Where There is Void: J. H. Prynne’s Kazoo Dreamboats or, On What There is

In this essay I explore the moral crisis of modernity as identified in J. H. Prynne’s latest book Kazoo Dreamboats or, On What There Is. The analysis focuses on the idea of “void” that in Prynne’s book both grants freedom for the linguistic creation of reality in line with the textualist viewpoint of such thinkers as Richard Rorty and allows for a threat to the moral existence of man as diagnosed by Zygmunt Bauman. I argue that Kazoo Dreamboats challenges the discourses of science, philosophy, rationality, and popular culture as means to impose order on a reality in which gross violations of morality have become a routine that evades direct exposure.