Susan Finlay
OBJEKTOPHILIA, 2020
Design classics, the
dates of which ranged from the beginnings of the previous century to the start
of the current one, were scattered throughout the room, their very definite
shapes offset against the off-white, off-modern walls. I allowed my gaze to
flit from one piece of furniture to the next, and as I mentally joined the dots
between them I unwittingly re-wrote their history according to thematic as
opposed to chronological concerns. I wondered if perhaps I were simply seeing
my own flat ‘in the expanded field’, each element repositioned by some new and
typically rabid curator eager to facilitate the production of their own dense
texts...
Part metafiction, part
design criticism, with a touch of armchair psychoanalysis, Objektophiliabegins in London in 2014, where a nameless design critic and her partner X
reside in a decrepit but Grade II listed tower block. It ends some months later
among the fin de siècle wonders of Vienna in an echo of the successive
encounters of Schnitzler’s La Ronde. Possessed by the ruins of social
housing and its accompanying ideologies, but nonetheless in possession of those
ruins’ original brushed-steel light-fittings, the critic soon discovers that
her craving for these and similarly ‘undemanding things’ has usurped her more
conventional—or fleshly—desires.
‘Susan Finlay’s deft, subtle
work examines the psychic texture of life through our relation to things...
objects of all kinds, from Filet-O-Fish sandwiches to high art, Le Creuset
cookware, bicycle baskets and purpose-built, modern flats. Objektophiliais witty and brisk and devastating all at the same time.’
–> Chris Kraus
Susan Finlay is a writer and
artist. She is the author of three poetry pamphets: Indole, 2019, The
Unruly Glove, the Green Bum and the Sickly Trickle (2018), and Sex and
the City 2 (2017), and two previous novels: Our Lady of Everything(Serpent’s Tail, 2019), and Arriviste (Five Lines in the Sand,
2007). Most (but not all) of her work relates to psychoanalysis, magic,
and the decorative arts. She lives in |the UK and Berlin.
Read an interview with Susan Finlay in Minor Literatures.
We are delighted to be mentioned in an interview with Amina Cain in the Paris Review. Amina Cain has also written a review in the TLS, 15 May, 2020.
236 pages
120 mm x 190 mm,
80 mm cover flaps
Format: Paperback
ISBN 9 78-1-910055-65-6
£15.00
Next Book ->
120 mm x 190 mm,
80 mm cover flaps
Format: Paperback
ISBN 9 78-1-910055-65-6
£15.00
Next Book ->
]