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The first collection from a Whiting Writers' Award winner whose work has become a fixture of The Paris Review and n+1
Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J. D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience-as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son-he considers how far books and learning and psychoanalysis can get us, and how much we're stuck in the mud.
In prose wound as tight as a copper spring, Daniels takes us from the highways of his native Kentucky to the Balearic Islands and from the Pampas of Brazil to the rarefied precincts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His traveling companions include psychotic kindergarten teachers, Israeli sailors, and Southern Baptists on fire for Christ. In each dispatch, Daniels takes risks-not just literary (voice, tone, form) but also more immediate, such as spending two years on a Brazilian jiu-jitsu team (he gets beaten to a pulp, repeatedly) or participating in group psychoanalysis (where he goes temporarily insane).
Daniels is that rare thing, a writer completely in earnest whose wit never deserts him, even in extremis. Inventive, intimate, restless, streetwise, and erudite, The Correspondence introduces a brave and original observer of the inner life under pressure.
Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J. D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience-as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son-he considers how far books and learning and psychoanalysis can get us, and how much we're stuck in the mud.
In prose wound as tight as a copper spring, Daniels takes us from the highways of his native Kentucky to the Balearic Islands and from the Pampas of Brazil to the rarefied precincts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His traveling companions include psychotic kindergarten teachers, Israeli sailors, and Southern Baptists on fire for Christ. In each dispatch, Daniels takes risks-not just literary (voice, tone, form) but also more immediate, such as spending two years on a Brazilian jiu-jitsu team (he gets beaten to a pulp, repeatedly) or participating in group psychoanalysis (where he goes temporarily insane).
Daniels is that rare thing, a writer completely in earnest whose wit never deserts him, even in extremis. Inventive, intimate, restless, streetwise, and erudite, The Correspondence introduces a brave and original observer of the inner life under pressure.
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Reviews
"[A] stunning debut . . . Delivered with the storytelling talents of John Jeremiah Sullivan and brimming with the folkloric, true-life tales of Breece D'J Pancake, these tales are funny; unrepentantly realist; and, in their way, awfully elegant . . . With careful wit, an attention to emotional nuance that reaches down to the gut, and an astounding ear for dialogue, Daniels writes with a kind of brutal authenticity that is not easily faked, whichever side of auto-fiction's hyphen he's writing from."
Diego Báez, Booklist (starred review)
"A fascinating correspondence . . . Throughout the book, Daniels masterfully hints at other stories just off the page, revealing much about himself but never too much . . . The letters here represent a bold and daring contribution to belles lettres; Daniels is an essayist to watch."
Publishers Weekly