These Possible Lives (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780811226875)

New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggy's strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quincey's early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb "spoke of 'Lilliputian rabbits' when eating frog fricassse"; Henry Fuseli "ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams"; "Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers"; and "Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke." In a book of "blue devils" and night visions, the Keats essay opens: "In 1803, the guillotine was a common child's toy." And poor Schwob's end comes as he feels "like a 'dog cut open alive'" "His face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief." Fleur Jaeggy's essays--or are they prose poems?--smoke of necessity: the pages are on fire.

Author: Fleur Jaeggy
ISBN-10: 0811226875
ISBN-13: 9780811226875
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 07/25/2017
Pages: 64
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.10lbs
Size: 6.90h x 5.00w x 0.30d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/06/2017
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2017