{"product_id":"departures-isbn-9781590512913","title":"Departures","description":"\u003ci\u003eDepartures \u003c\/i\u003eis Paul Zweig’s celebration of life and love. Zweig thought of himself as a sojourner, a contemporary Wandering Jew, a man with “a loose wire in his genes.” He led a number of distinct lives: as a Jewish child in Brooklyn and on a farm in the Catskills; as a literature student at Columbia; as a young exile who spent a decade in Paris transforming himself into a French intellectual, absorbing the language, sex, culture, and leftist politics; and as an American man-of-letters who produced a steady stream of poems, essays, and wide-ranging works of literary scholarship and criticism. In 1978, at the age of forty-three, he abruptly entered a new life—”the life of the dying”—which he inhabited for the next six years. His writing was guided by a steely determination to hold the more pressing and distorting sentiments—self-pity, regret, anger, fear—at bay for the sake of his lucidity, which became his way through the world of cancer. This memoir stands as a testament to the passion and spirit with which Zweig lived and to the dignity that he brought to his final years.“An elegant and moving memoir.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“At a time when writers often write with calculated eccentricity rather than out of a fateful obsession, and compose memoirs that seem devoid of self-understanding, [Zweig’s] raw, original studies of culture and his masterly autobiographies provide a rich diet for famished readers.” —Lee Siegel, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Zweig] was never more expressive or appealing than in these final memoirs . . . A moving document of personal integrity.” —Joseph Frank\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The essays are so evocative of their time and place, so perfectly pitched, so persuasive and intense that they form a brilliant kaleidoscopic glimpse of a man in search of himself . . . A remarkable literary legacy.” —\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“There is no better vision of the ecstasy and wonder of our lives. There is no better chronicle of lost youth.” —Gerald Stern\u003cb\u003ePaul Zweig \u003c\/b\u003egrew up in Brooklyn, but left New York to explore Paris in the 1950s.  After a decade in France, he returned to America and established himself as a respected poet, critic, and professor. He wrote five books in the last ten years of his life: \u003ci\u003eDepartures, Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet, The Heresy of Self-Love, Three Journeys: An Automythology, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Adventurer: The Fate of Adventure in\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ethe Western World.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Other Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304663961829,"sku":"NP9781590512913","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590512913.jpg?v=1767724998","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/departures-isbn-9781590512913","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}