A Review of Dan Fox’s Limbo

Format: French paperback with flaps, 120pp.; Price: £10.99 Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions; Another book by the author: Pretentiousness; Number of artworks referenced: ninety-seven; Sun Ra albums mentioned: Somebody Else’s World (1971), When Sun Comes Out (1963); Representative Passage: “So. Limbo is the lobby next to the hereafter’s elevator banks. It’s that feeling in the dentist’s waiting room when you don’t know if your destiny lays up Satan’s root canal or ends with a bright white smile. It scales from the minor anxious withdrawal brought about by a broken smartphone device to serious time spent between jobs, and the months, years, letting a past relationship fade so that another can take colour. Limbo is a videogame, pulp fiction, a self-aggrandizing surrealist’s literary fantasy. It’s a way to describe modernist fantasies of cool affect. If you visit Vermont it’s hopped-up pop in a bottle. For Karl it gave him a near-death experience on the ocean, pinned between dangerous weather systems, trying to hide his stage fright from a green crew. It’s also one of the most famous and saddest dances in the world.”

Central Question: Can idleness be useful?

“In 2008,” writes Dan Fox near the end of his new book, Limbo, “I went to sea.” Encouraged by his older brother, Karl, who has spent his whole adult life working and living on ships since leaving England at 25, and a newspaper article about cargo ship travel, Fox took the sabbatical awarded to him by his bosses at frieze and spent six weeks sailing from Thamesport to Shanghai on a container ship. Aboard the Ital Contessa, “a machine three and a half football pitches long and some forty storeys high,” Fox found pleasure in unvariegated routine. In the mornings, he would walk the ship’s perimeter, use the rowing machine for exercise, and watch the crew play basketball from the stern. Afternoons were spent reading, working from the Teach Yourself Mandarin course Fox brought along for his arrival in Shanghai, while evenings were for journaling and dinner. A beer from the tuck box secured a pleasant night’s sleep. When crew members asked about his profession, Fox told them he was writing a science-fiction novel; he felt “no desire to talk about art.”

Limbo, Fox explains, was initially meant to be another book, “a collection of travel essays designed to shed light on Important Topics to be divined later.” This project was axed because after “a lurch of personal crises,” Fox felt little urgency to recount his travels. So, he took to playing DeBussy compositions on the piano, painted images...