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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live Paperback - 2016

by Peter Orner

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Reader reviews for Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

From the publisher

This 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" (The New York Times).

"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.

Among 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.

An elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, Am I Alone Here? 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.

Details

  • Title Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
  • Author Peter Orner
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 276
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Catapult, New York
  • Publication date 2016-10-25
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index
  • ISBN 9781936787258 / 1936787253
  • Weight 0.95 lbs (0.43 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.25 x 5.5 x 0.88 in (20.96 x 13.97 x 2.24 cm)
  • Category Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • Library of Congress subjects Books and reading, Essays
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2015955986
  • Dewey Decimal Code B

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 11/15/2016, Page 10
  • Kirkus Reviews, 01/01/0001, Page 0
  • Publishers Weekly, 08/22/2016, Page 0
  • Shelf Awareness, 11/18/2016, Page 0

About the author

Peter Orner is the author of two novels, Love and Shame and Love and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, and two story collections, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge and Esther Stories. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Best American Stories. 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.

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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Orner, Peter

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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Peter Orner

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Am I Along Here? Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Along Here? Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

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Am I Alone Here

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Am I Alone Here

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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Orner, Peter

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9781936787258 / 1936787253
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Orner, Peter

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9781936787258 / 1936787253
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Orner, Peter

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9781936787258 / 1936787253
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Description:
Catapult. Used - Good. Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Orner, Peter

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9781936787258 / 1936787253
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Description:
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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live
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Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

by Orner, Peter

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  • Paperback
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Paperback
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9781936787258 / 1936787253
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