Voices Kyle Muntz 9780981011714 Books
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Taking place in a kind of "internal space," populated by living ideas, Voices utilizes broken typography within the context of an equally broken narrative to examine an existence in which identity and self have become, themselves, imaginary, but have allowed human thought and feeling to reshape the very nature of perceptual reality. Language is given a new, unfamiliar shape complete freedom to explore the framework of an intricate semiotic landscape.
Voices Kyle Muntz 9780981011714 Books
I need to state at the outset that I don't read much experimental fiction, so it was at first difficult to pull away the lens of more traditional plot and character structures when reading Kyle Muntz's poetical prose novel Voices. But once I'd accomplished this, there is SO much to admire in this book.For starters, Muntz is a hell of a good writer.
The prose is electric, vibrant, thrumming with vitality and interest. The theme of "voices" runs throughout the work -- voices in the narrator's head, voices in your head as you read and the phonation of Muntz's poetry in prose form. The story, as much as I can speak of it, follows a narrator who is strangely absent. He is a poet, a would-be wanton, and a wanderer in a surreal city-scape with his friends.
The narrator's voice is consistent, but as I say, it is almost as though the brilliant observations and music of his language is his only way to maintain his existence. Without it he would simply vanish into the singularity that is his soul.
Muntz's work is intense. It's clearly designed by a great intellect, which is why I found it so strange to have such an emotional reaction. The text can vary wildly, from incredibly vivid scenes of beauty to images that are filled with existential horror, particularly whenever he visits his friend Jacob. It seemed to me that some of the best scenes were of intimate encounters like this one:
"We kissed
on the veranda. It was her arms and mine, sanctified: soft smooth skin, running hands down her back running them up. The night didn't call to us, because the night couldn't call, but we were there and we were really there. She tasted like something that wasn't moonlight. Scent and oranges, color, ellipsoid racing, we kissed. It started to rain. She didn't pull away. The rain matted her hair to us, a fall of water. We kissed. Her essence and the rain, gorgeous,
she didn't
pull away."
Now, I have an intimation of another way that "voices" influences this story, but I won't share it here and spoil the chance for you to find it yourself.
So if you're into beautiful writing, and not afraid to stretch your understanding of narrative, you should definitely give this a go.
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Tags : Voices [Kyle Muntz] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Taking place in a kind of internal space, populated by living ideas, Voices utilizes broken typography within the context of an equally broken narrative to examine an existence in which identity and self have become,Kyle Muntz,Voices,Enigmatic Ink,0981011713,Fiction - General,Fiction Visionary & Metaphysical,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Visionary & Metaphysical
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Voices Kyle Muntz 9780981011714 Books Reviews
Voices by Kyle Muntz is special, not just for being his first book, but as an early glimpse at a writer I’ve come to really enjoy. I’m about halfway through, and so far, it reads like a conversation, a multifaceted, complex, yet emotionally rife exploration of philosophy and love. “‘If you were a metaphysical object, where would you be hiding?’” Muntz’s narrator poses. How about within the pages of Voices, or better yet, a dialogue, an ontological conundrum wrapped up in poetry. The book is a mix of prose that takes lyrical stabs at the random staccatos of communication in its unique forms.
I have come away from Voices not with a plot in my head, a story isolated into a beginning and ending, separate from me, but a world that stuck to my skin while reading it in a leisurely fashion, immersing myself in it while immersing myself in water, and it feels as if now, I am always taking a bath in a fluid world I have been given permission to luxuriate within.
It is a phantom world, lacking any solid foundation, no one objective hardened way of looking at it possible, but there is only describing it in the various voices not only of those who populate it, but various voices even in each individual's head. One splash, and it will fly out of the open ended contours.
The narrator easily slips out of the rules of society, not always kindly or considerately. I think, now, I have some glimpse into what it was like to be those unseen people who broke my family's mailboxes night after night for years. Yet he is charmingly romantic in a lit up, ethereal way that makes him lovable in spite of being enigmatically pathological.
The characters' surroundings, and encounters seem like dreamlike symbols of what is inside them, coming out in ways that we are never fully privy to in any kind of analysis, proof, or logistics. We float in the world, and it floats in us, and the characters flow around our edges, and if we open our mouths, they flow into our voices, and out through our words.
Reading Kyle Muntz's book, our own voices in our heads are given the chance to be poetic, to feel it's OK to see the world so beautifully. And though the romantic notions of the narrator are overblown and get carried away with turning a girl into an explosion of light and heaven, they are also undercut with dry sophistication, with self-mockery of youthfulness, so they become OK to enjoy. It's wonderful to be able to follow the flights of ecstatic appreciation for sensuality and see the folly of it at the same time, but not have to judge it and throw it away as an example of niavete. Yes, it is, but it knows it, and the knowledge isn't cloying or harsh, but liberatingly subtle.
To keep that delicate balance is genius. And the language throughout the whole book is so sensual, so beautiful, we can have our own overblown ecstasies of appreciation for it, in turn. Reading it is like adding all the most full bodied flower essences to the tub, like Ylang Ylang, and Jasmine.
As if we are splashing the water, and letting it run in different directions at once, the narrative order, sentence structure, and even the integrity of the narrator's personality go in different directions, splitting and coming together at unexpected angles. Anything goes, and nothing holds the words in place, each new paragraph being something Muntz approaches freshly, not plodding along with predictable narrative, but with the tantalizing sense of What Next?.
Like water, the prose takes the shape of its container, so if describing a flower, it is shaped like a rose, and if describing something with two feet, the words form the shape of a two footed thing. I used this aspect of Voices to inspire my students in Advanced Experimental Fiction Writing class, because I am introducing them to some of the absolute best writing out there, with Kyle Muntz right in there with Julio Cortazar. The innovations with patterns of words on the page mixed with startlingly glowing writing sentence after sentence, relentlessly stimulating excitement makes reading this a transcendental experience of moving out of any mundane default way of moving along in an expected fashion. Each word is present, brilliant, and moving. Each image, concept, narrative move, is a revelation.
The motifs of Voices are cerebral, intellectually rich, but the experience is never stuck in the head, but always submerging the whole body in warmth of imagery and life force. Readers who like Haruki Murakami, Borges, Pynchon, Joyce, Barthelme, Barth won't be disappointed by this book, young as the author is. Enigmatic Ink made a great choice with daring to publish Kyle Muntz.
I like experimental fiction, but this wasn't my thing. In fact, it absolutely got on my nerves. The sentences are all very short and percussive, which is fine in doses, but it felt like Chinese water torture to me after very little time. I can see what the author is trying to do, and not to sound patronizing (at all), but it's a lot like how I used to want to write when I started writing. There is nothing to cling to besides one very manic and repetitive first person character, lost in a swirling volatile world. The most prevailing feeling I get through the whole thing is this the writing is very "free" and "e x p e r i m e n t a l", but there is no substance. Maybe that's the point, but I personally need substance.
I need to state at the outset that I don't read much experimental fiction, so it was at first difficult to pull away the lens of more traditional plot and character structures when reading Kyle Muntz's poetical prose novel Voices. But once I'd accomplished this, there is SO much to admire in this book.
For starters, Muntz is a hell of a good writer.
The prose is electric, vibrant, thrumming with vitality and interest. The theme of "voices" runs throughout the work -- voices in the narrator's head, voices in your head as you read and the phonation of Muntz's poetry in prose form. The story, as much as I can speak of it, follows a narrator who is strangely absent. He is a poet, a would-be wanton, and a wanderer in a surreal city-scape with his friends.
The narrator's voice is consistent, but as I say, it is almost as though the brilliant observations and music of his language is his only way to maintain his existence. Without it he would simply vanish into the singularity that is his soul.
Muntz's work is intense. It's clearly designed by a great intellect, which is why I found it so strange to have such an emotional reaction. The text can vary wildly, from incredibly vivid scenes of beauty to images that are filled with existential horror, particularly whenever he visits his friend Jacob. It seemed to me that some of the best scenes were of intimate encounters like this one
"We kissed
on the veranda. It was her arms and mine, sanctified soft smooth skin, running hands down her back running them up. The night didn't call to us, because the night couldn't call, but we were there and we were really there. She tasted like something that wasn't moonlight. Scent and oranges, color, ellipsoid racing, we kissed. It started to rain. She didn't pull away. The rain matted her hair to us, a fall of water. We kissed. Her essence and the rain, gorgeous,
she didn't
pull away."
Now, I have an intimation of another way that "voices" influences this story, but I won't share it here and spoil the chance for you to find it yourself.
So if you're into beautiful writing, and not afraid to stretch your understanding of narrative, you should definitely give this a go.
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