K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Many of the ideas that animated Capitalist Realism and Ghosts of My Life course through the collection. But it is more casual than those books; it allows you to watch Fisher’s theories take shape as he recounts his day-to-day life—things he’s seen on television or heard on the radio.
His prose could be cold, sad, sometimes deliberately estranging.
If Fisher is punk...it’s insofar as he rarely condescends to pop culture. Indeed, his enthusiasm for his material is infectious, his ferocity when it lets him down is admirable. He frequently praises his favorite writers and critics for scrambling the hierarchy between high theory and pop, but it’s a mode of writing of which Fisher is exemplary.
In the book K-Punk, we find an archaeology of Fisher’s relationship to networks, and his efforts to interpret and exist within them.
[Fisher] wrote vividly on the glam rock and new wave bands of his youth.
... this book is not a sentimental gesture of remembrance or solidarity with a fallen comrade. It turns out to be an utterly compelling and excoriating record of 21st-century cultural production and politics. If you have any interest in contemporary British politics and culture, it is a necessary read.
Capitalist Realism, the book, is...full of phrases so vivid and apt and funny they dance across the page like cartoon imps.
... should resound as a testament to [Fisher's] enduring relevance.
As the anthology demonstrates, a diverse set of topics caught Fisher’s attention, such that caustic analyses of commercial culture...nestle up against riffs on global political themes.
k-punk bags up the messy drive and phonetic thrum of a life distributed between careers and platforms.