Hipflasks – serie

“Very ready we are to say of a book, ‘How good it is – that’s exactly what I think!’ But the right feeling is, ‘What the hell did I just read?’”— John RuskinWhy a book of misquotations? Because what’s captured in such a book is the jittery, jumbled essence of truth: that wisdom and edict alike are constantly customised, iterated, adjusted. Nothing stays the same. Say It Again gathers the sage words of philosophers, statesmen, artists and authors alongside proverbs, sayings and scripture – all distorted with varying degrees of deliberation. Some are stitched into poems (or something like poems) while others speak to the present in bizarre new ways. Whether or not they retain their former authority, or the power to lower the reader into the deep well of human experience, these refigured fragments are evidence that everything we know may be shaken, like the grains in a kaleidoscope.

“Nobody is going to buy the book if I say nice things about you, Werner.”— Klaus Kinski to Werner HerzogWhat are the things you can’t live with or without? What can we expect from relationships that refuse to resolve themselves one way or the other? You Again collects together accounts of ruinous tension and blighted passion, mixing extracts and cut-ups from famous works with fresh slivers of contemporary writing. There’s romance, of course – but other kinds of entanglement as well, all awash with delight and frustration, rage and joy, hope and perplexity.