculpture—and like any work of art, is deserving of more than one reading to capture the many facets of its prism.
Want to read
January 26, 2013Goodreads somehow "unselected" my desire to read this book; fixed that pronto!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews