One of the first books written entirely on Facebook

Introduction by Kevin Killian
Cover art by Klaus Killisch
Book 3 of 5, TrenchArt Surplus Series
Prose | $15.00
ISBN 13: 978-1-934254-35-6
Size: 9.25″ X 4.25″
Pages: 255
Binding: Softcover, Perfect

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On February 6 2009, Matias Viegener logged into Facebook and wrote a short list of random things about himself. He had been tagged in a friend’s meme, “25 Random Things About Me,” and though it irked him, he decided to respond. The meme’s premise was simple: Write 25 unrelated facts about yourself, then ask 25 friends to compose their own list. The next day, Matias composed a second list, despite remarking in the first, “I don’t want to tell people things they don’t know about me.” Two days later, he wrote a third. Then a fourth. The question became: Is it possible, given our love of stories and human proclivity toward habit, to make a long and truly random list from one’s life? The 100 lists assembled in 2500 Random Things About Me Too set out to do just that, exploring along the way the relationships between family, memory, sexuality, social networks, and randomness—on and offline.

Viegener limited himself to a single day for each list, leaving his topics unlimited while aiming to avoid repititions. His reflections wander through past and present—the writing and art scenes of New York and Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s, his sexual adventures, his friendship with Kathy Acker, and his current art practice as a co-founder of the Fallen Fruit collaborative. Neither memoir nor diary but with aspects of each, 2500 Random Things About Me Too recalls the work of Joe Brainard and John Cage. It is an experiment in the construction of identity in a Facebook-drenched world of self-manufacturing and short attention spans. Possibly the first book to have been composed entirely on Facebook, 2500 Random Things About Me Too is a text-cloud raining art, dogs, sex, death, and fruit.

Read one of the lists on our Give a Fig blog.

2500 Random Things About Me Too is published as part of the TrenchArt: Surplus Series, with an introduction by Kevin Killian and visual art by Klaus Killisch. Become a member and receive Matias Viegener’s aesthetic essay, and the other 4 books in the series for only $60. Sign up today to become a member.

Praise for 2500 Random Things About Me Too

“You can’t put two words together without creating a meaning, and you can’t make a list without inflecting narrative on your reader. Matias Viegener resists calling his book a memoir, but asks us to think of it as a ‘procedural experiment that comes to resemble and echo the memoir.’ That it does.”

-Kevin Killian

“Bracketed by three deaths—his mother’s, his friend’s and his dog’s—Matias Viegener’s 2500 Random Things is an extraordinary capture of a life and a consciousness in middle age, when mortality and the grid of associations laid by one’s personal history cannot be denied. Chained to the task of compiling these ‘random’ lists, Viegener creates a self-portrait—of the whole world!—that encompasses everything from Descartes to the grooming habits of parrots, with plenty of sex, beauty and boredom. Like Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, Viegener’s journey leads nowhere except to an emptying out. Compulsively readable, the book is a brilliant achievement. I could not put it down.”

-Chris Kraus

“Boris Vian called it “the froth of the days,” an honorific that miraculously anticipated the textures of social networking by a half-century. And now Matias Viegener gives this to us with such grace and ease we can only take it in and read it as the background hum of our lives, somehow turned into literature: 2500 Random Things About Me Too, beautifully designed and produced by Les Figues Press, is utterly contemporary, intelligent, and wry—a double-edged sword—like all of Matias Viegener’s best work.”

-Matthew Stadler

More Reviews…

Janis Butler Holm at The Iowa Review

Daniel Coffey at ForeWord Reviews

Colin Dickey at Used Furniture Review

Marie Lecrivain at Al-Khemia Poetica

John Yau at Hyperallergic

TT Jax at Lambda Literary

Jacob Wren at Lemon Hound