Book Review : Jennifer Robin - You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury (2022)
David Foster Wallace once claimed that fiction’s purpose was to give the audience imaginary access to other selves, to make us feel less alone. It has been traditionally achieved through long narratives that depicted complex and relatable inner struggles, but poets and contemporary artists have found shorter workarounds. These are two titles I would use to describe author Jennifer Robin. Her new book You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury grants us unlimited access into her overflowing mind.
You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury is a series of surreal vignettes that may or may not be inspired by the author’s own dream. Many of them start with the words "In my dream" or "I dreamed about", setting the tone for narratives have absolutely no allegiance to reality. These vignettes sometimes don’t feel like narrative storytelling in the proper sense of the term. You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury reads like a walk through a museum where the paintings have a life of their own.
Reanimating the past
One common feature of You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury is the use of iconic pop culture figures from the past: Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, etc. These are disinvested of their own agency and service something new. They are not stripped of their persona’s own logic or history, but they do not bridge the gap between the vignette and our own shared reality. My favourite example of that involves David Bowie and Iggy Pop in a vignette called Legendary Drugs, 1973.
In the story. Bowie and Pop arrive late at a contemporary artist’s party and fiercely hound for drugs, while only finding the artist’s "snuff art" in the garbage, consisting in ropes, duct tape, bloody blankets and whatnot. I thought this vignette was particularly clever, because Bowie and Pop figures historically taken to be ahead of the curve. They are "real artists" and therefore interested in how far they can push their own creativity, instead of blandly celebrating the creativity of someone else.
See, Bowie and Pop act very much like Bowie and Pop, but their entire participation in this vignette is meant to make a point: art is born out of an inner compulsion. The two singers are dreamlike figures in a shared language that are meant to represent a form of radical, almost self-destructive creativity. They are themselves and not themselves at once. They are Jennifer Robin’s Bowie and Pop more than they are Bowie and Pop in themselves and it’s alright, because we all have our understanding of Bowie and Pop.
This is also the case of David Duchovny’s in the hilarious David Duchovny’s Cock, where he flaunts his all-encompassing dong at a house party or Neil Young just stopping by for a kiss in Lust Never Sleeps. These guys are merely representation of themselves and are acting accordingly. Because pop culture is not just a form of entertainment. It’s a language that creates echoes within the self and allow us to communicate with one another. It has both an objective and a personal meaning.
You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury is very much a pantheon to that personal, polyphonic side of pop culture. Jennifer Robin’s vignette have a meaning that is her own and might create new meanings for you.
The subtle art of corrupting reality
Although it’s not even 120 pages long, You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury doesn’t lend itself to a single sitting read. Its stories are too full. Too pregnant with meaning and symbolism. It’s a great book to read one or two vignettes at a time, to allow them to live inside you. A vignette like Phantom Hour featuring street surgery in the middle of the night and Arcimbolesque gore will disappear immediately if you jump to something else, but you gotta resist it.
The details swell up with time and silence.
You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury is definitely not meant to be read like a conventional book, which might make it appear like a thoughtless exercise in iconoclasm for certain readers and I would understand that point of view to a certain extent. Jennifer Robin’s work shines through its micromanagement of otherworldly details. It’s almost non-narrative at times. Words function like paint and clay in order to create powerful symbols or images. It isn’t always the easiest.
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I’ve enjoyed my reading on You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury because it pushed the boundaries of how I usually read and analyze art in general. It’s somewhat of a 201 or even a 301 class for lit nerds and part of it more sports than aesthetic contemplation, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome and never really tries to outsmart you, like other books of similar ambition would. You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury is an inner, psychedelic tapestry that interweaves consciousnesses.
Pre-order it now and get it for release day, July 19th
