Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
I Will Take the Answer: Essays

I Will Take the Answer: Essays

Monson, Ander

Paperback

Letters & Essays

Publisher Price: $16.00

ISBN10: 1644450119
ISBN13: 9781644450116
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: Feb 4 2020
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.20
Language: English

A moving and wide-ranging collection of essays by the author of Letter to a Future Lover

The idea of connection permeates I Will Take the Answer, Ander Monson's fourth book of utterly original and intelligent essays. How is our present connected to our past and future? How do neural connections form memories, and why do we recall them when we do? And how do we connect with one another in meaningful ways across time and space?

In the opening essay, which extends across the book in brief subsequent pieces, a trip through a storm sewer in Tucson inspires Monson to trace the city's relationship to Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman who shot Gabrielle Giffords and killed six bystanders, along with how violence is produced and how we grieve and honor the dead. With the formally inventive I in River, he ruminates on water in a waterless city and the structures we use to attempt to contain and control it. Monson also visits the exuberantly nerdy kingdom of a Renaissance Faire, and elaborates on the enduring appeal of sad songs through the lens of March Sadness, an online competition that he cofounded, an engaging riff on the NCAA basketball tournament brackets in which sad songs replace teams.

As personal and idiosyncratic as the best mixtape, I Will Take the Answer showcases Monson's deep thinking and broad-ranging interests, his sly wit, his soft spot for heavy metal, and his ability to tunnel deeply into the odd and revealing, sometimes subterranean, worlds of American life.

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