Stephanie Gray Reads Lisa Robertson's Cinema of the Present

At Jacket 2, Stephanie Gray introduces readers to Lisa Robertson's most "present" book: Cinema of the Present. Gray writes: "To “read” (or view?) this book is not unlike (thrillingly) “reading” a film." More:

Lisa Robertson’s epic, nothing-quite-like-it Cinema of the Present reads and screens like its title. I daresay it is a textual film. On paper. But moving. You often hear about “poetic” or “text-films” but on film. But what about the opposite? Films on paper. After you’re done reading it you will feel like you’ve just watched a film. The images will come back to haunt and unhaunt you over and over. You’ll remember and then you'll remember you just read a book, not a film. Robertson has written a majestic long-poem-film on paper that disrupts in real time our perception of the everyday — the subconscious thoughts, the thinking without thinking, the seeing without seeing — it’s all here, in intonating rhythm, making readers crack open the undercurrents of the seeming banality of normative life — and behold the wondrous thought-form journey to epiphany that Robertson takes us on.

To “read” (or view?) this book is not unlike (thrillingly) “reading” a film. It’s an astonishing feat — the book reads as a film that is always present, never past. You blink and the next line takes you to the next frame. A concrete, often surreal image appears and then a thought or feeling that you, the viewer, might have — in your subconscious — deduced from the image. Lines alternate between italics and normal type. [...]

Grab your popcorn and read on, at Jacket 2.