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Book

The correspondence

Call Number

  • 814 D1863 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Physical Description

126 pages ; 20 cm

Uniform Title

Essays. Selections

Summary

"Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J.D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience--as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son--he considers how far books and learning and psychoanalysis can get us, and how much we're stuck in the mud. In prose wound as tight as a copper spring, Daniels takes us from the highways of his native Kentucky to the Balearic Islands and from the Pampas of Brazil to the rarefied precincts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His traveling companions include psychotic kindergarten teachers, Israeli sailors, and Southern Baptists on fire for Christ. In each dispatch, Daniels takes risks--not just literary (voice, tone, form) but also more immediate, such as spending two years on a Brazilian jujitsu team (he gets beaten to a pulp, repeatedly) or participating in group psychoanalysis (where he goes temporarily insane)"--

Contents

  • Letter from Cambridge
  • Letter from Majorca
  • Letter from Kentucky
  • Letter from Level Four
  • Letter from Devils Tower
  • Letter from the Primal Horde.

Genres

Essays.