Picture 1 of 1

Stock photo

Proxies : Essays near Knowing by Brian Blanchfield (2016, Trade Paperback)

Bokonon Books (173)

98.5% positive feedback

Price:

US $10.95

ApproximatelyAU $16.87

+ $23.86 postage

Estimated delivery Thu, 26 Jun - Mon, 7 Jul

Returns:

30-day returns. Buyer pays for return postage. If you use an eBay postage label, it will be deducted from your refund amount.

Condition:

Brand new

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherNightboat Books

ISBN-101937658457

ISBN-139781937658458

eBay Product ID (ePID)219141352

Product Key Features

Book TitleProxies : Essays Near Knowing

Number of Pages200 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicEssays

Publication Year2016

GenreLiterary Collections

AuthorBrian Blanchfield

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.5 in

Item Weight9.5 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Dewey Edition23

Reviews(starred review) "The 25 essays in this collection from poet Blanchfield (A Several World) are small, highly polished jewels that together form an intricate mosaic. Giving himself the project of following a thought to its uncomfortable edges, in each entry Blanchfield picks a subject-foot washing, authorship, owls-and examines it from several angles until the connection between metaphysical principle and lived experience suddenly crystallizes, often producing an analogy as surprising as it is lovely. Blanchfield will typically betray a glimpse of erudition-a reference to cult cinema, Greek tragedy, or Noam Chomsky-alongside raw confession, balancing "a poetics of impersonality" with "disinhibited autobiography." Thus, the billiards term "leave" proves connected to his father's departure, a meditation on ingénues extends to his experience of 9/11, and the story of a dog bite becomes the story of his coming out. The themes of secrets and concealment pervade the collection, as does a "spellbound trade in vulnerability and openheartedness" conjured by Blanchfield's prose style, with its catch-and-release rhythm-sometimes lyrical, sometimes barbed. The concluding essay "Correction," which fills in or corrects details for the other selections, offers its own tribute to the processes by which we construct meaning-the real subject of this elegant and astonishing book.", "Brian Blanchfield's sentences are modern marvels. They coil, insinuate, embellish-and then land on the tender spot. If Hart Crane had survived to write a book of autobiographical essays, it would resemble Proxies-but would Hart have given us the low-down on frottage? Blanchfield is a staggeringly accomplished stylist, whose artful elucidations deserve to be savored, studied, and, yes, worshipped." -Wayne Koestenbaum, (starred review) "The 25 essays in this collection from poet Blanchfield (A Several World) are small, highly polished jewels that together form an intricate mosaic. Giving himself the project of following a thought to its uncomfortable edges, in each entry Blanchfield picks a subject-foot washing, authorship, owls-and examines it from several angles until the connection between metaphysical principle and lived experience suddenly crystallizes, often producing an analogy as surprising as it is lovely. Blanchfield will typically betray a glimpse of erudition-a reference to cult cinema, Greek tragedy, or Noam Chomsky-alongside raw confession, balancing "a poetics of impersonality" with "disinhibited autobiography." Thus, the billiards term "leave" proves connected to his father's departure, a meditation on ingénues extends to his experience of 9/11, and the story of a dog bite becomes the story of his coming out. The themes of secrets and concealment pervade the collection, as does a "spellbound trade in vulnerability and openheartedness" conjured by Blanchfield's prose style, with its catch-and-release rhythm-sometimes lyrical, sometimes barbed. The concluding essay "Correction," which fills in or corrects details for the other selections, offers its own tribute to the processes by which we construct meaning-the real subject of this elegant and astonishing book."- Publishers Weekly (starred), Excellent....a book of dynamic, thoughtful, and flat-out moving essays. These proxies are short but extremely sticky. They stuck with me. I'm carrying them with me as I write this sentence. I think you're going to want to get sticky too., "Into what some are calling a new golden age of creative nonfiction lands Brian Blanchfield's PROXIES, which singlehandedly raises the bar for what's possible in the field. This is a momentous work informed by a lifetime of thinking, reading, loving, and reckoning, utterly matchless in its erudition, its precision, its range, its daring, and its grace. I know of no book like it, nor any recent book as thoroughly good, in art or in heart." -Maggie Nelson, "Brian Blanchfield's brief, multivalent essays are titled to echo the master of the form, Montaigne. They include 'On Withdrawal,' 'On Tumbleweed' and 'On House Sitting.'...Mr. Blanchfield's more high-flown reflections [are] slyly used in juxtaposition with the plain-spoken memories of this 'working class white boy' from North Carolina....He calls the essays "inroads to disinhibited autobiography." One becomes acclimated to, and impressed by, the way he transitions from, say, an etymological investigation of billiards terminology to the way his father shot pool.", "Excellent....a book of dynamic, thoughtful, and flat-out moving essays. These proxies are short but extremely sticky. They stuck with me. I'm carrying them with me as I write this sentence. I think you're going to want to get sticky too."-Ander Monson, BOMB Magazine, 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir and the Finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award in Nonfiction"A collection of idiosyncratic, candid, devastating essays...it's the most brilliant book I've read in years. Anyone who has been amazed (and rightly so) by Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts should read this book posthaste."--Garth Greenwell, The Guardian"The quiet but searing vulnerability in Brian Blanchfield's writing is as wide and trembling as the wingspan of his otherness. He writes with a beguiling sagaciousness that made me bow my head so many times that I lost count. These are essays about honesty and the revelation of self in which shame and guilt are dissected and anything extraneous scrubbed away. Each sentence is a live wire. Diverse, maybe mismatched styles, genres and topics accrue to great and moving effect, a profound whole made from an unlikely assemblage of parts. He appears to be forging a new genre before your very eyes."--2016 Whiting Award Judges' Citation"Proxies: Essays Near Knowing brings a slowed-to-meaning lens to the remembered moments of a life. Blanchfield's readers wander into his ordinary-extraordinary quotidianthe vulnerable longing of a singular voice expressing a peopled intelligence. Not since Hilton Als' White Girls have I read anything as interrogative, unsettling, and brilliant."--Claudia Rankine"Into what some are calling a new golden age of creative nonfiction lands Brian Blanchfield's PROXIES, which singlehandedly raises the bar for what's possible in the field. This is a momentous work informed by a lifetime of thinking, reading, loving, and reckoning, utterly matchless in its erudition, its precision, its range, its daring, and its grace. I know of no book like it, nor any recent book as thoroughly good, in art or in heart."--Maggie Nelson, "Proxies: Essays Near Knowing brings a slowed-to-meaning lens to the remembered moments of a life. Blanchfield's readers wander into his ordinary-extraordinary quotidian-the vulnerable longing of a singular voice expressing a peopled intelligence. Not since Hilton Als' White Girls have I read anything as interrogative, unsettling, and brilliant."-Claudia Rankine, Awards:2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir and the Finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award in NonfictionReview Quotes:"A collection of idiosyncratic, candid, devastating essays...it's the most brilliant book I've read in years. Anyone who has been amazed (and rightly so) by Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts should read this book posthaste."--Garth Greenwell, The Guardian"The quiet but searing vulnerability in Brian Blanchfield's writing is as wide and trembling as the wingspan of his otherness. He writes with a beguiling sagaciousness that made me bow my head so many times that I lost count. These are essays about honesty and the revelation of self in which shame and guilt are dissected and anything extraneous scrubbed away. Each sentence is a live wire. Diverse, maybe mismatched styles, genres and topics accrue to great and moving effect, a profound whole made from an unlikely assemblage of parts. He appears to be forging a new genre before your very eyes."--2016 Whiting Award Judges' Citation"Proxies: Essays Near Knowing brings a slowed-to-meaning lens to the remembered moments of a life. Blanchfield's readers wander into his ordinary-extraordinary quotidianthe vulnerable longing of a singular voice expressing a peopled intelligence. Not since Hilton Als' White Girls have I read anything as interrogative, unsettling, and brilliant."--Claudia Rankine"Into what some are calling a new golden age of creative nonfiction lands Brian Blanchfield's PROXIES, which singlehandedly raises the bar for what's possible in the field. This is a momentous work informed by a lifetime of thinking, reading, loving, and reckoning, utterly matchless in its erudition, its precision, its range, its daring, and its grace. I know of no book like it, nor any recent book as thoroughly good, in art or in heart."--Maggie Nelson, The quiet but searing vulnerability in Brian Blanchfield's writing is as wide and trembling as the wingspan of his otherness. He writes with a beguiling sagaciousness that made me bow my head so many times that I lost count. These are essays about honesty and the revelation of self in which shame and guilt are dissected and anything extraneous scrubbed away. Each sentence is a live wire. Diverse, maybe mismatched styles, genres and topics accrue to great and moving effect, a profound whole made from an unlikely assemblage of parts. He appears to be forging a new genre before your very eyes., 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir Finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award in Nonfiction "A collection of idiosyncratic, candid, devastating essays...it's the most brilliant book I've read in years. Anyone who has been amazed (and rightly so) by Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts should read this book posthaste."--Garth Greenwell, The Guardian "The quiet but searing vulnerability in Brian Blanchfield's writing is as wide and trembling as the wingspan of his otherness. He writes with a beguiling sagaciousness that made me bow my head so many times that I lost count. These are essays about honesty and the revelation of self in which shame and guilt are dissected and anything extraneous scrubbed away. Each sentence is a live wire. Diverse, maybe mismatched styles, genres and topics accrue to great and moving effect, a profound whole made from an unlikely assemblage of parts. He appears to be forging a new genre before your very eyes."--2016 Whiting Award Judges' Citation " Proxies: Essays Near Knowing brings a slowed-to-meaning lens to the remembered moments of a life. Blanchfield's readers wander into his ordinary-extraordinary quotidianthe vulnerable longing of a singular voice expressing a peopled intelligence. Not since Hilton Als' White Girls have I read anything as interrogative, unsettling, and brilliant."--Claudia Rankine "Into what some are calling a new golden age of creative nonfiction lands Brian Blanchfield's PROXIES , which singlehandedly raises the bar for what's possible in the field. This is a momentous work informed by a lifetime of thinking, reading, loving, and reckoning, utterly matchless in its erudition, its precision, its range, its daring, and its grace. I know of no book like it, nor any recent book as thoroughly good, in art or in heart."--Maggie Nelson

Dewey Decimal814.6

Table Of ContentA Note On Owls On Completism On Sardines On Br'er Rabbit On Foot Washing On Propositionizing On the Locus Amoenus On Man Roulette On Withdrawal On Tumbleweed On Containment On House Sitting On Minutes On Authorship On the Leave On Confoundedness On Abstraction On Peripersonal Space On Dossiers On Frottage On Reset On the Ingénue On the Understory On the Near Term Correction. Acknowledgments

SynopsisPast compunction, expressly unbeholden, these twenty-four single-subject essays train focus on a startling miscellany of topics --Foot Washing, Dossiers, Br'er Rabbit, Housesitting, Man Roulette, the Locus Amoenus--that begin to unpack the essayist himself and his life's rotating concerns: sex and sexuality, poetry and poetics, subject positions in American labor (not excluding academia), and his upbringing in working-class, Primitive Baptist, central-piedmont North Carolina.

LC Classification NumberPS3602.L37