{"product_id":"am-i-alone-here-isbn-9781936787258","title":"Am I Alone Here?","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis National Book Critics Circle Award is “an entrancing attempt to catch what falls between: the irreducibly personal, messy, even embarrassing ways reading and living bleed into each other, which neither literary criticism nor autobiography ever quite acknowledges\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times). \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Stories, both my own and those I’ve taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I’ve become,” Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and living. Orner reads and writes everywhere he finds himself: a hospital cafeteria, a coffee shop in Albania, or a crowded bus in Haiti. The result is a book of unlearned meditations that stumbles into memoir.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the many writers Orner addresses are Isaac Babel and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom told their truths and were silenced; Franz Kafka, who professed loneliness but craved connection; Robert Walser, who spent the last twenty-three years of his life in a Swiss insane asylum, working at being crazy; and Juan Rulfo, who practiced the difficult art of silence. Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Yasunari Kawabata, Saul Bellow, Mavis Gallant, John Edgar Wideman, William Trevor, and Václav Havel make appearances, as well as the poet Herbert Morris--about whom almost nothing is known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, \u003ci\u003eAm I Alone Here?\u003c\/i\u003e is also a celebration of the possibility of renewal. At once personal and panoramic, this book will inspire readers to return to the essential stories of their own lives.\u003cb\u003eA National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in Criticism\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An entrancing attempt to catch what falls between those genres: the irreducibly personal, messy, even embarrassing ways reading and living bleed into each other, which neither literary criticism nor autobiography ever quite acknowledge.” —Nicholas Dames, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The underlying force of the book is the desire to recover the 'weight of what's vanished' and fiction's alchemical ability to do so.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Orner has excellent taste: The subjects of his rhapsodic appreciations range from Eudora Welty to Lyonel Trouillot, and his love for the written word is palpable.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The most beautiful, moving book I’ve read in a very long time, and I’ll use any opportunity to mention it . . . I encourage anyone who loves reading, I mean who truly loves reading, to immediately go to a bookshop and demand a copy.” --Alexander Maksik, \u003ci\u003eThe Huffington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sometimes it's hard to buy a book for a book nerd, because you don't know what they haven't read yet. But any book-lover will be enthralled by this spirited exploration of life as a reader.\" --Melissa Ragsdale, \u003ci\u003eBustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Made me want to close myself in a dusty bookstore for a few months to read until my eyes burn and my soul is washed clean of the trivial. Alone there, yes. But with all the world before me.\" --Leilani Clark, \u003ci\u003eThe Spine, KQED Arts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Orner, a distinguished fiction writer, appears here as a devoted book lover, inviting the reader to an intimate and friendly book group of two . . . Readers will be delighted to join him, grab one of the stories he delves into, and enjoy his company.\" --\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Book lovers will devour these genuine, personal tales about literature and reading.\" --\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This book, thank god, defies any category.  It's partly an ode to reading, partly a memoir of Chicago and family, partly a travelogue, and often it's all of these things in one four-page essay. Orner reads Cheever in Albania, thinks about Salinger in Haiti, salutes his father from a taqueria in San Francisco. Although some will want to dive in randomly and skip around, reading these exquisite essays in order allows the book to develop a momentum and cumulative power that sneaks up on you and knocks you back.” --Dave Eggers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Brisk, beautiful essays about reading, and (as a bonus) it's also a wry, self-examining memoir of being a child, a partner, and a parent. It will remind you of important books you've forgotten and make you want to read ones you haven't, and it really will make you feel less alone.\" --Maile Meloy, author of \u003ci\u003eBoth Ways Is the Only Way I Want It\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Orner\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of two novels, \u003ci\u003eLove and Shame and Love\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo\u003c\/i\u003e, and two story collections, \u003ci\u003eLast Car Over the Sagamore Bridge\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eEsther Stories\u003c\/i\u003e. His work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eBest American Stories\u003c\/i\u003e. A recipient of Guggenheim and Lannan Foundation Fellowships, as well as a Fulbright to Namibia, Orner has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Montana, Northwestern, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. He is currently on the faculty of San Francisco State University and a member of the Bolinas Volunteer Fire Department.","brand":"Catapult","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302577950949,"sku":"NP9781936787258","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781936787258.jpg?v=1767721366","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/am-i-alone-here-isbn-9781936787258","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}