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A review by 600bars
How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch
1.0
What a disappointment! This book has survived 2 of my hold shelf cullings smh. Because of the title I thought this was going to be more of a guide on how to live under a surveillance state, or at least how to stop being so concerned with putting yourself on display. I quickly realized it wasn’t that, but was going to be a meditation on the concept of invisibility. That would have been fine with me tbh. I love to chat about the politics of recognition. Everyone is anxious about being seen. Anyone remember that (annoying) period a few years ago where ppl were obsessed with saying “do not perceive me”?
I love a good meander and ponder on a concept, but this book was written just like my early undergrad papers where I was trying to get to the word count. Every chapter is basically the author listing art projects and personal or scientific anecdotes that aren’t even necessarily supporting an argument. She will have a paragraph describing a project, then another paragraph describing another art project, then a third describing a third, and it moves on paragraph after paragraph introducing a new reference without ever connecting it to the theme or topic. And because each item gets one paragraph, we barely get into what it means or what it’s doing because most of those words are used to describe the project/painting/item. Then at the end of the chapter she will have a paragraph that lists a couple of the works, (as if I can remember any of them bc by that point they’ve all glazed by), as if that’s a meaningful conclusion synthesizing all these works together.
It’s not that there even needs to be an argument. I thought of other books I’ve read recently that I enjoyed. The book of Eels blends memoir and science and art and history, with a clear structure. Every other chapter is a memoir about the author's personal history with eels, and then the alternate chapters discuss Eels in literature or eels in history or eel breeding techniques etc. It’s a well-organized way to talk about one thing, in this case eels, from every angle.
Busch attempted a structure like the one above, but all the anecdotes and examples in each chapter could’ve been placed anywhere and it would barely have mattered. Eels are a concrete thing, and invisibility is a slippery idea, so let me compare it to other works that explored a concept. 10:04 by Ben Lerner is technically fiction but we all know it isn’t really. That book is about the seemingly vague idea of “things being the same except totally different”. It wanders around the idea through experience, art, etc. I was fascinated and couldn’t stop thinking of examples. Drifts by Kate Zambreno (also technically fiction but again we all know) does something similar with the concepts of dailiness and solitude. So I’ve definitely read things that successfully blend anecdotes, art criticism, literary criticism, science facts.
It’s unfortunate because I would have loved to read something on the topic of invisibility, on turning away from the self and how our current age makes that difficult. Also, the title made me think there would be a prescriptive aspect to this book that was not present. I really wish I had abandoned it, because I recognized what was wrong pretty early but thought maybe it would get better but then it continued in the same fashion for the whole rest of the book.
I love a good meander and ponder on a concept, but this book was written just like my early undergrad papers where I was trying to get to the word count. Every chapter is basically the author listing art projects and personal or scientific anecdotes that aren’t even necessarily supporting an argument. She will have a paragraph describing a project, then another paragraph describing another art project, then a third describing a third, and it moves on paragraph after paragraph introducing a new reference without ever connecting it to the theme or topic. And because each item gets one paragraph, we barely get into what it means or what it’s doing because most of those words are used to describe the project/painting/item. Then at the end of the chapter she will have a paragraph that lists a couple of the works, (as if I can remember any of them bc by that point they’ve all glazed by), as if that’s a meaningful conclusion synthesizing all these works together.
It’s not that there even needs to be an argument. I thought of other books I’ve read recently that I enjoyed. The book of Eels blends memoir and science and art and history, with a clear structure. Every other chapter is a memoir about the author's personal history with eels, and then the alternate chapters discuss Eels in literature or eels in history or eel breeding techniques etc. It’s a well-organized way to talk about one thing, in this case eels, from every angle.
Busch attempted a structure like the one above, but all the anecdotes and examples in each chapter could’ve been placed anywhere and it would barely have mattered. Eels are a concrete thing, and invisibility is a slippery idea, so let me compare it to other works that explored a concept. 10:04 by Ben Lerner is technically fiction but we all know it isn’t really. That book is about the seemingly vague idea of “things being the same except totally different”. It wanders around the idea through experience, art, etc. I was fascinated and couldn’t stop thinking of examples. Drifts by Kate Zambreno (also technically fiction but again we all know) does something similar with the concepts of dailiness and solitude. So I’ve definitely read things that successfully blend anecdotes, art criticism, literary criticism, science facts.
It’s unfortunate because I would have loved to read something on the topic of invisibility, on turning away from the self and how our current age makes that difficult. Also, the title made me think there would be a prescriptive aspect to this book that was not present. I really wish I had abandoned it, because I recognized what was wrong pretty early but thought maybe it would get better but then it continued in the same fashion for the whole rest of the book.