In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, and 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 A 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, but when they come to feel unlifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness and self-consciousness--perfect, since so much of what ails him is acute self-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.

Paperback. Pub Date :2013-09-03 Language: English Publisher: Simon Schuster Based on eight years of exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with more than 200 people-and published in coordination with the international theatrical release of a major documentary film from the Weinstein Company-The Private War of JD Salinger is a global cultural event:. the definitive biography of one of the most beloved and mysterious figures of the twentieth century For more than fifty years. the ever elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye has been the subject of a relentless stream of newspaper and magazine articles as well as several biographies. Yet all of these attempts have been hampered by a fundamental lack of access and by the persistent recycling of inaccurate information. Salinger remains. astonishingly. an enigma. The complex and contradictory human being behind the myth has...

A sportswriter and author of Black Planet examines the way in which basketball players have become public heroes, focusing on such individuals as Ichiro Suzuki, Latrell Sprewell, and Hideki Matsui and exploring such topics as athlete tattoos, sports movie resurrection myths, and the recent influx of European players. 15,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

The author offers a meditation on mortality as he chronicles his own life and that of his family from cradle to grave, integrating biological details with cultural history and criticism to furnish a portrait of human existence as revealed through a single family.

A season-long study of the Seattle SuperSonics discusses the players, coaches, agents, games, fans, and the role of race in a sport dominated by African American athletes

Ex-jock sportswriter Al Biederman, mired in a midwestern college town, dreaming of glories past and a fantasy future, finds hope and then a moral dilemma in Belvyn Menkus, a basketball phenomenon involved in a recruiting scandal

In a unique, meditative autobiography, the author of Dead Language explores the nature of autobiography itself, using his life as the grist for delving into the art of literary self-exploration and memoir. 30,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Product Description: David Shields has crafted a brutally honest novel of family, religion, and relationships. This story transcends the boundaries of the Salt Lake Valley where it’s set, ultimately soaring above and beyond the towering peaks of the Wasatch Front...read more

Product Description: Ichiro Suzuki, the rookie All-Star right fielder for the Seattle Mariners, has the sports world transfixed. Author David Shields was at first entranced by Ichiro's smart, subtle play--just what the Mariners and Seattle needed. Then he was entranced by what Ichiro said--his smart, subtle words...read more

Product Description: Washington State Book Award, 1990 Silver Medal, Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards, 1990 From the moment his mother tries unsuccessfully to coax him into saying "Philadelphia," Jeremy Zorn's life is framed by his unwieldy attempts at articulation...read more

Presents fifty-two short writings--from family chronicle, to reportage, to personal essay--which explore the concept of remoteness in contemporary America's obsession with popular culture, celebrity, and media

Product Description: "Shields's lucid prose succinctly illuminates the larger context of Jaffe's life. . . . It's even better at capturing the small picture."--Timothy Hunter, Cleveland Plain DealerIn Handbook for Drowning, Walter Jaffe grows up in a family obsessed with social justice; Walter fixates on his own mortality...read more