He Used Thought as a Wife: An Anthology of Poems & Conversations (From Inside)

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His admittedly unreliable recollections are a delight, despite, or possibly because of, the undertow of despair that he’s trying not to confront. Key’s decline is charted with a dry and ever-present wit, which frequently erupts into a bluntly funny line that elicits a hard, inappropriate laugh.

He Used Thought As A Wife by Tim Key : Book reviews 2021 He Used Thought As A Wife by Tim Key : Book reviews 2021

Anyone familiar with Key’s passive-aggressive but vulnerable, needy, beer-swigging onstage persona will doubtless be able to conjure a picture of the poet-comic gone to seed. An over-indulging artist imprisoned in his garret, he clung to sanity by scribbling his abrupt, off-beat verse on to Post-it notes and making testy phone calls to friends and family. The collection, beautifully designed by Emily Juniper, may draw on such tropes as clapping for the NHS or obsessing about sourdough starter without ever seeming trite or overfamiliar. Just as the pattern becomes predictable the book takes an interesting meta-turn that is enjoyable, and self aware. If you are in the North America, look out for US/Canadian flag icons on popular product listings for direct links.Having a knowledge of Key and his actual life/friends helps contextualise the conversations, and it is easy to work out who some of the veiled characters are - but beyond that the character that TK paints is fascinating, and the reader is left wondering to what extent the actual Tim Key resembles his self portrait. [Something that his Megadate show also left the audience wondering, I suspect].

He Used Thought as a Wife: An Anthology of Poems - AbeBooks

Does 5 seem to high? Maybe. But what at first seems like just a collection of stand-alone snippets of text manages to create a quietly effective, cohesive whole.

A latter-day Samuel Pepys, chronicling the modern bubonic plague for posterity... a hilarious portrait of an artist just about creatively keeping his funk at bay" i