Sign-In
Cart
The Break
Paperback
Biographies GeneralMetaphysical General
Publisher Price: $17.99
ISBN13: 9781734734188
Publisher: Arbitrary Press
Published: Oct 1 2022
Pages: 246
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.52 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
First diagnosed with schizophrenia following his freshman year at Harvard, Steve Lansky learned over the years to manage his mental illness with the help of medication. By middle age, he had forged a life as a poet and teacher. But like so many similarly afflicted, he felt heavy and hamstrung by the drug that had helped keep him sane. When a new drug came on the market, Lansky switched to it, hoping to regain the energy and lightness of his youth. It worked. He was able to pursue a romance with a young aspiring actress. He started riding his bike again-a lifelong passion. But his renewed energy also led him in directions less healthy and tethered to reality.
As The Break begins, Steve is embarking, despite admonitions from academic colleagues, on an ill-considered and quixotic train trip from his Cincinnati hometown to The New Yorker Festival, where he believes he will be able to persuade someone at the magazine to publish one of his poems. In a voice that is at times comic, at other times harrowing, Lansky describes his increasing disorientation, which culminates, after he gets on the wrong train home, with a late-night arrest in a trainyard and a stint in a New Jersey state mental hospital. Following his release, he embarks on another poorly conceived journey, this time an unwelcome visit to his brother in Vermont with whom he shares a plan to see author Margaret Atwood so she and Steve can discuss her novel Alias Grace. With a hero who is part Bukowski, part Neal Cassady, part Humbert Humbert, The Break shows how tenuous sanity is, and how easy it is for inspiration to give way to madness.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Erdoes, Richard
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover