Prism and Graded Monotony

Prism and Graded MonotonyPrism and Graded Monotony is the earlier of Dominic Ward's two JEF novels, and the more associative. The publisher's own description calls it a plurality of threads in which death and survival are the sum and myriad weird parts comprise it. The pacing reads more like a prose poem than like a plot: associative, fragmentary, shaped by recurrence rather than arc. Its logic is the logic of a dream rather than a plot. Recurring images shift register

visual poetry

a New York playwright

I didn't want to write a love story until I found life to be an abiding romance with words

playwright

and the form he ended on was the form the subject demanded

in the publisher description

Its prime symptom is that they are driven apart into separate realities

bending their separate voices toward his own motive

the novel stops being a novel and becomes a play

How to Break Article Noun is a carefully crafted work consisting of seven parts

and what recurs is voice

more than twenty years in the making