Asemic: The Art of Writing by Peter Schwenger

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This book has been out since the end of 2019, but I thought I should do a blog post on it here because Peter was kind enough to write a chapter on my asemic writing. 

ASEMIC: The Art of Writing
By Peter Schwenger

University of Minnesota Press | 192 pages | December 2019
ISBN 978-1-5179-0697-9 | paper | $25.00
ISBN 978-1-5179-0696-2 |  cloth | $100.00

In recent years, asemic writing—writing without language—has exploded in popularity, with anthologies, a large-scale art exhibition, and flourishing interest on sites like tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. Asemic is the first critical study of this fascinating field, proposing new ways of rethinking the nature of writing and exploring how asemic writing has evolved and gained importance today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Peter Schwenger is resident fellow at the University of Western Ontario’s Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism. He is the author of several books, including The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects and At the Borders of Sleep: On Liminal Literature (both from Minnesota).

Click On The Links To Buy Asemic: The Art of Writing

PRAISE FOR ASEMIC:

How does the noncommunicative communicate? This is the seemingly innocent question Peter Schwenger unpacks. At once storehouse and treatise, Asemic has the clarity of a dictionary entry, its sagacity delivered with deceptive ease, revealing a domain vaster than anyone would have thought: a Copernican marvel.

—

 Jed Rasula, author of History of a Shiver: The Sublime Impudence of Modernism

Asemic is a long-overdue study of poetries that occupy liminal spaces between art, like Cy Twombly's paintings, and recognizable words, like Henri Michaux's poetry. Peter Schwenger offers an extended theory and an introductory survey of contemporary asemic writing by Michael Jacobson, Rosaire Appel, Christopher Skinner, and others. From this book one can learn to read and, by extension, teach asemiological texts.

—

 Craig Saper, co-editor of Readies for Bob Brown's Machine

This is the first full-length exploration of the history and meaning of asemic writing. Important figures such as Michaux, Twombly, Barthes, Jim Leftwich, and Rosaire Appel are included, as well as examples from Chinese culture. Well-chosen illustrations accompany Peter Schwenger's insightful text. This book is a solid first map of a territory previously unknown to academic study.

—

 Tim Gaze, publisher of Asemic magazine


What emerges in Schwenger’s book is an aesthetics of language, and of reading in par- ticular, that draws attention to how asemic writing lets us dive into the untapped possibilities of incomprehension.

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 Literary Review of Canada

The Art of Writing,Peter Schwenger’s engaging and groundbreaking book focused on the asemic as a cultural phenomenon and ratified genre of modern and contemporary art.

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 Art in America

Peter Schwenger offers a history of the practice, linking modern era pioneers like Barthes, Henri Michaux, and Cy Twombly to lesser-known contemporary practitioners Michael Jacobson, Rosaire Appel, and Christopher Skinner. Pulling examples of asemic writing from a diversity of fields—across contemporary art, comics, notation, and even nature—he demonstrates poet Michael Jacobson’s fitting definition of his field: “Without words, asemic writing is able to relate to all words, colors, and even music, irrespective of the author or the reader’s original language.”

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 The Brooklyn Rail

Peter Schwenger offers the first book-length academic study of this vibrant field; it is an important and valuable start to the formal study of asemic writing.

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 Rain Taxi Review of Books


For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book's webpage:



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