Invisible mending (a disintegrated essay)

Background: This work is situated in the field of creative nonfiction practice, specifically the experimental and lyric essay (Tall and D’Agata 1997), which is marked by fragmentation and mosaic forms (Robertson and Hetherington 2016). Against the backdrop of essayistic experiments in redaction (Strahan 2012) and textual absence (Bouilly 2002), this research asks what the further element of collaborative authorship can produce in a lyric essay constituted by implied erasure. Contribution: ‘Invisible Mending’ is a lyric essay written by Murray and Carlin, produced using an iterative and collaborative process of textual erasure, fragmentation, and mosaicking, which reduced an (as if found) co-written manuscript of 40,000 words into 800 words. By these methods, the lyric essay, finding a form both dialogic and poetic, stages a contemplation on fashion and the ageing body. Within the context of a journal issue themed Erasure, the form of the essay underwrites its speculations into how ageing, often experienced in modern Western culture as a process of gradual erasure, can become instead a site of resistance to that disappearing. In so doing, it invites further experiments in collaborative essaying that can expand the essay’s formal repertoire. Significance: This essay is published in Speculative Nonfiction, a US literary journal edited by esteemed nonfiction writers/academics Leila Philip and Robin Hemley. The journal’s Advisory Board includes Pulitzer Prize winning critic Margo Jefferson and Guggenheim Fellows Lia Purpura, David Lazar and David Shields. The essay is part of an ongoing essaying project led by Murray and Carlin, How to dress for old age, which has attracted interest from publishers including Hardie Grant.