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Today, the surprisingly elastic form of the memoir embraces
subjects that include dying, illness, loss, relationships, and
self-awareness. Writing to reveal the inner self--the pilgrimage
into one's spiritual and/or religious nature--is a primary calling.
Contemporary memoirists are exploring this field with innovative
storytelling, rigorous craft, and new styles of confessional
authorship. Now, Thomas Larson brings his expertise as a critic,
reader, and teacher to the boldly evolving and improvisatory world
of spiritual literature. In his book-length essay Spirituality and
the Writer, Larson surveys the literary insights of authors old and
new who have shaped religious autobiography and spiritual
memoir--from Augustine to Thomas Merton, from Peter Matthiessen to
Cheryl Strayed. He holds them to an exacting standard: they must
render transcendent experience in the writing itself. Only when the
writer's craft prevails can the fleeting and profound personal
truths of the spirit be captured. Like its predecessor, Larson's
The Memoir and the Memoirist, Spirituality and the Writer will find
a home in writing classrooms and book groups, and be a resource for
students, teachers, and writers who seek guidance with exploring
their spiritual lives.
We all know someone who has suffered a heart attack. But, how often
do we learn the intimate, potentially life-saving details that
accompany coronary disease? In The Sanctuary of Illness, Thomas
Larson (The Memoir and the Memoirist; The Saddest Music Ever
Written) gives a powerful and personal inside tour of what happens
when our arteries fail. He chronicles the three heart attacks in
five years that he survived, and the emergency surgeries that saved
his life each time. Slowly waking up to the genetic legacy and
dangerous diet that pushed him to the brink, he reveals a path to
healing that he and his partner, Suzanna, discovered together. Told
with urgency and sensitivity, The Sanctuary of Illness is a subtle
reminder that heart disease seldom affects just one heart.
Anthology of poems, novel and memoir excerpts, and short stories
from San Diego Writers, Ink, a nonprofit literary organization.
The memoir is the most popular and expressive literary form of our
time. Writers embrace the memoir and readers devour it, propelling
many memoirs by relative unknowns to the top of the best-seller
list. Writing programs challenge authors to disclose themselves in
personal narrative. Memoir and personal narrative urge writers to
face the intimacies of the self and ask what is true. In The Memoir
and the Memoirist, critic and memoirist Thomas Larson explores the
craft and purpose of writing this new form. Larson guides the
reader from the autobiography and the personal essay to the
memoir-a genre focused on a particularly emotional relationship in
the author's past, an intimate story concerned more with who is
remembering, and why, than with what is remembered. The Memoir and
the Memoirist touches on the nuances of memory, of finding and
telling the truth, and of disclosing one's deepest self. It
explores the craft and purpose of personal narrative by looking in
detail at more than a dozen examples by writers such as Mary Karr,
Frank McCourt, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Mark Doty, Nuala
O'Faolain, Rick Bragg, and Joseph Lelyveld to show what they reveal
about themselves. Larson also opens up his own writing and that of
his students to demonstrate the hidden mechanics of the writing
process. For both the interested reader of memoir and the writer
wrestling with the craft, The Memoir and the Memoirist provides
guidance and insight into the many facets of this provocative and
popular art form.
The memoir is the most popular and expressive literary form of our
time. Writers embrace the memoir and readers devour it, propelling
many memoirs by relative unknowns to the top of the best-seller
list. Writing programs challenge authors to disclose themselves in
personal narrative. Memoir and personal narrative urge writers to
face the intimacies of the self and ask what is true. In The Memoir
and the Memoirist, critic and memoirist Thomas Larson explores the
craft and purpose of writing this new form. Larson guides the
reader from the autobiography and the personal essay to the
memoir-a genre focused on a particularly emotional relationship in
the author's past, an intimate story concerned more with who is
remembering, and why, than with what is remembered. The Memoir and
the Memoirist touches on the nuances of memory, of finding and
telling the truth, and of disclosing one's deepest self. It
explores the craft and purpose of personal narrative by looking in
detail at more than a dozen examples by writers such as Mary Karr,
Frank McCourt, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Mark Doty, Nuala
O'Faolain, Rick Bragg, and Joseph Lelyveld to show what they reveal
about themselves. Larson also opens up his own writing and that of
his students to demonstrate the hidden mechanics of the writing
process. For both the interested reader of memoir and the writer
wrestling with the craft, The Memoir and the Memoirist provides
guidance and insight into the many facets of this provocative and
popular art form.
"Whenever the American dream suffers a catastrophic setback,
Barber's Adagio plays on the radio."--Alex Ross, author of The Rest
is Noise In the first book ever to explore Samuel Barber's Adagio
for Strings, music and literary critic Thomas Larson tells the
story of the prodigal composer and his seminal masterpiece: from
its composition in 1936, when Barber was just twenty-six, to its
orchestral premiere two years later, led by the great Arturo
Toscanini, and its fascinating history as America's secular hymn
for grieving our dead. Older Americans know Adagio from the
funerals and memorials for Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, Albert
Einstein, and Grace Kelly. Younger Americans recall the work as the
antiwar theme of the movie Platoon. Still others treasure the piece
in its choral version under the name Agnus Dei. More recently,
mourners heard Adagio played as a memorial to the victims of the
9/11 attacks. Barber's Adagio is truly the saddest music ever
written, enrapturing listeners with its lyric beauty as few laments
have. The Adagio's sonorous intensity also speaks of the turbulent
inner life of its composer, Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a
melancholic who, in later years, descended into alcoholism and
severe depression. Part biography, part cultural history, part
memoir, The Saddest Music ever Written captures the deep emotion
Barber's great elegy has stirred throughout the world during its
seventy-five-year history, becoming an icon of our national soul.
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