Sentences - Philip Trussell

Sentences by Philip Trussell. Arranged by Bradley Ray King. Cuneiform Press 2019. An edition of three hundred copies.

'In 2012, he started writing discontinuous sentences as a daily practice. He soon began arranging them into sequences on postcards and mailing them out.'

A book of barbed aphorisms with something of the atmosphere of Kafka, Walser, Cioran, Ligotti, strange, sardonic, sometimes sharp, sometimes oblique. Each provides a jag, a jolt, one of those forks of lightning that eerily illumine a scene, so that for a moment it seems utterly other.

A pocket notebook in appearance, a slim volume, austerely designed with black covers and silver lettering. This discreet form is pleasing: it seems as if you are holding something clandestine, to consult when you need it, on train journeys, in waiting rooms, while out wandering, or in backstreet cafes. It is like a bible-black tract from some obscure sect, full of singular interpretations and prophecies. Chiselled flakes of obsidian.

MV