A Horse at the Window is Spencer Gordon’s third book.
A Horse at the Window is a genre-bending collection of dramatic monologues shining a light on the anxious, self-directed gaze that defines contemporary consciousness.
Borrowing stylistic elements from the prose poem, faux memoir, online diatribe, and philosophical investigation, the 25 dramatic monologues in Spencer Gordon’s genre-bending collection shine a light on the anxious, self-directed gaze that defines contemporary consciousness. CEOs lose their obscene wealth in lurid hellrealms; an aspiring writer reassembles a personal history out of fragments from the 2000s; police cadets receive a curious crash course in transduction and ethics; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and Deepwater Horizon oil spill reveal the immanent sublime.
Ranging from ironic and furious to pleading and melancholic, Gordon’s speakers exist in a world of social media think pieces, hot takes and take downs, fake news and distorted facts, steeped in pop culture and its discontents. They are real people, intimate as kin. But they’re also pseudonyms, ghosts, and playbacks, echoing from insubstantial handles drifting on the web. They lie and lurk and love online, channelling the morphemes of digital language and filtering the concerns of self, performance, digital identity, and complicity through the irreverence, non-rationality, and surprising beauty of Zen.
Note: All royalties accrued from this book, from its inception to disappearance, will be donated on an annual basis to Fred Victor, a social service charitable organization that fosters long-lasting and positive change in the lives of homeless and low-income people living across Toronto. Thank you for purchasing this book and contributing, in a small way, to people in need. Learn more at fredvictor.org.
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Learn more about the cover art (and artist) here.
Praise & Press for A Horse at the Window
- “Is it short fiction? Prose poetry? I think so. So far, it's brilliant.” — Gary Barwin, All Lit Up
- “Each entry moves at a feverish pace as it blends highbrow with lowbrow: Kantian philosophy, pagan theology, and modernist literary references meet OnlyFans, Top Gun, and Twitch ... his observations are exciting and introspective ... Gordon effectively recognizes our overburdened condition and reproduces it with great accuracy ... [and] the scattered bits of deep reflection make for a worthwhile read.” — Alexander Sallas, The Literary Review of Canada, Bookworm #60
- “[M]ultifaceted, dark and brilliant ...” — Damian Tarnopolsky, All Lit Up
- “To enter A Horse at the Window is to enter the world of dreams and visions, of funhouse mirrors and social-media terrors. Over four pages, for example, the narrator confesses all he was “not nice enough to” do in "Reasons for My Success," a portrait of a bizarre dude. The longest piece, "The Garbage and Oil Thread," is a meditation on environmental crisis that so self-consciously piles words upon words that the crisis feels as if it consists of language as much as microbes and atoms. Throughout, prepare for sharp waves of word flow often depopulated from bodies and context, polished to an eerie sheen ... That Gordon connects these 'stories' to ancient Buddhist writings (among other intertextual hoodwinks) highlights his talent, frequently profound, sometimes miraculous.” — Michael Bryson, Zoomer Magazine (Zed Book Club)
- A Horse included in Writers’ Trust 2024 Summer Reading List (by Domenica Martinello, who says, “[Spencer is] a writer who pulls off an incredible range of forms and registers, I’m sure this book has something for every internal weather forecast.”
- Spencer interviewed over at Open Book about pros and cons of publishing, with a small promo for A Horse: “Whatever the publishing world might want to call these pieces, they are profound glimpses into the jawdropping, terrifying, sublime, and mundane.”
- Spencer interviewed by rob mclennan on the Chaudiere Books blog.
- A listicle prepared in advance of the Brockton Writers Series.
- A Horse is one of the "most anticipated" fiction titles of the first half of 2024, say the good people at 49th Shelf.
- Those same people included it in a list of books called, "Most Anticipated: Our Fall Fiction Preview" (is A Horse a fall book)?
- A Horse is part of Quill & Quire's 2024 Spring Preview: “This intriguing collection of 25 dramatic monologues,” writes Attila Berki, “written in a range of styles, reflects the issues and obsessions of lives soaked in pop culture and social media to reveal the pitfalls, anxiety, irrationality, and even beauty of our self-conscious digital age.”
- The fine folk at Hamilton Review of Books are “really excited to pick up” A Horse “on these longer, warmer, more beautiful days,” so it's one of their staff picks for spring 2024.
"A Horse at the Window is a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for our fractured, pixelated 21st century. With maximum velocity, existential wit, and dazzling imagery, Spencer Gordon spins a zoetrope of the Anthropocene that uncannily helps make sense of being alive today, yesterday, and tomorrow while claiming there is no point."
— Zsuzsi Gartner, author of the Giller shortlisted Better Living through Plastic Explosives and Writers Trust finalist The Beguiling
"Its poetics fanned by tutelary spirits, A Horse at the Window spans the burning issues of a world torn between the tangible and the digital. Okay, so it might set your head on fire. But that’s just as well."
— S. D. Chrostowska, author of A Cage for Every Child, The Eyelid, and Permission