{"product_id":"men-in-the-off-hours-isbn-9780375707568","title":"Men in the Off Hours","description":"Anne Carson has been acclaimed by her peers as the most imaginative poet writing today.  In a recent profile, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e paid tribute to her amazing ability to combine the classical and the modern, the mundane and the surreal, in a body of work that is sure to endure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003cb\u003eMen in the Off Hours\u003c\/b\u003e, Carson offers further proof of her tantalizing gifts.  Reinventing figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, and Audubon, Carson sets up startling juxtapositions: Lazarus among video paraphernalia, Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war, Edward Hopper paintings illuminated by St. Augustine.  And in a final prose poem, she meditates movingly on the recent death of her mother.  With its quiet, acute spirituality and its fearless wit and sensuality, \u003cb\u003eMen in the Off Hours\u003c\/b\u003e shows us a fiercely individual poet at her best.ANNE CARSON was born in Canada and has been a professor of Classics for over thirty years. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.\u003cb\u003eTV Men: Lazarus\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VOICEOVER\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYes I admit a degree of unease about my\u003cbr\u003emotives in making\u003cbr\u003ethis documentary.\u003cbr\u003eMere prurience of a kind that is all too common nowadays\u003cbr\u003ein public catastrophes. I was listening\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto a peace negotiator for the Balkans talk\u003cbr\u003eabout his vocation\u003cbr\u003eon the radio the other day.\u003cbr\u003e\"We drove down through this wasteland and I didn't know\u003cbr\u003emuch about the area but I was\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efascinated by the horrors of it. I had never\u003cbr\u003eseen a thing like this.\u003cbr\u003eI videotaped it.\u003cbr\u003eThen sent a 13-page memo to the UN with my suggestions.\"\u003cbr\u003eThis person was a member\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof the International Rescue Committee,\u003cbr\u003enot a man of TV.\u003cbr\u003eBut you can see\u003cbr\u003ehow the pull is irresistible. The pull to handle horrors\u003cbr\u003eand to have a theory of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut now I see my assistant producer waving her arms\u003cbr\u003eat me to get\u003cbr\u003eon with the script.\u003cbr\u003eThe name Lazarus is an abbreviated form of Hebrew 'El'azar,\u003cbr\u003emeaning \"God has helped.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have long been interested in those whom God has helped.\u003cbr\u003eIt seems often to be the case,\u003cbr\u003ee.g. with saints or martyrs,\u003cbr\u003ethat God helps them to far more suffering than they would have\u003cbr\u003ewithout God's help. But then you get\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esomeone like Lazarus, a man of no\u003cbr\u003eparticular importance,\u003cbr\u003eon whom God bestows\u003cbr\u003ethe ultimate benevolence, without explanation, then abandons\u003cbr\u003ehim again to his nonentity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe are left wondering, Why Lazarus?\u003cbr\u003eMy theory is\u003cbr\u003eGod wants us to wonder this.\u003cbr\u003eAfter all, if there were some quality that Lazarus possessed,\u003cbr\u003esome criterion of excellence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eby which he was chosen to be called\u003cbr\u003eback\u003cbr\u003efrom death,\u003cbr\u003ethen we would all start competing to achieve this.\u003cbr\u003eBut if\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGod's gift is simply random, well\u003cbr\u003efor one thing\u003cbr\u003eit makes a\u003cbr\u003emore interesting TV show. God's choice can be seen emerging\u003cbr\u003efrom the dark side of reason\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike a new planet. No use being historical\u003cbr\u003eabout this planet,\u003cbr\u003eit is just an imitation.\u003cbr\u003eAs Lazarus is an imitation of Christ. As TV is an imitation of\u003cbr\u003eLazarus. As you and I are an imitation of\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTV. Already you notice that\u003cbr\u003ealthough I am merely\u003cbr\u003ea director of photography,\u003cbr\u003eI have grasped certain fundamental notions first advanced by Plato,\u003cbr\u003ee.g. that our reality is just a TV set\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einside a TV set inside a TV set, with nobody watching\u003cbr\u003ebut Sokrates,\u003cbr\u003ewho changed\u003cbr\u003ethe channel in 399 B.C. But my bond with Lazarus goes deeper, indeed\u003cbr\u003enausea overtakes me when faced with\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe prospect of something simply beginning all over again.\u003cbr\u003eEach time I have to\u003cbr\u003eraise my slate and say\u003cbr\u003e\"Take 12!\" or \"Take 13!\" and then \"Take 14!\"\u003cbr\u003eI cannot restrain a shudder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRepetition is horrible. Poor Lazarus cannot have known\u003cbr\u003ehe was an\u003cbr\u003eimitation Christ,\u003cbr\u003ebut who can doubt he realized, soon after being ripped out of his\u003cbr\u003ewarm little bed in the ground,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehis own epoch of repetition just beginning.\u003cbr\u003eLazarus Take 2!\u003cbr\u003ePoor drop.\u003cbr\u003eAs a bit of salt falls back down the funnel. Or maybe my pity\u003cbr\u003eis misplaced. Some people think Lazarus lucky,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike Samuel Beckett who calls him \"Happy Larry\" or Rilke\u003cbr\u003ewho speaks of\u003cbr\u003ethat moment in a game\u003cbr\u003ewhen \"the pure too-little flips over into the empty too-much.\"\u003cbr\u003eWell I am now explaining why my documentary\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efocuses entirely on this moment, the flip-over moment.\u003cbr\u003eBefore and after\u003cbr\u003edon't interest me.\u003cbr\u003eYou won't be seeing any clips from home videos of Lazarus\u003cbr\u003ein short pants racing his sisters up a hill.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo footage of Mary and Martha side by side on the sofa\u003cbr\u003ediscussing how they manage\u003cbr\u003eat home\u003cbr\u003ewith a dead one sitting down to dinner. No panel of experts\u003cbr\u003edebating who was really the victim here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur sequence begins and ends with that moment of complete\u003cbr\u003einnocence\u003cbr\u003eand sport--\u003cbr\u003ewhen Lazarus licks the first drop of afterlife off the nipple\u003cbr\u003eof his own old death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI put tiny microphones all over the ground\u003cbr\u003eto pick up\u003cbr\u003ethe magic\u003cbr\u003eof the vermin in his ten fingers and I stand back to wait\u003cbr\u003efor the miracle.National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303316443365,"sku":"NP9780375707568","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375707568.jpg?v=1767732549","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/men-in-the-off-hours-isbn-9780375707568","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}