Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death

Birth is not inevitable. Life certainly isn't. The sole inevitability of existence, the only sure consequence of being alive, is death. In these eloquent and surprising essays, twenty writers face this fact, among them Geoff Dyer, who describes the ghost bikes memorializing those who die in biking accidents; Jonathan Safran Foer, proposing a new way of punctuating dialogue in the face of a family history of heart attacks and decimation by the Holocaust; Mark Doty, whose reflections on the art-porn movie Bijou lead to a meditation on the intersection of sex and death epitomized by the AIDS epidemic; and Joyce Carol Oates, who writes about the loss of her husband and faces her own mortality. Other contributors include Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Peter Straub, and Brenda Hillman.

Author: Bradford Morrow
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/01/2011
Pages: 334
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 8.22h x 5.59w x 0.84d
ISBN: 9780393339369

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 02/15/2011 pg. 41
Publishers Weekly 11/15/2010
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2010
Library Journal 02/15/2011 pg. 113
Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2011 pg. 261

About the Author
Morrow, Bradford: - Bradford Morrow's novels include The Diviner's Tale, Giovanni's Gift, and Trinity Fields, and co-edited with David Shields The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death. The recipient of numerous awards, he founded and edits the literary journal Conjunctions and is a professor of literature at Bard College. He lives in New York City.Shields, David: - David Shields, the author of Reality Hunger, is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington.