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

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And to be fair on Key, this is a far more entertaining account of this plague: a rich source of perfectly observed, often laugh-out-loud humour than never shies away from the malaise, the melancholy, the isolation, the futility, the political incompetence and the uncertainty that has blighted the last year. 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

He Used Thought as a Wife. An Anthology of Poems And He Used Thought as a Wife. An Anthology of Poems And

My American experience of early COVID was slightly different--more haphazard and unstructured, more politically frustrating (Bohnson's got nothing on Drump)--but the world is small enough and the pandemic so global, that despite the geographical gulf, Key's rendering of living alone, frozen in time while the world spiraled out of control, resonated. Juniper designed the beautiful Megadate printed script, and then his playing cards (which also have conversations with her on some of them) and in this book her role as TK's foil is thrust even further into the spotlight (although how much (if any) of it is real is for the reader to guess). At his most self-consciously pompous, Key fancies himself a latter-day Samuel Pepys, chronicling the modern bubonic plague for posterity. With some justification, even as his febrile imagination conjures bleak erotica, featuring an out-of-his-depth, depressed Boris Johnson, “Bohnson”, as he sinks further into his own hellish quagmire. Ever since I made an account on the book-centered social medium, I rated every book from 1 to 5 stars. Thoughtless, because it was an option, and because it felt complete. I rarely gave 1 star (who am to think a book is so shite?), same story with 5 stars (it’s gotta stay special). 2 only when highly irritated, and I found 3 all but easy. 4 stars. I only really gave 4 stars. Because I think giving stars is awkward. A book can speak to you because of so many reasons, and that doesn’t fit inside a small symbol. And mainly, I don’t want to rate my books. Why does everything have to be judged? And why the hell do I have to judge it?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. Just as the pattern becomes predictable the book takes an interesting meta-turn that is enjoyable, and self aware. 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. All the while, Key’s intensifying mental degradation belies the volume’s deceptive density and rigorous chronological timeline of major pandemic moments. Despite alighting on obvious touchstones such as the NHS clapping, Johnson’s brush with Covid, banana bread and Dominic “Cumdawg” Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle, it is the specific oddity of Key’s existence that best captures the general experience of lonely, inward-looking, disconnected life.

He Used Thought as a Wife, by Tim Key, review: pithily funny

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. At his most playfully self-aggrandising, Key imagines himself as a modern-daySamuel Pepys only better (‘He’s a yawnfest, Em. He makes the Fire Of London sound as boring as sin, to be fair on him’). As a historical document, it’s Pepys. It does what it seeks out to achieve. As a work by a comic, it’s tremendously funny and makes me punch the air at its wit, foresight and genius. As a novella it has an embedded friendship love story between author and graphic designer that is untouchable. I kill for a well written sort of flirty friendship. I need to show my friend Grayce this as a benchmark to the appeal of non-romance. Never will a book be written in such a way. And playing with form makes me want to play with myself it’s fantastic. Tim Key has] always been at a gloriously odd angle to life as we know it. Now that life itself is at an ingloriously odd angle to life as we knew it, his time has come.” The Times ****The typesetting and layout is genuinely very attractive. This is Emily Juniper's contribution - the person whom Tim converses most with in the book. As this book seems like a continuation of the same world that TK created for Megadate, and then his Poetical Playing Cards this is appropriate. 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.