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
What Is It Like to be Alive?: Fourteen Attempts at an Answer

What Is It Like to be Alive?: Fourteen Attempts at an Answer

Arthur, Chris

Paperback

Letters & Essays

Publisher Price: $25.99

ISBN10: 195809451X
ISBN13: 9781958094518
Publisher: Eastover Press
Published: Sep 10 2024
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.78
Height: 0.64 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

In What is it Like to be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer, prize-winning essayist Chris Arthur looks into life's mirror and offers an account of what can be seen in ordinary things. Each of the book's fourteen essays is an exercise in seeing beyond the obvious, and finding hidden depth in the places and things we might otherwise take for granted. Arthur ranges over subjects as various as a patch of lichen growing on a windowsill, memories of a childhood barber's shop, the inscriptions on park benches, goldcrests (Europe's smallest bird), different ways of seeing a statue, and the dimensions of a moment. Whether he's writing about the plight of nineteenth century Japanese prostitutes, a ferret's momentary appearance through a letterbox, a girl's obsession with the Holocaust, or a black and white photograph of a child holding a horse in a snowy field in Sweden, these unorthodox meditations, with striking lyricism, tap into unexpected seams of mystery in our everyday terrain. The book offers a virtuoso demonstration of the potential of the creative essay, and shows how different it is from the tedious academic assignments that share its name.

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