THE WEIRD AND THE EERIE - MARK FISHER

Mark Fisher only seems to be getting more and more popular as the years since his suicide roll on, so I felt it was only appropriate to dip my toes back in. I’ve read his most famous book, CAPITALIST REALISM, which does deserve the hype, it’s really good and punchy and interesting, as well as some of his blog writing and parts of the book he was working on when he died, called, intriguingly, ACID COMMUNISM (more on the idea of an acid communism in a future review), but this is the second full book of his I’ve read. Sadly, this is not as good as CR, it’s much more plain. As promised, the book is indeed about the states of weirdness and eeriness. He does a good job defining both; the weird is something that is not supposed to be there, the eerie has to do with an unexpected presence or absence. From there the book dissolves into general cultural criticism. We get who you’d expect w/r/t weirdness and eeriness: H.P. Lovecraft, Lynch, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Joy Division, etc. And, like most cultural criticism, it’s interesting when you’re already interested in the work being discussed, like, say, Tarkovsky, and boring when he’s talking about something dull, like a Chris Nolan film. Fisher is smart and incisive and I came away with a few movies and bands to check out, but no really big ideas. Given the subject matter and incisiveness of CR, I was hoping for him to discuss, at length, the weird and eerie aspects of capitalism, but we get only the most cursory statements. Definitely work checking out individual essays if you dig the topic but overall not anywhere near the heights he reaches elsewhere. 1 weird and eerie road.