| Occasional Desire: Essays Contributor(s): Lazar, David (Author) |
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ISBN: 0803246382 ISBN-13: 9780803246386 Publisher: University of Nebraska Press OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2013 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Collections | Essays |
| Dewey: 814.6 |
| LCCN: 2013005456 |
| Physical Information: 0.59" H x 5.61" W x 8.5" (0.65 lbs) 232 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In his new collection of essays, Occasional Desire, David Lazar meditates on random violence and vanished phone booths, on the excessive relationship to jewelry that links Kobe Bryant and Elizabeth Taylor, on Hitchcock, Francis Bacon, and M. F. K. Fisher. He explores, in his concentrically self-aware, amused, and ironic voice, what it means to be occasionally aware that we are surviving by our wits, and that our desires, ulterior or obvious, are what keep us alive. Lazar also turns his attention on the essay itself, affording us a three-dimensional look at the craft and the art of reading and writing a literary form that maps the world as it charts the peregrinations of the mind. Lazar is especially interested in the trappings of memory, the trapdoors of memory, the way we gild or codify, select, soften, and self-delude ourselves based on our understanding of the past. His own process of selection and reflection reminds us of how far this literary form can take us, bound only by the limits of desire and imagination. David Lazar is a professor of creative writing and English at Columbia College Chicago and the editor of Hotel Amerika. His works include The Body of Brooklyn, Powder Town, and Essaying the Essay. |