“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” — Adorno, Minima Moralia

It is full of surprises, this book that interweaves the philosophical and the personal. It is a creature of excess that gives the appearance of being casually composed, layer by layer, aphorism by fragment, resisting integration into the totality of a completed system. There is an intense quality similar to that of atonal music, a teetering on an edge that is never quite resolved between art, philosophy and political polemic. As with Minima Moralia, this book is an indictment of what capitalism is doing to life (and death). Matches can share with Adorno’s book its subtitle: Reflections from Damaged Life, and its idea that the notion of an ethical life is so battered that all philosophy can do is survey the destruction and dream of what has been lost. It is an unflinchingly perceptive book, a heartfelt reflection of what it is to be neither dead nor alive.