BURN YOUR BELONGINGS
a novel by
DAVID HOENIGMAN
"Destined for cult status."
- Alex Martin, Outsider Writers Collective
ART: orginal images by Yasutoshi Yoshida
SOUND: original music by Yasutoshi Yoshida – LISTEN NOW"David Hoenigman's Burn Your Belongings is a dense narrative of choppy sentences that elude the human desire for story at almost every turn. When read aloud, mantralike, the thick walls of text take on the feel of religious chant, a prayer to weariness and sickness and anxiety. At other times, they flutter with moments of happiness and love, and feel exponentially more like real life than anything Hemingway or any naturalist ever put to paper. In the margins of each page is a different vibrant color collage by Yasutoshi Yoshida. ... The collages add another layer, another conversation, to the book."
- Paul Constant, book critic for The Stranger
Burn Your Belongings slowly, relentlessly builds the emotional ebb and flow of a love triangle over a period of months, perhaps years. Every fear, joy, doubt, hatred, desire and elation manifests through a litany of interior monologues - from the mundane to the profound and always beautifully lyrical. The accretion of imagery and often frighteningly stark examination of Self and Other create a transformational emotional experience. Hoenigman's brilliance is his ability to transfer language to the reader so that by novel's end, the feelings and observations of the characters become not their memories but the reader's own.
Three illustrated editions available
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DAVID HOENIGMAN was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, but has lived in Tokyo, Japan since 1998. He is the organizer of Tokyo’s bimonthly PAINT YOUR TEETH, a celebration of experimental music, literature and dance. Hoenigman regularly interviews avant-garde writers for the online journal, WORD RIOT. He is currently working on his second novel, Squeal For Joy, forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press.
MORE PRAISE FOR
BURN YOUR BELONGINGS
"A perfect rondel." –Terese Svoboda, author Black Glasses Like Clark Kent
"I like the obsessive quality of the writing and the way certain images or sentences seem to burst out of the background with a kind of eerie, insistent resonance. It's like the emotional equivalent of the sensation of a phantom limb"* –Dawn Raffel, author of Carrying the Body
"Hoenigman's terse, staccato prose is the language of consciousness, and his book not so much anti-narrative as true to the realities of one's inner sense-making, true to the convoluted and seemingly disparate tales we tell ourselves. In short, Burn Your Belongings is a well-crafted and adventurous book from what is undoubtedly a writer of great promise." – Gary J. Shipley, Word Riot
FINE ART LIMITED EDITION OF 10
A hand-carved, hand-painted 2-foot length of mako bamboo contains the text and images of Burn Your Belongings printed in color on a double scroll.
A hand-carved, hand-painted 2-foot (approx) length of mako bamboo contains the text and images of Burn Your Belongins printed in color on a double scroll. The effect is a beautiful art object that might have been made long ago by someone in a Japanese village. A matchbook bearing the book's title is fitted into a carved niche in the cork top. Hoenigman lives and works in Tokyo, the setting of Burn Your Belongings. Tokyo artist, Yasutoshi Yoshida, is a renowned Harsh Noise musician and record producer whose collage influences stem primarily from art brut. The book’s narrative exemplifies the intersection of old and new that still exists in Japanese culture, as well as the role of the American outsider situated in the insider world of Tokyo; thus the design of inside vs. outside. Moreover, to read the scroll one must “pile” the pages in a flowing heap, just as the author’s innovative narrative lyrically piles sentence upon sentence upon sentence to create not so much an obvious plot but rather a flowing experience so intense that it feels as much physical as intellectual. The intent is also to emphasize the delicacy of language – its mutability and potential dissolution – by printing the text and art on Japanese sumi paper. Approximate size: 2' (height) x 7" (diameter). Scroll approx. 190 feet long.PRICE: $8500.00 Because our limited edition fine art books are handcrafted, each will vary slightly. Special order only. Allow 8-10 weeks. Email us to order now.Or buy now through Paypal. (We are a Verified Seller)