A Gesture Through Time

Gesture is a commanding novel, one that, in its nonlinear structure, allows Block to inject the
energy of human emotion into our ever-expanding juggernaut of steel, light, and technology.
To boot, in the enduring materiality of its presence and its playful formal invention, Gesture
sets itself apart as an equally enduring piece of metafiction that recognizes, then explodes,
the boundaries of the medium. American Book Review/ Matt Samet

While there are many talented experimental novelists working today, writers who are able
to transcend the traditional limitations of the novel in order to present rare states of experience
and consciousness, a rarer state of experience and consciousness occurs when an experimental
novel is actually fun to read. A Gesture Through Time, Elizabeth Block’s debut, is that rare
and sparkling find. Not only is Block’s novel more entertaining than most avant-garde writing,
but it gives more pleasure than many mainstream novels from large and small presses alike.
Spuyten Duyvil Press, which in recent years has been steadily improving its batting stats,
hitting doubles and triples and the occasional home run, has finally hit one clean out of the park.
...... Indeed, if Joyce and Eliot were alive today, celebrating literature by taking film cameras apart,
celebrating stream-of-consciousness by dictating their love of technology into digital recorders,
and celebrating sex by showing us what the lesbians are doing behind the steel plant, then Block’s
prose would be the prose that they would be required to write. Robert Clark Young, The Brooklyn Rail

A Gesture Through Time is a work of remarkable ingenuity. With the daring of a poet,
Elizabeth Block splices an unexpected montage of elements to tell a story that is as
intriguing and immediate as life itself. This meticulously written first novel by Block
demonstrates her sophisticated skills as a writer and a vision that expands the
possibilities for fiction. Denise Newman (author of Human Forest, Apogee Press; Editor and Translator)

Elizabeth Block’s A Gesture Through Time is a novel for the new millennium.
Deft and funny and wise, it examines authorship, narration, technology, love,
and memory, and asks most playfully what it means to tell a story. Always
inventing and bravely trying out new strategies, she puts most writers and
their sorry pretenses of invention to shame. In the spirit of Stern’s Tristram
Shandy, A Gesture Through Time captures the relation of muse and amuse, taking the
reader on a spirited, pleasure-filled journey. Maxine Chernoff

Elizabeth Block was born in Detroit, MI, and lives in San Francisco, CA. She has been writing most of her life, and she is also a filmmaker. Since 1985, she has received numerous awards and grants for her writing in three genres (poetry, fiction, essay writing). Her
novel, A Gesture through Time was written under fiscal sponsorship of Intersection for the Arts; it was short-listed with an honorable
mention for the 2004 Starcherone Fiction Prize; it was selected as a 1998 Heekin Foundation first national novel competition finalist; and it was the recipient of a Djerassi Resident Artists Program Tread of Angels Fellowship. She was also recently awarded a 2005 Mills
residency fellowship to the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her writing has been published in a variety of journals, it has been broadcast on the
radio, and it has been performed on stage. Canyon Cinema distributes her short experimental films Make Haste, Slowly and
Strewnpackedcinderwhateverlight, which have been internationally exhibited. She is currently finishing up a book length poetry
manuscript, with accompanying short hand-made 16mm films where she inks poetry directly onto celluloid. She was educated at Bard College, the
University of Michigan, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the California College of the Arts.