Panopticon

by Steve McCaffery

Announcing the long-awaited reprint of Steve McCaffery's rare 1984 intervention into fiction (if "fiction" indeed this be). Taking its inspiration from Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon Papers" McCaffery's Panopticon shatters all omnivison in a tour de force of formal innovation, theoretical comment and narrative critique. In Panopticon narrative stutters, repeats itself, sequence is deranged and complicated by a multi-media presence on the page of grids, film bands and acoustic channels. On its first appearance Charles Bernstein hailed the book as "as perhaps the exemplary �antiabsorptive work'" and William McPheron claimed its first appearance as "an extraordinary act of revolution and charity. Out of print for over twenty-five years, this new edition is enhanced by the inclusion of a revised CD recording of the book, its three voices, one male, two female teasing out the gender complexities of Panopticon. McCaffery has also added an Introduction to the book and has revised the text entirely.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Steve McCaffery is the author of over twenty-five books of poetry and criticism. He has twice been awarded the Gertrude Stein Award for innovative poetry and twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. His poems have been published in more than a dozen countries. A long-time resident of Toronto, he is currently the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, University at Buffalo.

Reviews

[DW]

A novel that is poetically an anti-novel. Turning narrative conventions in upon themselves, the author twists and turns to make every part of language that supports a story collapse in upon itself.

The simple ligatures of every day linguistic structure is placed in front of you and then repeatedly teased and pulled away from you. Eventually you realize that you are indeed in the prison that the novel is named after. However, the prison is language and the book is merely pointing out its presence there all along. It mocks the absurd practices and assumptions that we forgive in broad daylight -- and see in every mundane movie or book we read.

It took my brain in such interesting places. Definitely a read that is more about work than play.

[Andrew Sare · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A woman emerges from her bath ect. and steps into a mark that's bigger than all her meanings. Something like that. Something about a single sentence bringing about a cause in which a body dries itself. A little like life." - McCaffery

If I had my own copy of this I'd lend it around, just so that you could flip through it and guffaw. But my copy is from a library.

Its an engaging artifact. From its shabby cover with blurred pixels that looks far worse in person, stickers replacing pages that are out of order, and lines and columns that spiral and striate through pages in varying manners. All of this and perhaps what drove me mad the most was the complete lack of page numbers. And that's just the layout and physical form.

The text itself is minimalism meets maximalism - not far off a Canadian Joseph McElroy. Small scenes are pulled apart to the extreme and written and examined from every imaginable angle. Is it a novel, poetry, or text puzzle? I'm not sure. One can interpret it in any of these ways I suppose.