With Let Us Build Us a City Tracy Daugherty considers the principles of literary art in a series of essays that focus on the nature of artistic vision and the creative individual's relationship to the world. The book reads like a master class on writing as practice, while performing a deep reading of art and life and looking to discern why liberal education matters so much to our society.
At its core, Let Us Build Us a City is a work of cultural and literary history, combining memoir (of the author's experiences as a student and teacher of literature and writing) with analysis and speculation. Daugherty exploits a variety of forms to explore literary apprenticeship and mentoring, philosophy, politics, metaphysics, and American history.
In particular, Daugherty focuses on the creative impulse and the diverse ways in which individual writers apply their imaginations to their craft. Along the way, he offers multiple lace of creative practice within it. Let Us Build Us a City is a stirring defense and timely renewal of our national literary vision.
"Tracy Daugherty's Let Us Build Us a City reconsiders the role of literature in our world. Drawing from some of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century, Daugherty poses questions that face anyone engaged in the arts today. These thoughtful, deeply considered, and provocative essays encourage the reader to engage with the unknown, to embrace 'the mystery and power of crea
Peter Turchi, author of Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer
"In homespun words, strong-minded Rice, born in 1909 in rural Alabama, bears witness to her hard life as a black woman. . . . Rice's comments on social and racial issues, especially when based directly on her experiences as an employee of white families, are instructive; sensitive yet objective, she proves able to reckon with differences, not just take sides. She seems always to say exactly what s
John Domini, author of MOVIEOLA!
"Tracy Daugherty's Let Us Build Us a City reconsiders the role of literature in our world. Drawing from some of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century, Daugherty poses questions that face anyone engaged in the arts today. These thoughtful, deeply considered, and provocative essays encourage the reader to engage with the unknown, to embrace 'the mystery and power of creating new worlds,' and to take part in building what Daugherty calls 'a creative and imaginatively generous society'-exactly the sort of society we should aspire to."
Peter Turchi,
"In Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, the canals and streets of Esmeralda render every route a 'zigzag.' Worse, the paths of the human citizens get confused with those of rodents underfoot and birds overhead, and in the end, no map can reveal everything, 'solid and liquid, evident and hidden.' Yet now Tracy Daugherty has worked up just such a miracle: a Baedeker to the city of storytelling. Amid the confounding boulevards and alleyways of fiction, Daugherty's guide is like nothing else out there, rangy and profound, smooth going for the reader and yet never flinching from trouble-especially the troubles of the human heart. The journey always proves fascinating, whether the landmarks are Dante or Sherwood Anderson, Ptolemy or Grace Paley. An essential text for anyone susceptible to the magic of stories long or short."
