Even with my high expectations, this book still surprised me

Joynt often quotes McLuhan, along with many other thinkers and artists. The book contains lists, photos, abstract art, diagrams, letters, maps and very unusual formatting. There is no resolution and few answers. Joynt is interested in the ways in which he was deliberately and unconsciously shaped by masculinity. He is interested in how language creates meaning, the violence he can do, and the asylum he can do. He is interested in how the transmission in the media is depicted, as well as how the transnes – and other types of strange identity and expression – makes media.

And through all this he tries to make sense – or maybe there will be a (not) meaning of his own trauma. There is a way that this book feels public and private. It is certain: Joint always thinks about how his life and his family, and even the way he thinks, is related to much larger systems. But it is also full of intimate details – looking at Heart, touching, specific.

Joynt constantly questions his own process and motivation. Why does this story write? Whose story is? What is it doing? What does he want to do? How does it intersect with other media, with the colonial history of Canada, with a trance memoir like a “genre”? This book is a record; Both hides and makes visible. I loved to think with him as well. I love how visible the grappy is. It is structured as a process, as unfinished, as a trip, not arrival. JOYNT makes so many connections and associations. His curiosity is endless and he invites his readers to this curiosity. This is the type of reading that I always chase: a challenge, but not alienating, both intellectual and emotional, and with many topics for me to continue to follow long after I finished the book.