These Possible Lives - Softcover

Fleur Jaeggy; Minna Proctor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811226875 ISBN 13: 9780811226875

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017

Synopsis

"...vibrant and unforced, shimmering with the complexity of reality. As in Plutarch's Parallel Lives, the juxtaposition of [these] biographies accentuates their common characteristics, and from this triptych a survey of genius, mysticism and intoxication emerges." Financial Times

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.

About this title

About the Author

The London Times Literary Supplement named Fleur Jaeggy's S.S. Proleterka as a Best Book of the Year; and her Sweet Days of Discipline won the Premio Bagutta as well as the Premio Speciale Rapallo.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811226875
• ISBN 13: 9780811226875
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64