How Literature Saved My Life

How Literature Saved My Life

1st Edition

Hardback (05 Feb 2013)

Not available for sale

Includes delivery to the United States

Out of stock

This service is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Publisher's Synopsis

"Reading How Literature Saved My Life is like getting to listen in on a really great, smart, provocative conversation. The book is not straightforward, it resists any single interpretation, and it seems to me to constitute nothing less than a new form." --Whitney Otto
 
In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative for all readers and writers who seek to find salvation in literature.
 
Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal's Pensées to Maggie Nelson's Bluets, Renata Adler's Speedboat to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past ) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his "ridiculous" ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs. Books are his life raft, but when they come to feel un-lifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness. And he shares with us a final irony: he wants "literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn't lie about this--which is what makes it essential."
 
A captivating, thought-provoking, utterly original way of thinking about the essential acts of reading and writing.

Book information

ISBN: 9780307961525
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Imprint: Knopf
Pub date:
Edition: 1st Edition
DEWEY: 813.54
DEWEY edition: 23
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 367g
Height: 219mm
Width: 148mm
Spine width: 21mm