Sean Ashton
Living In A Land, 2017
ProProduced Living in a Land is a novel written almost entirely in the negative,
consisting mainly of things the narrator has never done, no longer does or will
never do. Given that what he has not done is more diverse than what he has,
there is much ground to cover, and he approaches the task with arguably greater
zeal than a conventional diarist. A study of the conceivable versus the actual,
the personal versus the universal,
idiocy versus logic, black versus white, circles versus squares, renting versus buying, Living in a Land is
a chronicle of a mind fighting its own oppositional nature, a portrait of a
hypothetical man.
‘Sean Ashton’s Living in a Land takes the old adage that we could define ourselves by what we are not for a new ride. Each sentence of the novel offers personal and social insights through the negative—a concept that allows Ashton to flood us with Proustian details and a dizzying imagination of unexpected confessions: “I have never stinted on the garlic, or gone too far on the nutmeg…” Readers will feel invited, even compelled, to respond: Me too! Never!’
–> Robert Fitterman
‘Buy this book rather than anything else. It’s just the funniest, most enjoyable and oddest read I’ve had in years.’
–> Darian Leader
‘Like Christine Brooke-Rose or Georges Perec, Ashton works within his self-imposed limits with energy, wit, and inventiveness; Living in a Land […] provides an implicit diagnosis of both the proliferation and constriction of possibilities in the way we live now, facing a profusion of lifestyle choices which are in fact closely circumscribed and which never touch the real.’
–>Nicolas Tredell
Sean Ashton writes fiction, criticism, and poetry. As a poet, he adopts lyric personae rather than converting his own ‘true’ experiences into verse. He is interested in how the formal nature of composition produces an alternate rather than authentic self, while still insisting on the egotism that inheres in the term ‘poet’. Living in a Land is his second novel.
The third edition was published on the occasion of
The Mutes exhibition by Lina Lapelytè at Lafayette Anticipations from 23 June to 24 July 2022
Produced in collaboration with Fondation Galerie Lafayette
‘Sean Ashton’s Living in a Land takes the old adage that we could define ourselves by what we are not for a new ride. Each sentence of the novel offers personal and social insights through the negative—a concept that allows Ashton to flood us with Proustian details and a dizzying imagination of unexpected confessions: “I have never stinted on the garlic, or gone too far on the nutmeg…” Readers will feel invited, even compelled, to respond: Me too! Never!’
–> Robert Fitterman
‘Buy this book rather than anything else. It’s just the funniest, most enjoyable and oddest read I’ve had in years.’
–> Darian Leader
‘Like Christine Brooke-Rose or Georges Perec, Ashton works within his self-imposed limits with energy, wit, and inventiveness; Living in a Land […] provides an implicit diagnosis of both the proliferation and constriction of possibilities in the way we live now, facing a profusion of lifestyle choices which are in fact closely circumscribed and which never touch the real.’
–>Nicolas Tredell
Sean Ashton writes fiction, criticism, and poetry. As a poet, he adopts lyric personae rather than converting his own ‘true’ experiences into verse. He is interested in how the formal nature of composition produces an alternate rather than authentic self, while still insisting on the egotism that inheres in the term ‘poet’. Living in a Land is his second novel.
The third edition was published on the occasion of
The Mutes exhibition by Lina Lapelytè at Lafayette Anticipations from 23 June to 24 July 2022
Produced in collaboration with Fondation Galerie Lafayette