Greg Bem reviews Allison Cardon's What was the sign you gave (a selection) (2018)

Our pal Greg Bem was good enough to provide the first review for Allison Cardon's What was the sign you gave (a selection) (2018) at Goodreads. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

This book, which pulls language and ideas from works by Hannah Arendt, Roland Barthes, and The Saint Joan of Arc Center, is a book of questions. It is spacey and subtle in its writing, but dense and driven in its curiosities. The dis-assemblage of the found text and found ideas by way of an almost cautious pace results in a dimming of the original ideas, either intentional or not. This dimming results, fascinatingly, in a barrier towards access and evolution of those original ideas and while the potential profound core is brilliant, the motivations are uncertain enough to be offputting and stressful.