Adam Tipps Weinstein, Some Versions of the Ice, Les Figues Press, 2015.
Winner of the 2014 NOS Book Contest, as selected by guest judge Fanny Howe.
“A flourish of secrets underlying cuffs and garden plots and the ice so fast approaching and receding. This is a happy book, sinister undertones reserved for the reader to recognize, if they are there at all. I love information. Uncanny information. The subplot and the reason for versions rather than certainties. Some Versions of the Ice is special, an original.”—Fanny Howe
“Some Versions of the Ice explores liminal spaces: where the real meets the unreal, where the physical world becomes imbued with the sublime. In their tension between order and chaos, Weinstein’s essays both formally and tonally dissolve the boundaries between myth and reality, appropriation and invention, nonfiction and fiction as they describe our search for permanence and order in an essentially chaotic world. With subjects ranging from ‘graveyard shoes’ to Frankenstein, from gardening to Renaissance ruffs, Weinstein’s essays merge the erudition of Anne Carson with the speculative intelligence of Borges, all while investigating the ways our species both creates and inspires awe. It is a hybrid field guide, an artist’s book, a personal cabinet of wonders. Weinstein’s book is a marvelous debut, one that I believe will beguile and bemuse, and ultimately captivate the reader.”—Paisley Rekdal
“The stunningly erudite essays in Adam Tipps Weinstein’s Some Versions of Ice are way beyond acrobatic ‘attempts.’ They are controlled crashes of trying language and heady concoctions of crazed content. Imagine (and you must imagine) Emerson ordaining the hieros gamos of Jorge Luis Borges to the conjoined twins of Susan Sontag and Martha Stewart. Here, Weinstein’s hyper-rational empiricism runs stoically and joyfully amok. He is the deadpanniest of deadpan prospectors, panning boatloads of precious metal, assaying whole new states of mannered matter.”—Michael Martone