Out of Nowhere Into Nothing - Softcover

Caryl Pagel (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573661864 ISBN 13: 9781573661867

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press, 2020

Synopsis

Essays on the apparitional, the incomprehensible, and the paranormal in conversation with art, travel, and storytelling

Out of Nowhere Into Nothing is a collection of sublime meditations on the unbelievable, the coincidental, and the apparitional; the ghosts―literal and figurative―that drive our deepest impulses, disturb our most precious memories, and haunt the passages of our daily lives. Often containing reflections on the art of storytelling, Caryl Pagel’s essays blend memoir, research, and reflection, and are driven by a desire to observe connections between the visual and the invisible. The narrator of Pagel’s essays explores each enigma or encounter (a football coach’s faked death, the faces of women walking, historical accounts of hallucinations, a city’s public celebration gone wrong) as an intellectual detective ascending a labyrinthine tower of clues in pursuit of a solution to an unreachable problem: always curious, and with a sense of profound wonder.

Out of Nowhere Into Nothing is a sprawling, highly associative consideration of the ways in which the observed material world recalls us to larger narrative and aesthetic truths. Interspersed with documentary-style photographs, Pagel’s first collection of prose is a radiant, obsessive investigation into the mysteries at the center of our seemingly mundane lives.

About this title

About the Author

Caryl Pagel is an associate professor at Cleveland State University, where she teaches poetry and nonfiction in the NEOMFA program. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Twice Told and Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death. Pagel is a co-founder and editor at Rescue Press and the director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573661864
• ISBN 13: 9781573661867
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 164