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So Beautiful and Elastic
"Gary J. Shipley's So Beautiful and Elastic entwines elegant prose, blistering suspense, and art criticism, all shot through with a dark secret. Exploring creators as diverse as René Magritte, Clarice Lispector, David Lynch, Dennis Cooper, Bruno Dumont, and Gary Indiana, Shipley claims his spot as a singular disciple of this genealogy of experimental art. Ann's voice will stay with you long after you exit her mind's haunted house—you won't even realize its cursed magic until it has already swallowed you whole."
—Claire Donato, author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts "Recalling Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women and Hadean in its academic waste, this miserabilist's trance of "fed-on thinas" dons a destructive getup. Cogitating on the "ignominy of actually having to exist." toxicity is king and identity gets tricked-up, looted from philosophy, film, art, plus porn. The metamuck of the erudite sex worker. The punk muck of the abused stray. The gothic muck of the terrible secret from the terrible past. Shipley's anti-heroine thinks, thinks, thinks her way into and outta existence. So Beautiful and Elastic is a visceral and psychological portrait of disguise. If Wuornos were on a spree with Cioran; if their stops were mapped by Magritte; if the map was an appointment for Die Familie Schneider ."
—Kim Gek Lin Short, author of China Cowboy "This brutal book is one of the best-worst nightmares l've ever had—as if Kathy Acker had written a movie novelization of a grimy true crime documentary and then studded it with exactly the kind of art-historical and countercultural references I love. Or as if Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous had an evil twin."
—Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence
—Claire Donato, author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts "Recalling Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women and Hadean in its academic waste, this miserabilist's trance of "fed-on thinas" dons a destructive getup. Cogitating on the "ignominy of actually having to exist." toxicity is king and identity gets tricked-up, looted from philosophy, film, art, plus porn. The metamuck of the erudite sex worker. The punk muck of the abused stray. The gothic muck of the terrible secret from the terrible past. Shipley's anti-heroine thinks, thinks, thinks her way into and outta existence. So Beautiful and Elastic is a visceral and psychological portrait of disguise. If Wuornos were on a spree with Cioran; if their stops were mapped by Magritte; if the map was an appointment for Die Familie Schneider ."
—Kim Gek Lin Short, author of China Cowboy "This brutal book is one of the best-worst nightmares l've ever had—as if Kathy Acker had written a movie novelization of a grimy true crime documentary and then studded it with exactly the kind of art-historical and countercultural references I love. Or as if Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous had an evil twin."
—Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence
218 pages, Paperback
First published August 8, 2023
About the author
Gary J. Shipley
47 books154 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Gary J. Shipley is a writer and philosopher based in the UK. He has published work in various philosophy journals and literary journals.
Gary J. Shipley is a writer and philosopher based in the UK. He has published work in various philosophy journals and literary journals.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 8, 2024
Amazing. RTC.
August 9, 2024
Wandering the ruins of haunted house memories is always fascinating when written well. SBaE was only my second book by Shipley. I was immersed and craved to learn more about Ann. Her ferocity, detachment and tangled mind were fascinating to excavate. The ending was a surprising payoff. I loved SBaE. I think I've become a fangirl.
August 11, 2024
I resented the implication that I should grow out of pessimism. I took it to mean I should grow out of truth.Ekphrasis as narratorial survival mode. A singular defining event recapitulates as persistent identity. An(n’s) early decision made precipitates future decision avoidance. Canvases stacked in corners of the infinite rooms comprising the mind as house. So many rooms in this house. You wander through and pick up the paintings, reflect on how art ‘consumes its own vomit only in order to be sick again’. A fitting metaphor for your own experience. Mind as house pictured next to actual house. Seems identical from outside, but within the walls the details bleed through the faded wallpaper. The blood in your mouth. The secret in the wardrobe. The knife in your bag. Missing eyes and missing dick. Memories do dissemble. But suppose you did make real the unspeakable, and it scraped you out fully. Now you are a cut-out, a shadow. A vessel to be filled by anyone given the chance. They think you are there. But you are not there. You are nowhere. So you consider the possibility of repeating a prelude to becoming. Crouching in a kind of perch on the precipice of being. Maybe this is penance for what you took from her. Maybe it is enough for some semblance of an existence.
I’ll live like nobody has ever been able to live: as the outside of something with no inside, the skin of a ghost, the bright green lustre of an endlessly repainted apple.
August 22, 2024
Shades of Heather Lewis' Notice as channelled through an exquisitely subtle lattice of theory and narrative. Compulsively structured, elegantly written, and totally unforgiving in its implication of the reader. Shipley poses the question of reality in a wholly unique way and pursues its logic to strange and unnerving extremes.
March 2, 2024
The precision of Shipley's prose astounds me. This book could almost be a popular true crime novel; it's got the salacious content, easy reading, and suspenseful plot that folks who love trash (hey, I've read and watched my share) will eat up. It's different from his previous books on the surface, appearing less experimental if you're not paying too much attention. I'm fascinated with the accuracy with which Shipley portrays a disassociating or compartmentalized mind and how he crunches time and cuts his scenes to communicate gaps in the brain/story here. Then there's the strange twinning of art history and pop-culture serial-killer lore delivered with (mostly) flat affect by a protagonist whose personality is the central mystery of the book, more so than the mystery of the events that go down. And events do go down. The narrative really kicks. But what the book seems to really be exploring is the ephemeral nature of consciousness and the unreliability of thought by breaking down their components and presenting us with a slide show of how we construct personality or being. Even with this more emotional narrator than I've encountered in his writing before, Shipley's prose a nearly clinical experience. Maybe he's keeping a brain in a jar and slicing it up for us, one book at a time. I hope so. I can't wait for more.
August 31, 2024
Shipley does literary fiction with delirious results. That he could be the most popular genre practitioner of our generation and chooses not to be is why he remains my GOAT.
May 26, 2024
Exquisitely well-written. My favorite Shipley, with a perfect combination of narrative and theory/philosophy, fused into a genuinely phenomenal narrative voice. A highlight of my 2024 reading.
September 20, 2023
An amazing turning point in Shipley's work, and his most accomplished novel to date.
A masterpiece from a protean author whose talent knows no boundaries.
A gut wrenching downward spiral.
A masterpiece from a protean author whose talent knows no boundaries.
A gut wrenching downward spiral.
August 21, 2023
This is a very different type of novel than anything else I’ve read from Shipley. An incredible writer to be certain. A novel about disguises that is written in a stylistic disguise.
April 28, 2024
One of the most interesting novels I've read. Hard to describe, but probably will be one of my favorite reads of this year.
August 29, 2024
With absolutely no real similarities to any other book or writer I’ve read (maybe Heather Lewis, but not really? Maybe Dennis Cooper, if you stretch?), So Beautiful And Elastic feels like a completely original moment. The ending legitimately shocked me, and I can’t remember the last time a book shocked me. Shipley’s fast becoming one of my favorites going right now.
May 1, 2024
A novel centered on a dissociative character obsessed with some arcane personal meaning in the alienating unreality of Magritte's paintings.
While rather abrupt and out-of-left-field, I can't say that Ann's actual damage was anything I'd come up with over the course of reading the book. So props to Shipley for subverting my expectations to such a bizarre degree.
While rather abrupt and out-of-left-field, I can't say that Ann's actual damage was anything I'd come up with over the course of reading the book. So props to Shipley for subverting my expectations to such a bizarre degree.
July 17, 2024
So Beautiful and Elastic belongs to the category of books which only reveal their true story, or what’s really happening, after the ending. Only after reading from cover to cover, actions by the protagonist and conversations with characters are seen in another, better light. Suddenly, all the events flash by through memory, while hindsight opens the reader’s eyes wider and wider. All these terrifying inner monologues of this traumatised woman on the streets gain yet another level of meaning. With short chapters and a rapid flow, Shipley creates a grim diary of a former academic working as a prostitute in a sinister urban environment.
Expected a beach read with lofty observations on art and youth.
Got a blood-soaked psychological thriller with new perspectives on René Magritte’s paintings and life.
Expected a beach read with lofty observations on art and youth.
Got a blood-soaked psychological thriller with new perspectives on René Magritte’s paintings and life.
June 6, 2024
This is now my all time favorite book. A masterpiece.
March 29, 2024
“The language of despair always sounds fresh. Even when all it does is repeat the same old things…”
My God, this book.
Gary Shipley’s So Beautiful and Elastic is a one-woman tour-de-force of unreliable narration delivered with such bitter conviction that you can’t help but start to believe it. Its seething antiheroine, Ann, a runaway-turned-hooker-turned-sex-trafficking-victim-turned-art-student, is an unflinching portrait of radicalized nihilism in the tradition of Steppenwolf, Nausea, and Journey to the End of the Night. Indeed, if it weren’t for the occasional reference to cell phone usage – or Shipley’s usual raft of bleak film references (shouts to Bruno Dumont) – one could be forgiven for misplacing Ann to the European gutters of yore. There’s something classical about her urchindom – her refusal to see herself as a martyr, even as she burns everything around her to the ground. "I cannot be a martyr” she insists, “when there's no such thing as a cause."
Through her loathing for her dying (possibly abusive) father, her casual disdain for her kind but privileged lover Djuna, her devastating encounters with various johns, and above all, her ecstatic, ekphrastic love for the work of Rene Magritte, Shipley shows how Ann has carefully built herself a house of cards dealt from mostly lousy hands (and how the poisoned well of her own mind might well be the one dealing her dirty from the start). Somehow both painfully self-aware, and wholly dissociated, she has more brilliantly brutal lines in this book than I dared to underline – sentiments of metastatic pessimism so crystallized that they almost find their way back around to a kind of comfort – the dark truths that have become both her armor, and her cage. These are the certainties she lives on. Survives on. Feeds on. The living bird she eats again and again, every day. Very occasionally, something breaks through her dark cloud, and for a brief moment, she knows she could stop. Maybe even knows she should. But just as quickly, she rejects the possibility, certain that it could only lead her to further ruin. "It's only when the integrity of the trance gets compromised that things go wrong, that time is felt, that the world is seen, that the work of being alive begins."
My God, this book.
Gary Shipley’s So Beautiful and Elastic is a one-woman tour-de-force of unreliable narration delivered with such bitter conviction that you can’t help but start to believe it. Its seething antiheroine, Ann, a runaway-turned-hooker-turned-sex-trafficking-victim-turned-art-student, is an unflinching portrait of radicalized nihilism in the tradition of Steppenwolf, Nausea, and Journey to the End of the Night. Indeed, if it weren’t for the occasional reference to cell phone usage – or Shipley’s usual raft of bleak film references (shouts to Bruno Dumont) – one could be forgiven for misplacing Ann to the European gutters of yore. There’s something classical about her urchindom – her refusal to see herself as a martyr, even as she burns everything around her to the ground. "I cannot be a martyr” she insists, “when there's no such thing as a cause."
Through her loathing for her dying (possibly abusive) father, her casual disdain for her kind but privileged lover Djuna, her devastating encounters with various johns, and above all, her ecstatic, ekphrastic love for the work of Rene Magritte, Shipley shows how Ann has carefully built herself a house of cards dealt from mostly lousy hands (and how the poisoned well of her own mind might well be the one dealing her dirty from the start). Somehow both painfully self-aware, and wholly dissociated, she has more brilliantly brutal lines in this book than I dared to underline – sentiments of metastatic pessimism so crystallized that they almost find their way back around to a kind of comfort – the dark truths that have become both her armor, and her cage. These are the certainties she lives on. Survives on. Feeds on. The living bird she eats again and again, every day. Very occasionally, something breaks through her dark cloud, and for a brief moment, she knows she could stop. Maybe even knows she should. But just as quickly, she rejects the possibility, certain that it could only lead her to further ruin. "It's only when the integrity of the trance gets compromised that things go wrong, that time is felt, that the world is seen, that the work of being alive begins."
August 27, 2024
I feel like this book would be brilliant if it was written by a woman. I just found so much of it great- the writing, mostly, and the twist, and Shipley's ability to create such a deeply unlikable protagonist- but there's something so distinctly "woman written by a man" about this, and I don't mean in the "her breasts bounced boobily" or whatever the fuck sense, I meant more in a well-meaning, "I'm trying my hardest" sense. I just think Shipley needed more practice writing the female voice before tackling a character like Ann. Stylistically, he reminds me very strongly of Frisk-Try-Guide-era Dennis Cooper which is probably why I liked his writing as much as I did (Dennis Cooper, it should be noted, tends to stay the fuck away from anything even remotely to do with the female perspective and honestly I respect that about him, man knows his limitations).
Then again all the blurbs on the back are written by women, so it could just be a me problem, but I think it's really clear if you pick up something by Dodie Bellamy or Kathy Acker, who write that sort of woman-on-the-verge, unhinged woman protagonist that Shipley is trying to get at and contrast the two. There's no way, for instance, a man could have written The Letters of Mina Harker.
I'm also going to take a moment and say that I don't care about cinema and I wish the books I liked would stop trying to rhapsodize to me about cinema but that's 100% a me problem but I'm also just saying that it's very difficult in general for me to see the title "Eraserhead" and have my brain not instinctively power off as a defensive mechanism against filmbros. I like Twin Peaks, it's my favorite show, I don't care about David Lynch beyond that.
This all sounds like I hate it but in truth I am probably going to read a lot of other things Gary J Shipley writes because I love the writing style that much and he managed to create compelling enough characters that he's sufficiently proven that, as an author, he can check all or at least most of my mental boxes. I just think this book had some problems with its narrative voice, but that's okay. I'll probably end up picking up Terminal Park some time in October depending on how bad my mental state is.
Then again all the blurbs on the back are written by women, so it could just be a me problem, but I think it's really clear if you pick up something by Dodie Bellamy or Kathy Acker, who write that sort of woman-on-the-verge, unhinged woman protagonist that Shipley is trying to get at and contrast the two. There's no way, for instance, a man could have written The Letters of Mina Harker.
I'm also going to take a moment and say that I don't care about cinema and I wish the books I liked would stop trying to rhapsodize to me about cinema but that's 100% a me problem but I'm also just saying that it's very difficult in general for me to see the title "Eraserhead" and have my brain not instinctively power off as a defensive mechanism against filmbros. I like Twin Peaks, it's my favorite show, I don't care about David Lynch beyond that.
This all sounds like I hate it but in truth I am probably going to read a lot of other things Gary J Shipley writes because I love the writing style that much and he managed to create compelling enough characters that he's sufficiently proven that, as an author, he can check all or at least most of my mental boxes. I just think this book had some problems with its narrative voice, but that's okay. I'll probably end up picking up Terminal Park some time in October depending on how bad my mental state is.
June 5, 2024
like reading a fever dream of someone lost in a painting/lost in general, who were they?
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September 29, 20242 stars
former child sex worker returns to the nest she flew when she was 15.
trigger warnings for pedophilia, statutory rape and Neonaticide.
former child sex worker returns to the nest she flew when she was 15.
trigger warnings for pedophilia, statutory rape and Neonaticide.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews