LRD
Grant Maierhofer
2024
LRD is the second in a trilogy of books of critifiction, exploring various unknowable musicians. The first, The Compleat Lungfish, was published by Apocalypse Party. LRD looks at Les Rallizes Dénudés, in recursive, elliptical fragments, occasionally intercut with ideas from philosophers and novelists and others, exploring the world the band enacted and their strange discography via a protagonist, named simply “Writer”. Inspired by writers like Ihab Hassan and Raymond Federman, these books attempt to explore and exhaust real things via layered, referential text fragments. The end result is a kind of commonplace book around a single subject, writing “at” the thing rather than writing biographically.
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"when Writer takes a new job, Writer likes to find out whom it is important to be nice to… Writer had these sweats in the early morning because overnight Writer dreamt of the forest, or Pascal… Writer sweated and Writer sweated and Writer stood in front of people and Writer stands there looking pathetic in his new job and miserable and Writer talks and if he’s had coffee then Writer sweats more but Writer talks more and so it’s easier… no no… Writer doesn’t like to watch the new films… no no… Writer is within an anxiety, an anxious state, a hole… this is correct for Writer, although his wife often suffers more from this and Writer worries about her… Writer is interested in anything that forces a person into a position of extremity… his relatives are nearly all in sympathy with him… Writer would get something to eat, or should… no no… this is tough, as he’s not sure what they mean by “health,” and he’s not sure what they mean by “friends”… David Bowie explored the fascists, in turn, or no… David Bowie did piles of cocaine and called Adolf Hitler one of the first rockstars… Writer is interested in anything that forces a person into a position of extremity… when people do him wrong, Writer feels he should pay them for it, just for doing him wrong and hopefully ruining things… it’s definitely tied with Writer’s present desire to quit writing, not because Writer doesn’t love writing, but because Writer feels as though Writer persists in trying, and persists in keeping pushing on, only to find himself in exactly the same place every moment of his living… it’s as if you’re there, and you’re feeling that the presence of potential death is so loud, that you feel as though you should jump just to complete this apparently logical action in such an absurd circumstance… not only does Writer do this once in a while, but most of the time, if not all of the time… no no… it’s stupid, so stupid…"
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ISBN 978-1-916541-02-3 // also via retailers including Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Blackwells, & Wordery // Pre-launch & Launch Video // excerpt on Propagule