The Story of My Accident is Ours
Rachel Levitsky
“Emotional life and cognitive knowledge are not mutually exclusive nor even entirely separate spheres of experience. And neither unfolds except under sway of multiple contradictions, such that grief and determination can coincide, and uncertainty and understanding be simultaneous. In her magnificent The Story of My Accident is Ours Rachel Levitsky undertakes a meditation on the status of knowledge under conditions over which we have almost no control but which exert intense emotional, as well as practical, pressure on our lives. The narrator of this saga is a preternaturally astute observer of the recurrent, but never habitual, ways of a world in which she strangely participates. Indeed, it is a world in which strange participation is the only viable means of survival. It is, then, a revolutionary’s tale, and, like all such tales, one without end. May it rise forever.”
—Lyn Hejinian
“Rachel Levitsky’s prose poems employ the elegant language of philosophical inquiry to probe a territory not unlike the domain of poetry. The Story of My Accident is Ours is a thrilling voyage of discovery into “the vast and nearly completely unmanageable spaces between us.”
—John Ashbery
“Rachel Levitsky’s The Story of My Accident Is Ours is an impossible comedy, a radical tragedy, a warning: beware “the glimmering smiles on television.” Sometimes I wondered if I was on another planet, an alternate universe with its “privasphere” and its unsettling “The Large” (which is, of course, “always growing ever larger”). But this is absolutely our world: here's our “spectacle of consumption,” here's "the mall, and then the mall.” Levitsky's project and her prose exert a palpable urgency. She has something important to show us.”
—Danielle Dutton
“How tremulous and effervescent I felt while reading this book—and how it impacted! By writing around and around the social, political, and emotional issues that have upmost bearing in our lives, Rachel Levitsky gets to the marrow of the matter in every single sentence. It's a transforming experience. It's just downright trans, in every sense of the word. This is it, everyone: a real modern marvel.”
—Lonely Christopher
About the Author
Rachel Levitsky is the author of two previous books, Under the Sun (Futurepoem, 2003), NEIGHBOR (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009). She is the founder of the feminist avant-garde network, Belladonna* Collaborative. In 2010 with Christian Hawkey, she started The Office of Recuperative Strategies (OoRS.net), a mobile research unit variously located in Amsterdam, Berlin, Boulder, Brooklyn, Cambridge, NYC and the Universität Leipzig in Leipzig. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Pratt Institute.
Additional Links
A conversation with Andrew Zawacki and Rachel Levitsky, Hyperallergic
Review of The Story of My Accident is Ours, The Constant Critic
Excerpt from The Story of My Accident is Ours, Lemon Hound
Section of The Story of My Accident is Ours, Conjunctions
Lucy Ives in Conversation with Rachel Levitsky, Triple Canopy
The Next Big Thing: Rachel Levitsky, Futurepost
“Emotional life and cognitive knowledge are not mutually exclusive nor even entirely separate spheres of experience. And neither unfolds except under sway of multiple contradictions, such that grief and determination can coincide, and uncertainty and understanding be simultaneous. In her magnificent The Story of My Accident is Ours Rachel Levitsky undertakes a meditation on the status of knowledge under conditions over which we have almost no control but which exert intense emotional, as well as practical, pressure on our lives. The narrator of this saga is a preternaturally astute observer of the recurrent, but never habitual, ways of a world in which she strangely participates. Indeed, it is a world in which strange participation is the only viable means of survival. It is, then, a revolutionary’s tale, and, like all such tales, one without end. May it rise forever.”
—Lyn Hejinian
“Rachel Levitsky’s prose poems employ the elegant language of philosophical inquiry to probe a territory not unlike the domain of poetry. The Story of My Accident is Ours is a thrilling voyage of discovery into “the vast and nearly completely unmanageable spaces between us.”
—John Ashbery
“Rachel Levitsky’s The Story of My Accident Is Ours is an impossible comedy, a radical tragedy, a warning: beware “the glimmering smiles on television.” Sometimes I wondered if I was on another planet, an alternate universe with its “privasphere” and its unsettling “The Large” (which is, of course, “always growing ever larger”). But this is absolutely our world: here's our “spectacle of consumption,” here's "the mall, and then the mall.” Levitsky's project and her prose exert a palpable urgency. She has something important to show us.”
—Danielle Dutton
“How tremulous and effervescent I felt while reading this book—and how it impacted! By writing around and around the social, political, and emotional issues that have upmost bearing in our lives, Rachel Levitsky gets to the marrow of the matter in every single sentence. It's a transforming experience. It's just downright trans, in every sense of the word. This is it, everyone: a real modern marvel.”
—Lonely Christopher
About the Author
Rachel Levitsky is the author of two previous books, Under the Sun (Futurepoem, 2003), NEIGHBOR (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009). She is the founder of the feminist avant-garde network, Belladonna* Collaborative. In 2010 with Christian Hawkey, she started The Office of Recuperative Strategies (OoRS.net), a mobile research unit variously located in Amsterdam, Berlin, Boulder, Brooklyn, Cambridge, NYC and the Universität Leipzig in Leipzig. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Pratt Institute.
Additional Links
A conversation with Andrew Zawacki and Rachel Levitsky, Hyperallergic
Review of The Story of My Accident is Ours, The Constant Critic
Excerpt from The Story of My Accident is Ours, Lemon Hound
Section of The Story of My Accident is Ours, Conjunctions
Lucy Ives in Conversation with Rachel Levitsky, Triple Canopy
The Next Big Thing: Rachel Levitsky, Futurepost
