As We Know - Amaranth Borsuk & Andy Fitch
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Praise for As We Know
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Roland Barthes introduces us to this remarkable book: a 鈥渃orrected banality.鈥 I can imagine no better spokesperson than the one who announced the death of the author, for As We Know is truly a work of 鈥渄estroyed origin,鈥 in which 鈥渁ll identity is lost.鈥 Borsuk takes hold of Fitch鈥檚 notebooks, filled with their gorgeous banalities, and forges them into a graphic sprawl that belongs to no one of no gender. And yet, we read these confessional fragments with as much eagerness as we bring to the secrets of our best friend, or the stars, or our selves. This 鈥淚鈥 who speaks, who can never be known, lets language spin its own brilliant tales. 鈥淚鈥 or 鈥渨e鈥 are enraptured.
~ JULIE CARR
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Part day book, part accounting ledger compounded of morning into evening, part calendar of days removed from the A train and S-bahn, Andy Fitch and Amaranth Borsuk have unwritten most of their days, and thus outlined their lives, sometimes by crossing out, sometimes by adding a little cinnamon and cardamom to tomorrow, sometimes by simply not saying, 鈥渋t鈥檚 definitely going to rain.鈥
~ TAN LIN
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Amaranth Borsuk and Andy Fitch鈥檚 collaborative work, As We Know, is the daybook of a singularly personable fiction鈥攁 graduate student preoccupied by an unraveling dissertation, a Chaplinesque flaneur, a connoisseur of people and cats and 鈥淸s]emi-wild daisies looking breeze blown / as they wilt / and some / Floating / construction along water鈥檚 edge.鈥 Re-imagining memoir as a palimpsest of erasures, As We Know invents a new kind of Personism that, remarkably, feels more human, more intimate, and more buoyantly alive precisely because of its artful subtractions.
~ SRIKANTH REDDY
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Amaranth Borsuk鈥檚 and Andy Fitch鈥檚 As We Know is beautifully set adrift within the lines of a diary from April to June, cross-wired (10 AM-as-hingepoint) in three locations: New York, Home, and Berlin. Deftly keen, the language here moves within the realm of sensorium and sensation, open lines and strikeouts: a 鈥減latform smells like caramel. / This split / in my crotch is now comforting鈥︹ This brilliant collaboration in which 鈥淭he one who writes / doesn鈥檛 know any more than the other,鈥 proceeds with subtle cultural critique: 鈥淭he whole idea of being a hipster is just / showing yourself through signs.鈥 Meditating in a world of Whole Foods, Mom, black flats, books, old tennis rackets, and discarded computers, the 鈥渙ne who writes鈥 is compellingly reflective 鈥(as an American, I could beat up at least 10 European Kids / I鈥檝e never gotten / in a fight)鈥 throughout this arrestingly honest and poignant book.
~ RONALDO WILSON
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