The World Is a Book, Indeed: Writing, Reading, and Traveling
Peter Lasalle
(Author)
Description
The World Is a Book, Indeed chronicles in eleven rich personal essays the ongoing quest of award-winning writer Peter LaSalle to embark on offbeat, often startlingly revelatory literary travel.
LaSalle spends a summer roaming the lesser-known quarters of Paris, haunted by the writing of the French surrealists. In Hanoi, he meets for beers with the editors--two military men--of the Army Literature and Arts Magazine while investigating Vietnam's acknowledged great modern novel, Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War. Other pieces find LaSalle on a strange nighttime drive through the streets of sprawling São Paulo in search of landmarks associated with Brazilian modernist poetry, bouncing around Africa to interview writers there when very young, exploring Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges's memorable stay in Texas, and traveling to Istanbul, Lisbon, Tunis, and elsewhere, as he considers major writers amid the settings that produced their works. Deeply felt and replete with insight into literature and life itself, even capable of evoking valid mind leaps in its innovative approaches, this is a collection for readers who love books and want to learn more about the places they originated, presented by a well-traveled guide with an intimate voice and a gift for the essay form.Product Details
Price
$24.95
$23.20
Publisher
LSU Press
Publish Date
October 07, 2020
Pages
240
Dimensions
5.5 X 8.5 X 0.55 inches | 0.68 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780807173961
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
Peter LaSalle is the author of two novels, five story collections, and a previous collection of essays on literary travel, The City at Three P.M. His writing on travel and literature has appeared in, among others, The Progressive, Africa Today, New England Review, Southern Review, and The Best American Travel Writing 2014 (selected by Paul Theroux). He teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin
Reviews
LaSalle shows himself to be a smart and open writer with a restless intellect and infectious passion for travel and literature.--Publishers Weekly
LaSalle's command of the language is admirable, but even more admirable is his moral vision.--Dallas Times-Herald
LaSalle's stories are full of detail, and he knows how to create a sense of place, be it Buenos Aires, Austin, Texas, Paris, or Boston.--Atlanta Journal-Constitution
LaSalle's dreamlike sense of exploration through past and present, memory and loss, the mundane and the profound, not only keeps the reader on the brink of discovery but also paints a picture far more vivid than any standard travel narrative.--Ploughshares
LaSalle delivers a wonderful collection of essays about his extensive travels, to places both literary and actual, over his career as a fiction writer and writing instructor.... Readers who discover this literary gem will be delighted.--Publishers Weekly
LaSalle's command of the language is admirable, but even more admirable is his moral vision.--Dallas Times-Herald
LaSalle's stories are full of detail, and he knows how to create a sense of place, be it Buenos Aires, Austin, Texas, Paris, or Boston.--Atlanta Journal-Constitution
LaSalle's dreamlike sense of exploration through past and present, memory and loss, the mundane and the profound, not only keeps the reader on the brink of discovery but also paints a picture far more vivid than any standard travel narrative.--Ploughshares
LaSalle delivers a wonderful collection of essays about his extensive travels, to places both literary and actual, over his career as a fiction writer and writing instructor.... Readers who discover this literary gem will be delighted.--Publishers Weekly