‘Contemporary culture has eliminated both the concept of the public and the figure of the intellectual,’ Zero’s manifesto stated, but ‘another kind of discourse – intellectual without being academic, popular without being populist – is not only possible: it is already flourishing.’ Zero also published Militant Modernism by Owen Hatherley, One-Dimensional Woman by Nina Power and The Meaning of David Cameron by Richard Seymour, all of which grew from their authors’ blogposts. The books are short and slim, and much of their content is crafted from pieces tried out on Fisher’s blog, k-punk, on which he wrote, sometimes daily, from 2003. The publishers, Zero Books and, from 2014, Repeater, were run by Fisher’s friend the novelist Tariq Goddard, with help from Fisher himself. It was followed in 2014 by Ghosts of My Life, then The Weird and the Eerie (2016). To read Sebald, according to Mabey, was to watch the belittlement of ‘a very close friend’.įisher’s first book, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? was published towards the end of 2009, and by 2017 had sold more than 30,000 copies (55,000 and still rising by this March). This was ‘mittelbrow miserablism’, Fisher continued, ‘an anachronistic, antiqued model of “good literature”’ he quoted the naturalist Richard Mabey, who, like Fisher, had known and loved that coast for years. Sebald, in his much admired Rings of Saturn (1995), ‘morosely trudged through the Suffolk spaces without really looking at them’. He had wanted to raise his son there, to work from home, be ‘supported by the landscape’ and go on long walks: he didn’t write much about walks or landscapes, but he did once mention how much he distrusted the way W.G. He grew up in Leicestershire and had lived in various places but it was Suffolk, where he’d spent childhood holidays, that he really loved. ‘We fell foul of a lot of reforms that have taken place.’ Fisher was 48 when he died, ‘an influential writer, music blogger and university lecturer’, the Ipswich Star reported, who taught in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths in South-East London. ‘The hospital services are always attentive and on the ball, but once you leave hospital, the GP becomes your access to any help,’ she explained.

His wife, Zoe, told the inquest that they had been seeking help for him, but the local NHS trust hadn’t been able to offer anything beyond a telephone chat with a GP. His mental health had been deteriorating, according to the Ipswich Star’s report of the inquest, since the previous May. M ark Fisher killed himself on 13 January 2017, at the house in Felixstowe he shared with his wife and young son.

Mark fisher capitalist realism review