The Inevitable
Contemporary Writers Confront Death
Bradford Morrow (Editor, Introduction by, Bard College), David Shields (Editor, Introduction by)
What is death and how does it touch upon life? Twenty writers look for answers.
Birth is not inevitable. Life certainly isn't. The sole inevitability of existence, the only sure consequence of being alive, is death. In these eloquent and surprising essays, twenty writers face this fact, among them Geoff Dyer, who describes the ghost bikes memorializing those who die in biking accidents; Jonathan Safran Foer, proposing a new way of punctuating dialogue in the face of a family history of heart attacks and decimation by the Holocaust; Mark Doty, whose reflections on the art-porn movie Bijou lead to a meditation on the intersection of sex and death epitomized by the AIDS epidemic; and Joyce Carol Oates, who writes about the loss of her husband and faces her own mortality. Other contributors include Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Peter Straub, and Brenda Hillman.
Book Details
- Paperback
- February 2011
-
ISBN 978-0-393-33936-9
- 5.5 × 8.2 in
/ 336 pages
- Territory Rights: Worldwide
Endorsements & Reviews
“Starred Review. A wonderfully speculative patchwork quilt on the meaning of life and death.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[A] diversity of views, yet a consistently high level of thought. Their
eloquent introduction sets up these pieces, several of them previously
published. Suffusing the collection as a whole is the humility expressed by Lynne
Tillman at the end of her essay: "Of death, mortals are absolutely
ignorant. The dead, fortunately, are beyond caring." Ultimately, these
readings may bring the reader some comfort to realize, perhaps again,
that we are all in this together.” — Alan Moores, Seattle Times
Also by David Shields 
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