| Description |
xvii, 316 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm |
| Note(S) |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Chekhov's way of dying -- Bachelor uncle -- Winter in September -- Wideman's welcome -- Lonely voice -- Stray thoughts on Kafka -- Eudora Welty, badass -- Walser on Mission Street -- On the beauty of not writing, or an unnecessary homage to Juan Rulfo -- Upper Moose Lake, 1990 -- My father's gloves -- Unforgivable -- While reading Imre Kertész -- Under all this noise -- Hit and run -- Carter on Borden -- Shameless impostors -- Infinite passion of Gina Berriault -- Since the beginning of time -- Surviving the lives we have -- Every grief-soaked world -- A Black boy, a white boy -- A small note from Haiti -- Mad passionate true love -- Frederick the great -- An American writer: Victor Martinez -- Cheever in Albania -- All lives are interesting -- Sisters and brothers -- Parting -- What feels like the world -- Virgie walking away -- Cincinnati, 2001 -- Salter -- Early morning thoughts on Ahab -- All fathers are fictional -- Ronald A. Orner -- Letter from New Melleray, Iowa -- A Palm-of -the-hand story -- Night train to split -- Father's death: The final version. |
| Summary |
'Stories, both my own and those I've taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I've become,' Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and living. Orner reads and writes everywhere he finds himself: a hospital cafeteria, a coffee shop in Albania, or a crowded bus in Haiti. The result is 'a book of unlearned meditations that stumbles into memoir.' Among the many writers Orner addresses are Isaac Babel and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom told their truths and were silenced; Franz Kafka, who professed loneliness but craved connection; Robert Walser, who spent the last twenty-three years of his life in a Swiss insane asylum, 'working" at being crazy; and Juan Rulfo, who practiced the difficult art of silence. Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Yasunari Kawabata, Saul Bellow, Mavis Gallant, John Edgar Wideman, William Trevor, and Václav Havel make appearances, as well as the poet Herbert Morris about whom almost nothing is known. |
| Subject(S) |
Essays -- 21st century.
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American essays -- 21st century.
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English literature -- 20th century.
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Literature -- Essays.
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Criticism -- Books & Reading.
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Biography & autobiography -- Literary.
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Authors, American -- Books and reading.
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Authors -- Books and reading.
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Books and reading.
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English literature.
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Essays.
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Creative nonfiction.
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| Added Name(S) |
Orner, Eric, illustrator.
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| ISBN |
9781936787258 |
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1936787253 |
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Other Resources
