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Nocilla Lab
by Agustin Fernandez Mallo
(Fitzcarraldo Editions, £12.99)
HOW to create a literature out of the detritus of consumer culture? That’s the task Agustin Fernandez Mallo sets himself in Nocilla Lab, the concluding volume of a trilogy published in Spain between 2006 and 2009, which seeks to create a poetics fit for the late capitalist epoch.
Unlike the previous volumes, which sutured quotations of theoretical physics and Hollywood films with fictional narrative strands into a peculiar cumulative collage, this concluding work is one of “autofiction” that blends memoir and fiction in detailing the origins myth of what Mallo calls “The Project.”
The opening section is a single, serpentine 70-page sentence in which Mallo sieves through his memories and ideas in the vain attempt to trace the provenance of The Project. Never precisely described, it seems to centre upon an empty Gibson guitar case.
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