Contagiously curious essays on reading, art, and the life of the mind, from the acclaimed author ofThe Unreality of Memory.
Who are we when we read? When we journal? Are we more ourselves alone or with friends? Right now or in memory? How does time transform us and the art we love?
In sixteen dazzling, expansive essays, the acclaimed essayist and poet Elisa Gabbert explores a life lived alongside books of all kinds: dog-eared and destroyed, cherished and discarded, classic and clichd, familiar and profoundly new. She turns her witty, searching mind to the writers she admires, from Plath to Proust, and the themes that bind themchance, freedom, envy, ambition, nostalgia, and happiness. She takes us to the strange edges of art and culture, from hair metal to surf movies to party fiction.Any Person Is the Only Selfis a love letter to literature and to life, inviting us to think alongside one of our most thrilling and versatile critics.
Elisa Gabbertis the author of
Normal Distance,
The Unreality of Memory, and several other collections of poetry, essays,
and criticism. She writes the On Poetry column for
The New York Times, and her work has appeared in
Harpers Magazine,
The Atlantic,
The Believer,
The New York Times Magazine,
The New York Review of Books, and other publications.
Praise forAny Person Is the Only Self
A work of embodied and experiential criticism, a record of its authors shifting relationships with the literature that defines her life . . . Gabbert is a master of mood, not polemic . . . In place of the analytic pleasures of a robustly defended thesis, we findthe fresh thrills of a poets perfected phrases and startling observations.Any Person Is the Only Selfis both funny and serious, a winning melee of high and low cultural references, as packed with unexpected treasures as a crowded antique shop . . .Slƒ.
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