I must confess that I made a number of assumptions about the content and style of this book based solely on the author's name. The word ‘eldritch’ is exclusively associated, in my mind, with the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Additionally, I knew that this book was published by Duke University Press, implying that there would be a creative approach to critical theory and cultural criticism that challenges easy categorisation. These assumptions combine to suggest that Eldritch Priest was a member or part of the extended network of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a renegade group of academics, philosophers and musicians at Warwick University from the early to the late 1990s, a hotbed of experimentation in continental philosophy, specifically Deleuze, which was and still is uncommon in anglosphere academic philosophy. The most famous alum is probably Mark Fisher, and the most infamous is certainly Nick Land, who has since taken a political turn to the hard right. Other figures include Kodwo Eshun, author of More Brilliant than the Sun, Steve Goodman, who creates music as Kode-9 and is the founder of Hyperdub Records, and Reza Negarestani, author of Cyclonopedia. The latter is an extraordinary book, an example of so-called ‘theory fiction’. In it, the Deleuzeo-Guattarian notion of nomadology (among others) is developed and explored in the context of a fictional quasi-narrative, Lovecraftian in style, in which Oil is a sentient entity explicitly trying to eradicate humanity by ensnaring it in addiction and bringing about the climate catastrophe. As I would discover, Priest is a member of The Occulture, a group of four authors who contributed essays to a book edited by the aforementioned Steve Goodman, so there is a direct connection. My expectation was that Eldritch Priest would write something within this style, and in a sense he has.
There are, in fact, two books contained in this volume, bound têch-bêche like an old science-fiction double shot. Earworm is a book of cultural criticism circling the titular theme, while Event is a collection of creative writing – not necessarily essays or short stories, but perhaps long-form musings. Earworm is, to be blunt, a difficult read. Andrew Hugill in this journal’s review of Priest's earlier book, Boring Formless Nonsense, wrote ‘keeping going is the hardest thing, since in almost every paragraph the book presents us with reasons to stop’.Footnote 1 Priest will often reference arguments – that capitalism seeks finer control over our emotions, for example – without really crafting the logic or making an argument. The most cogent writing is typically found between quotations marks. Priest reads Suzanne Langer's theories of feeling and music to develop the idea that earworms are ‘felt as thought’. What exactly that means doesn't seem to be as important as creating a conceptual land bridge away from earworms, because this book is not really about the phenomenon of an earworm per se, but rather circles it, using it as a touchstone or motivic reference point. The best chapter is the last, a reading of the film Upstream Color. Priest introduces it as ‘a series of impressionistic responses to the film’. As the prose drifts away from formality, logic and argumentation, one feels the author becoming more comfortable and the writing more interesting.
Unsurprisingly, Event is a much more enjoyable book. These five chapters are each little gems of what might be called pataphysical academic papers. Each is very much its own piece and has its own character. The second chapter, ‘Beating a Dead Beetle’, is the most successful piece of the whole volume, filled with Derrida-like wordplay. The question under consideration is ‘do animals get earworms?’. Impossible to tell, but we can observe strangely compulsive behaviour that is isomorphic with an earworm, or at least so the thinking goes. Yet there is an unresolved internal tension in presenting this as a chapter in a book, which might be why one can find the author delivering it as a paper on YouTube at an unconventional conference in 2016. Reference is made to a beetle walking in circles for minutes on end, a kind of kinetic earworm. In the live delivery, a video of this beetle is projected to the speaker's left, along with some other visual counterpoints (unfortunately, the screen is only partly visible in this particular video). Simply reproducing the text removes a charming bit of context, character and personality, but it also flattens Priest's charismatic and reserved delivery. Of course, the visual of sitting at a table reading a paper with a projection to the side leaves something to be desired as well. I hope to see continued experimentation with this material – perhaps eventually some kind of theory-film.
Eldritch Priest is an interesting individual, composing chamber music, producing records as a jazz guitarist, working with The Occulture and having now written two books. I wonder, though if there isn't a meeting point between all these various modalities. Defined forms seem to pose unproductive problems for him, so is there something between a free-jazz album and a book – something both and neither but completely its own thing?
