“Reading How Literature Saved My Life is like getting to listen in on a really great, smart, provocative conversation. The book is not straightforward, it resists any single interpretation, and it seems to me to constitute nothing less than a new form.” ––Whitney Otto
In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative for all readers and writers who seek to find salvation in literature.
Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal’s Pensées to Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Renata Adler’s Speedboat to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his “ridiculous” ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs. Books are his life raft, but when they come to feel un-lifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness. And he shares with us a final irony: he wants “literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn’t lie about this––which is what makes it essential.”
A captivating, thought-provoking, utterly original way of thinking about the essential acts of reading and writing.
- Self Care...(ebook)
- Classics (ebook)
- Home Design (ebook)
- Virgin River and Sweet Magnolia Read-alikes (ebooks)
- Historical Fiction (ebooks)
- Biographies and Autobiographies (ebook)
- Christian Fiction (ebook)
- Suspense and Thrillers (ebook)
- Science Fiction and Fantasy (ebook)
- No Wait Ebooks
- Differing Abilities (kids)
- Adult New Readers
- See all
- Mystery Fiction (audio)
- Horror (audio)
- Westerns (audio)
- Historical Fiction (audio)
- Biography and Autobiography (audio)
- Thrillers and Suspense (audio)
- We Are Made by History...(audio)
- Self-Care is... (audio)
- Christian Fiction (audio)
- Don't Forget the Classics (audio)
- Romance (audio)
- Science Fiction and Fantasy (audio)
- No Wait Audiobooks
- See all
- 2023-2024 SC Young Adult Book Award Nominees
- 2023-2024 SC Children's Book Award Nominees
- 2023-2024 SC Picture Book Award Nominees
- 2023-2024 SC Junior Book Award Nominees
- See all