There are several events upcoming next month to celebrate Brian Dillon’s new book from NYRB, Affinities: On Art and Fascination, which forms a trilogy of sorts with his Essayism and Suppose a Sentence. Read on for event information and quotes from recent reviews of Affinities in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and Vulture.
Events with Brian Dillon for Affinities
Tuesday, May 9, at 7pm ET
e-flux
with Elvia Wilk
Register here
Thursday, May 11, at 7pm ET
East City Bookshop
with Kyle Chayka
Register here
Saturday, May 13
P&T Knitwear (sponsored by The Yale Review)
with Sam Huber
Register here
Recent reviews of Affinities
“One might say . . . that Dillon makes of criticism an artistic practice. . . . Many of the pieces . . . are notably brief, strange, enticing aperçus that illuminate the juncture of science, art and philosophy. It’s as if, with these shorter pieces, Dillon were directing our gaze to particular constellations in the night sky, alerting us, with an enthusiast’s delight, to treasures easily overlooked. . . . Dillon observes that he is interested above all in images that enact ‘blurring and becoming,’ ‘becoming otherwise, in disguises and personae.’ In this engaging and exhilarating Wunderkammer of a book, he offers us the world — in this case, the visual world — as he experiences it: his way of seeing, and of being, in a web of thrilling, sometimes unexpected, connection.” —Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review
“Dillon’s forays into what he calls ‘the mundane miracle of looking’ are both impenetrably personal and so rigorously attentive to the external world that the critic sometimes seems to dissolve into the art. He has an affinity, in effect, for affinities — attractions so pronounced that, far from sequestering us in our private passions, they briefly annihilate us.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
“Dillon completes a hat trick of smart, idiosyncratic nonfiction books with what is perhaps his most ambitious: a criticism propelled by vibes. . . . The essays have enough rigor to stand on their own, but the thrill of reading lies in tracking the hazy connections that Dillon has stitched together. Even the introductory essay — usually an establishment of terms — appears throughout the book in numbered segments to up the ante, the author turning his disorienting critical experiment on himself. As original as any book to come out in recent memory and, to this writer, Dillon’s best.” —J. Howard Rosier, Vulture