Does Vivian Blaxell’s Worthy of the Event take things beyond the ambient Yes? The answer, reader, is of course, Yes. It would be an insult to call this extraordinary essay a work of autofiction or philosophy. Instead, the Event is an event unto itself.

In his review of Lucy Van’s The Open, Gareth Morgan writes that Van writes 'against the impulse to ponder dutifully about the sins of the past and present.' This fucked me up for some time. What is it to ponder dutifully? But perhaps more importantly, how do we ponder in a way that's more … metal?