The Oyster: Or, Radial Suppleness
There is something of the seventeenth century methodology present in The Oyster, as multiple disciplines (philosophy, literature, visual art, biology, architecture) converge within the experiences of thinking, eating, and diagramming. The center stage is given to a humble mollusk, which becomes an object, a subject, a sentient consciousness, and an alien will, progressively and then even simultaneously. In The Oyster we also find a pan-psychic attitude, something of a vital materialist disposition. This investigation reveals to the reader contingent details about the aesthetic origin of the universe by: a) ingesting the oyster's interior; and b) carefully traversing its sharp outer surface and polished interior space. Here reading, writing, creating, cooking, digesting become an act of filtering. The essential glorious trait of the oyster.
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Dejan Lukic's The Oyster is a beautiful pearl, perfectly formed. What he does with the Botticelli makes me want to brave the lines at the Uffizi one more time, just to see its glory in the pose he's given it. Only a moment ago I saw those trees for the first time. As a prose poem the whole of The Oyster far outshines the Ponge, who should've known better than to talk about an oyster he had no business trying to shuck in print. A dull knife & hammer? The guy tending the oyster bar in the old Marseille dives would've had a good laugh. No-the expert way Lukic pries it open, not so much as a drop of the liquor spilled, comes closer to Tolstoy's peasant sharpening his scythe, or the old carpenter's threshold to the trophy room in Homer-tight and plumb; correct and unforgettably beautiful. - Dr. George Smith, Professor of New Philosophy
