Spent Light is subtitled “A Book”. It’s not a memoir, but not really autofiction either; life writing, maybe, but the lives in question are not human. Pawson’s writing is prompted by objects usually considered inanimate but made and traded by people in systems that do harm. The book is among them, a physical object, in case you hadn’t noticed. (The book is interested in things you may not have noticed, or may have chosen not to notice.)
In the opening pages the narrator is given a toaster previously belonging to a deceased neighbour. The toaster is compared to a handbag, with the lights above the controls calling to mind a dog’s nipple “or the trigger pin on an Arma-Lite semi-automatic” or “that inarticulate surge of pleasure when your finger closes in on my clitoris”. I was seduced by this wild incantation when the narrator describes three words on the toaster “printed in the same restrained font as CIA documents. Together, they form a synopsis of the Anthropocene: REHEAT DEFROST CANCEL.” This is a book committed to thinking, looking and seeing and not looking away.
