Wridding
by
Nikolina Nedeljkov
Synopsis
Description of Book
Wridding is a phantasmagoric journey through whirlpools of the dreamscape and the fractured
empire of cronos. The adventurous excavation of the crevices in timespace is vision of the
refigured past, resurrecting the future into the redeemed present. It is postfuturist remapping of
mafotherlands--history and geography out of joints--inspiring the remix. The vernacular strongly
relies on a playful experimentation. It integrates blendings, coinages, derivatives, neologisms,
and samples from a variety of languages and/or registers. The linguistic aspect captures the
everyday threatened by bewildering noise of the polluted communication channel. It also
encapsulates the purifying power of turntablist poetics.
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This exploration in the novel as a liquid genre features sparse characterization, minimalist
setting, unstable plot, and a prominent role of the subtonic layers of the narrative. Fluctuating
identities are always already oscillating loops of disintegration and fusion. Strangers’ encounters
with unlikely mirror-images and brooding echoes are suggestive of contemporary babylonian
cultural cacophony. Seeking interpretations of death, the characters find out how it feels to be
alive. Their disappearance and reemergence both reflect and result from the alternating cycles of
kinetics and inertia, scarcity and abundance of communication. The dynamic is developed
through an eclectic, yet focused, stylistic versatility: from moody creatively-critical excursions,
via angular lyric prose passages, to quirky poetry, explosive dialogues, and bizarre humor. Not
only does the tone underscores the storyline, but it also inspires the characters’ engagement in
their own recreation, thereby ensuring a context for an organic evolvement of the story and its
reanimation through the remix.
Titles of Chapters
1. ChapteR A: Who Knows the Reason Why One is Children
2. Sabhilly in Soalsciety
3. Inn the Hearth off Mediation
4. Nest&Burden
5. DaYs
6. D: In De Reign off ye Viz
Description of Chapters
1. ChapteR A: Who Knows the Reason Why One is Children
The lyric opening introduces literary remixing of the dreamscape. Silence invites the reader to
join the travelers on the journey through the alleys of a language maze. Loosely delineated
characters map the itinerary of the transformative voyage through the brooding fog of noise into
the epicenter of contamination. Sylvan creatures, whose forest habitat is a source of poetic fiber,
a nest, and the platform for remixing, sleep a couple of hours between industrial partying and
another day of the quest. Strolling through unknown lands during the day, they collect the
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material for the stories that are at night projected on the wall-screen, while the storytellers
themselves act as organic loudspeakers. In order to preserve purity, a mighty weapon against
noise pollution, the remix requires active participation. One, actually, has to dive into the layers
imperceptible from the surface in order to be exhaled through the purged communication
channel. That’s how the characters get a glimpse of the redeeming light.
2. Sabhilly in Soalsciety
Continuing the oneiric exploration, the characters tack weaving of the narrative tissue,
simultaneously immersing themselves in the process of creation. They share a postfuturist
moment manifested in the confessional prose mode. Dialogues, alternating with descriptive
passages, ensure an instrumental role of the tone. The progression from one episode to another
creates a specific dynamic in the relationship between the fellow travelers. Oscillations from
intimacy to detachment, hostility to compassion are only the tip of the iceberg of the innermost
emotional collisions. With an introduction of the book On How To Phunkie WriteRead (ØØØØ),
acting as the guide through hardly manageable situations, intensified is linguistic playfulness
indicative of the tension between joyful versatility and noisy confusion. Simultaneously, it
signals the trajectory of greening the communication channel. Through the mutability of the
elusive, yet undoubtedly redeeming, light.
3. Inn the Hearth off Mediation
The characters from the first two chapters are now exiled into new narrative realms. Dissolved in
the polyphony of random, anonymous voices of the competitors in the discursive arena, their
shadowy presence illuminates redemptive powers of the complicity in and resistance against
noise pollution. Within a phone-in radio program, the character of the DJ/MC, briefly introduced
in the first chapter, is developed into a symbol of friendly guidance through the labyrinth of
contested narrative territories. Genuine exchange, born out of vigorous disputes and fruitful
dissensus, propagates a polyphonic union and the spirit of reverence. From this counteract to the
syncopated heartbeat arises a character of the generic name to further demonstrate the potential
of On How To Phunkie WriteRead (ØØØØ).
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4. Nest&Burden
This chapter presents in a fully-fledged form a pursuit of the answer to the questions about how
it feels to be dead, what it means to be alive, and how the related realizations can be manifested.
Specific maneuvering in tone ensues from the shifts from first person fiction prose to a loose
diary style, from monologues--dispersed across the galaxy of decay--to reintegrating dialogue.
Resonating with the dialectic of presence and absence, the rhythmic patterns flash out
unorthodox aesthetic means of obtaining knowledge about disappearance as a context for
resurfacing of a new life.
5. DaYs
Sounds from beneath the surface of the earth, from somewhere, are heard. An exchange of
vibrations with the surrounding saturates the words as they are being morphed. An aural
amalgam grips the rising consciousness. Confusion reigns. Observations about babylonian orbits
are emanated into the atmosphere of the newly born heavenly bodies, struggling to find their
places in the galaxy of multiple suns. The epistolary sun, the melancholy sun, the sun of fire, of
the purifying water, and the sun of laughter rotate in establishing a verbal carrousel, bringing to
the ear of the reader more material for poetic and critical / creative excavations. Through the
passages across unidentifiable territories, polluted with a deafening noise, new voices are being
crystalized. They deliver messages about the ways cacophony informs who they are. Or may
become. New characters, new names, and new friendships are ascending. Echoing the shadows
and flashes from the previous chapters, they are here now to tell new stories of the new life—in
and, silently, about the new light.
6. D: In De Reign off ye Viz
After a long trial presented in discontinuous diary of disappearance and epistolary manual for
deselfing, the voices resist the tyranny of imposed identities and celebrate hard-won
idiosyncrasies. Fluctuating on the naivety-innocence scale, the sophomoric flow is being
disrupted with occasional outbursts of grown up thinking. Juvenile biosphere is sporadically
punctured with an influx of adult responses. The characters are now dwellers of their own
stories. The voice of the DJ appears in a subtle role of scratching signposts: the title is On How
To Phunkie Remix (ØØØØ). Through furious clashes, the land of a melliferous expression is
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reached. Emotional shifts between melancholy and hope are key to reintegration both on
individual and communal levels. The deepest heights of a creative, playful act of dissolvement
and its restorative power demonstrate how it feels to be whole again. Talk about the vital light,
emerging from the empire of toxicity, is reanimated in the full glory of the human spirit.
Special Features
Special features of Wridding can be described in terms of two categories. One focuses on what it
opposes, while the other reveals what it finds to be worthy of reverence.
Thus, the book can be read as resistance against: (a) nihilistic dissolvement in the murky waters
of uncritical reductionism; (b) authoritarian pluralism; (c) hypocritical preservation of the
supposed narrative purity; (d) regressive restoration of conventional storytelling; (e) rhetoric of
empty signification; (f) formalities for formalities’ sake; (g) misconception about the totality of
discourse and the military-entertainment complex.
At the same time, it celebrates: (a) the reconstitutive combination of criticism and creation; (b)
playfulness through rigorous, insightful thinking; (c) joy of creation fertilized by exchange in
liquid culture; (d) nonprescriptive destigmatization of meaning; (e) the novel as a liquid genre—
fantasia of expressive modes; (f) imaginative critique flourishing from the limits to proliferated
realities; (g) quirky takes on the reanimation of the text; (h) the right to the remix.
About Author
Nikolina Nedeljkov is a reader / writer / scholar whose interest is centered around the creationremix nexus as a source of storytelling and creative / critical remapping of cultural realities. In
the light of peaceful/peaceable resistance to oppression, the remix is the postfuturist hifi response against noise, and in the service of disambiguated communication. Contributions
on LIES/ISLE; kill author; 3:AM; in Cultural Studies, Education, and Youth: Beyond
Schools; Genero; Pennsylvania Literary Journal; and Anamesa: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
The novel Wridding published by Lulu.com in 2014. Blogs here.
Audience
The readership is likely to consist of individuals with strong affinities for unorthodox theorizing
combined with an appreciation of experimental aesthetics. Academic and nonexpert novel
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enthusiasts alike can be imagined to rejoice in the adventures the book offers. Persons whose
inquisitive minds will find the language of the book provocatively playful, rather than
intellectually inhibiting, are also potential readers. It can appeal to those who can see in atypical
literary elements the embodiment of an eerie sparseness-abundance dialectic and to whom it
opens the door to imaginative critical thinking.
Finally, the reader can be anyone who is inspired by the idea and practice of reading-writing and
who feels that the culture in which we live today is not exactly a place that provides room for an
impassioned immersion in play and creation. But can be.
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