Kirjahaku

John is the teenage terror of his northern industrial town. With his friends, James and Simon, he is a disciple of depression and ennui. His world is a haze of smoke and heavy metal, anchored by poverty. Every day he steps closer to the edge. When an altercation at school leads to a bad encounter with the police and involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward, John finds himself alone in the hospital Quiet Room with time to think, to reflect on who he is, how he got here, and how to move forward—whether he wants to or not.John is a successful musician. Music is his passion, his solace, and the place he belongs. Looking for the lyric in the noise, he sifts through his life, through layers of experience overlapping like chords. He searches for himself in his psychiatric records, in the voices of his friends, his teachers, the cops, his doctors, and in his own memories. Rearranging the layers into some sort of music, he tries to find a true account of himself. In Singing, He Composed a Song is a masterful experimental novel that blends poetry and fiction, past and future, word and image, to radically question how language and authority intertwine to shape the ways we view ourselves. It finds the music—however dissonant—that can't be held behind steel doors or hidden in the pages of your file.

«How to become Jacques Derrida’s reader? By letting his texts engender you. Such a birth is taken literally by Jeremy Stewart, who proves by algebra that he is the author’s bastard son. In this wonderful, intense, witty, and gripping exercise in autotheory, deconstruction meets autofiction with a vengeance.» (Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, American Academy of Arts and Sciences) «With I, Daniel, Jeremy Stewart offers a reading, both rigorous and adventurous, of ‘Envois,’ one of Jacques Derrida’s most fascinating works. Unfolding and refolding the text around a blind spot in the philosopher’s journey, seeking to recognize in the twists and turns of this variously encrypted text the traces of an unutterable filiation, he takes us with him into the labyrinth, losing ourselves to better find ourselves. Through his personal commitment, Jeremy Stewart gives this close reading its full legitimacy, with the name ‘Daniel’ playing the role of révélateur, in the photographic sense of the term.» (Benoît Peeters, author of Derrida: A Biography) Jacques Derrida’s book The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1987) has often been read in purely philosophical terms. Derrida, alluding to Freud’s talk of «theoretical fiction,» describes the opening section («Envois») as a «project for a «fiction.» «Envois» (that is, «sendings») takes the form of hundreds of postcards to an unnamed lover. Enter a figure called «Daniel.» In some ways, he resembles Derrida’s unrecognized third son. In others, he resembles the author; this book’s creative-critical approach thus turns scandalously personal. In addressing literary questions, it draws on dreams, faith, the author’s middle name, and a testimony to illegitimacy. One of «Envois» key conceits is that it is «the preface to a book […] not [yet] written.» Taking, as cues, fleeting references to the biblical book of Daniel and George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda, «Envois» is read as a preface not so much to an unwritten book as to the text that is the name «Daniel.»

This is a young poet's search for and discovery of his place in the local landscape. The poet is haunted by the legacy of colonialism and propelled by the struggles of a community seeking its own identity. "(flood basement" is the raw, shocking and innocent journey of an emerging artist in a seemingly inflexible world. In this collection Stewart shares a collage of fragments that amount to a portrait of the Prince George of his youth, a transcription of a midnight audio journey, and an introspection of the fluctuating and sometimes fragile identity of the writer. Stewart's work pushes the boundaries of innovative and experimental poetry while weaving a visual narrative of the world in which he lives.