Object Lessons

Rabate counters our instinctively negative view of rust with a surprisingly wide variety of examples drawn from philosophy as well as the arts and sciences for a strikingly and broadly convincing argument as to the merits of rust ... Rabate presents rust as an imperfection with unlimited possibilities. He clarifies its role in our lives and complicates how we value its role. He brings readers his family rouille recipe and the news that someday soon, science may give us a green rust capable of cleaning our water and soil ... He provides plenty of food for thought as we run into these references across daily life. * PopMatters *
This is a witty, delightfully eclectic fantasy and fugue on the theme of rust, which, it turns out, is a perfect metaphor for an aesthetics of metamorphosis in and after modernism. Rust has the ruddy glow of active thinking in the process of self-transformation. Rust not only doesn't sleep, it never stops giving off sparks. * Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, USA *
Through his elegant alchemical associations, Rabate spins Rust to gold. * Vanessa Place, artist and criminal defense attorney *
Rust has its fascinating moments, those deeply poetic instants where metaphor becomes real and you get a tiny glimpse of the wonder that can reside inside seemingly ordinary items. * San Francisco Book Review *