Except for Breath: Reflections on Image and Memory
Published by Karavan Press.
To begin with the liturgy of death, here intoned in Latin: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis. To begin at the end. To begin with the deep blue marks of lividity blooming against pale skin.
Lucid and lyrical, Lucienne Bestall’s debut collection extends reflections on the seductions and limitations of language. With words and pictures borrowed from literature, contemporary art, art history, and mass media, Except for Breath asks after those experiences that elude simple description and turn instead to image and metaphor.
The collected essays appear an unlikely gathering – taking as their respective subjects death, disappointment, divine love, an unfamiliar city, the news, and headaches. Yet while each is discrete, together they share subtle affinities, their narratives shaped by memory’s imprecisions and dreams retold, by magical thinking and wishful thinking, and coincidence mistaken as sign.
Pairing art writing and life writing, Bestall’s limpid prose is delicately revealing of her subjective encounter with a shared repertoire of familiar texts and images.
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“In the prologue, as I noted, Bestall calls herself a ‘gleaner’. A ‘gleaner’ can refer to those who collect the scattered bits of produce leftover in the fields after harvest. Etymologically speaking, it’s suggested that ‘to glean’ comes from the Old Irish do-glinn, ‘to collect, gather’ and Celtic glan, ‘clean, pure’. This collection, as such, is not merely a work of pastiche. It is an attempt to glean through the harvest of one’s life, to gather the uncouth leftovers – the sticky, uncomfortable, hard-to-digest bits, like death and pain – and do one’s best to purify them.” – Keely Shinners for Full Stop
Purchase a copy here.
