How Literature Saved My Life
By David Shields
By David Shields
By David Shields
By David Shields
-
$20.00
Nov 05, 2013 | ISBN 9780345802729
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Feb 05, 2013 | ISBN 9780307961532
-
$20.00
Nov 05, 2013 | ISBN 9780345802729
-
Feb 05, 2013 | ISBN 9780307961532
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Praise
âHere is a mind on fire, a writer at war with the page. . . . These rigorous, high-octane, exhaustive yet taut ruminations on ambivalence, love, melancholy, and mortality are like an arrow laced with crack to the brain. [Shieldsâ] gun-to-the-head prose explicates an all-consuming passion for reading, writing, and âthe redemptive grace of human consciousness itself.â
âO, The Oprah Magazine
âIn this wonderful, vastly entertaining book, he weaves together literary criticism, quotations, and his own fragmentary recollections to illustrate, in form and content, how artâreal art, the kind that engages and reflects the world around itâhas made his life meaningful as both creator and beholder. Shields is an elegant, charming, and very funny writer. . . . Although his subject is himself, his instructions should prove usefulâinspiring evenâto all readers and writers.â
âThe Boston Globe
âShields is a stunning writer. Within this book lies significant passion and revelation. . . . What makes for an amazing reading experience is the piecing together an argument from the fragments. . . . The guy is a maestro.â
âThe Huffington Post
âShields has an uncanny ability to tap into the short attention span of modern culture and turn it into something positive. . . . How Literature Saved My Life presents a way forward for literature in new forms.â
âThe A.V. Club
âEminently readable and surprisingly life-affirming. . . . Mr. Shields has written a great book, and one which matters. . . . Uncompromisingly intelligent, blisteringly forthright, and eschewing convention at every turn. . . . Mr. Shields is one engaging writer. His enthusiasm is contagious. He cares, deeply, about his subject.â
âNew York Journal of Books
âThere is no more interesting writer at this precise moment than David Shields. I would call three of his books among the most important weâve seen in the last 15 years: The Thing About Life Is That One Day Youâll Be Dead, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, and now this. His nonfiction books are as much galvanizing electrical fields as those of David Foster Wallace were.â
âJeff Simon, Buffalo News, Editorâs Choice
âConcise, fearless, urgent. A soulful writer, a skillful storyteller, and a man on the hunt for the Exquisite. Shields is, in a writerly sense, as brave as they come. A giant, thrilling ride.â
âBookforum
âShields has composed not a paean to the glories of narrative or language, but a work that sits somewhere between essay and memoir, resisting easy expectations. . . . altogether fascinating.â
âPublishers Weekly, starred review
âQuintessential genre-defying Shields. His writing gives you [a] sense of vertigo. Itâs energizing and weird, and it works.â
âThe Village Voice
âShieldsâs ideas about literature come from a place of deep love; heâs not trying to destroy but rebuild what is already broken.â
âArtInfo
âIâm grateful for How Literature Saved My Life because the book has made me think againâand for the first time in a whileââWell, what is it we do when we read?â Itâs a damned annoying question, but it needs to be asked now and then, and Shields has asked it in a way I find resonant and moving.â
âAndre Alexis, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
âThoroughly rewarding.â
âLondon Evening Standard
âSmart, self-deprecating, and funny.â
âThe Plain Dealer
âWhat else are you looking for thatâs as real and interesting as another intelligent, articulate, bibliophilic humanâs personal revelations?â
âAustin Chronicle
â[One of] our most genial essayists. . . . You read [Shields] for the zip of his consciousness.â
âChicago Tribune
âAn invigorating polemicist, as well as a subtle and amusing memoirist.â
âThe New Statesman (UK)
âBoth a boldly written love note to that most precious of subjects, and David Shieldsâs latest statute in his quest for âart with a visible string to the world.ââ
âHTML Giant
âWhat makes us read and write when it is harder than ever to âonly connectâ? Examining our relationships with books.â
âSalon, Editorâs Pick
âWe can always count on Shields to force us to probe the edges of the way we think about, read, and even write literature and criticism of any kind.â
âFlavorwire, One of Ten Books That Could Save Your Life and One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2013