Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.
Format:
CONTRIBUTORS: David Shields
EAN: 9780141049496
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
PAGES:
WEIGHT: 181 g
HEIGHT: 198 cm
PUBLISHED BY: Penguin Books Ltd
DATE PUBLISHED: 2011-03-03
CITY:
GENRE: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Death, Grief, Bereavement, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying
WIDTH: 129 cm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
Memoirs, Sociology: death and dying, Coping with / advice about death and bereavement
So pure and wide in its implications that I think of it almost as a secular, unsentimental Kahlil Gibran: a textbook for the acceptance of our fate on earth, Breathtaking . . . Shields had us laughing out loud, even in the face of death, Mix equal parts of anatomy and autobiography, science and self-disclosure, physiology and family history; shake, stir, add dashes of miscellany, pinches of borrowed wisdom, simmer over a low-grade fever of mortality, and a terrible beauty of a book is born, Shields is a sharp-eyed, self-deprecating, at times hilarious writer
David Shields is the author of nine other books, including Reality Hunger and Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.www.davidshields.com
