Product Description

Organised around the idea that "you can't know what a magnetic field is like unless you're inside of it," Ron Loewinsohn's first novel opens from the disturbing perspective of a burglar in the midst of a robbery, and travels through the thoughts and experiences (both real and imaginary) of a group of characters whose lives are connected both coincidentally and intimately. All of the characters have a common desire to imagine and invent rather horrifying stories about the lives of people around them. As the novel develops, certain phrasings and images recur improbably, drawing the reader into a subtle linguistic game that calls into question the nature of authorship, the ways we inhabit and invade each other's lives, and the shape of fiction itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #673657 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 181 pages

Review
"Loewinsohn knows how to conjure, how to surprise the reader, which may be the best, or at least the rarest, of the novelist's talents." - Anatole Broyard, New York Times "Loewinsohn's novel displays an unmistakably impressive talent, the composure and resources not of a 'first' but of an accomplished novelist." - Publishers Weekly "An ingenious little jewel of writing." - Booklist

About the Author
Ron Loewinsohn is the author of five books of poetry, among them Watermelons, L'Autre and Goat Dances. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Harvard Graduate Prize Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He currently lives in Berkeley, California and teaches at the University of California. Steve Erickson, former Arts Editor for the Los Angeles Weekly, is the acclaimed author of numerous works of literary science fiction and non-fiction, including The Sea Came at Midnight, Tours of the Black Clock and Amnesiascope.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and hypnotic
skreetkleener is 100% correct and I couldn't describe this book any better. It's the best I've read in the past year and one of my favorites of all time. Experimental, but not pompously so. It's both enjoyable and intellectual.

Experiencing Space(s)
In a recent interview, Loewinsohn explains that he wrote the novel in basically six weeks(!), but when I think about how I read this amazing, enthralling, mysterious novel in practically one fevered gulp, I'm not surprised. I can't wait to read it again. Divided into three sections, MF begins with a burglar's experiences of being in the homes (spaces) of complete strangers and what he imagines their lives are like. The second section is from the perspective of the owner of the last house the burglar is breaking into. They briefly interact, in a very odd and funny scene. The second character turns out to be a sort of "sound artist" who takes his family to spend the summer on the Hudson in a sublet. There, while working on a sound sculpture called "Magnetic Field," he begins to think about the family that lived in the house he's subletting. In the final section, he finds out that his collaborator on MF has been having an affair, and he's shocked that he'd had no idea, and begins imagining how the affair had developed. All along, there are phrases that repeat though in entirely different contexts. Very unsettling yet hypnotic. This truly felt like more than just a book in my hands, but a wholly successful work of art that in addressing the idea of space, whether physical or personal, and how we experience it, completely altered my own experience of space. It was like taking a drug. Which maybe is why I can't wait to re-read it.