Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures by Mark Fisher ***

Reading dates: 08 June – 21 September 2014

I read this during a very special summer in my life. A close, loved and much admired person died young and unexpectedly, taken away by a devastating cancer in 3 months. Meanwhile, my country, the one I live in, was gearing to the most important decision in many years, perhaps ever: whether to break the United Kingdom and become independent, or (as it turned out on 18 September) not.

On the 10th June and following my invitation, Mark Fisher came to speak to the Glasgow School of Art where I work. I wanted to read his last book when I met him. This is a book on possible, lost futures, those that could have been and, at the same time, are and are not; a book on ghosts; a book on ontology. How apt for my summer. The book is divided into three sections for, broadly, the 70s, sounds and places. While I devoured 1 and 3, the second section was beyond me. Mark is an accomplished writer but I found it very hard to read on dubstep and house music, on artists I never heard of (literally). I did find them on youtube, and listened to get a sense, but that did not help my impasse. My advance through section 2 was very slow. I did adore his essays on Patrick Keiller, John le Carré, W. G. Sebald, David Peace and Christopher Nolan, despite his choices being the usual boys (boys I like, but still, always the same). He reveals insights, is well read, writes with care and precision and weaves philosophical, psychoanalytic and cultural thoughts to create a very good collection of essays, if you share with him his object of study. If not, the writing is still good, but the ideas are too abstract. Perhaps this is one of those books where some of the chapters would work better in the original form, as blog posts: linking feels an essential part of the process of reading, as Masha Tupitsyn did in her book Love Dog.