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Life Work
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Bibliographic Detail
Publisher Chivers North Amer
Publication date April 1, 1994
Pages 152
Binding Paperback
Edition Large print
Book category Adult Fiction
ISBN-13 9780792719328
ISBN-10 0792719328
Dimensions 0.75 by 5.75 by 8.75 in.
Weight 0.85 lbs.
Availability§ Out of Print
Original list price $19.95
Other format details large print
§As reported by publisher
Summaries and Reviews
Amazon.com description: Product Description: Distinguished poet Donald Hall reflects on the meaning of work, solitude, and love

"The best new book I have read this year, of extraordinary nobility and wisdom. It will remain with me always."—Louis Begley, The New York Times

"A sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness. . . . Life Work reads most of all like a first-person psychological novel with a poet named Donald Hall as its protagonist. . . . Hall's particular talents ultimately [are] for the memoir, a genre in which he has few living equals. In his hands the memoir is only partially an autobiographical genre. He pours both his full critical intelligence and poetic sensibility into the form."—Dana Gioia, Los Angeles Times

"Hall . . . here offers a meditative look at his life as a writer in a spare and beautifully crafted memoir. Devoted to his art, Hall can barely wait for the sun to rise each morning so that he can begin the task of shaping words."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"I [am] delighted and moved by Donald Hall's Life Work, his autobiographical tribute to sheer work--as distinguished from labor--as the most satisfying and ennobling of activities, whether one is writing, canning vegetables or playing a dung fork on a New Hampshire farm."—Paul Fussell, The Boston Globe

“Donald Hall’s Life Work has been strangely gripping, what with his daily to do lists, his ruminations on the sublimating power of work. Hall has written so much about that house in New Hampshire where he lives that I’m beginning to think of it less as a place than a state of mind. I find it odd that a creative mind can work with such Spartan organization (he describes waiting for the alarm to go off at 4:45 AM, so eager is he to get to his desk) at such a mysterious activity (making a poem work) without getting in the way of itself.”—John Freeman’s blog (National Book Critics Circle Board President)

Editions
Hardcover
Book cover for 9780807070543
 
from Beacon Pr (September 1, 1993)
9780807070543 | details & prices | 5.75 × 8.75 × 0.75 in. | 0.65 lbs | List price $15.00
About: The poet discusses his life, offering a meditation on work, describing how craft--be it canning vegetables or writing poems--creates its own discipline and an 'absorbedness' that no wage can equal
Paperback
Book cover for 9780792719311 Book cover for 9780792719328 Book cover for 9780807070550 Book cover for 9780807071335
 
from Beacon Pr (April 15, 2003)
9780807071335 | details & prices | 123 pages | 5.50 × 8.75 × 0.50 in. | 0.18 lbs | List price $16.00
Reprint edition from Beacon Pr (October 1, 1994)
9780807070550 | details & prices | 5.50 × 8.25 × 0.50 in. | 0.40 lbs | List price $14.00
About: An evocation of the life of the writer offers a meditative and insightful look at what it means to be an artist, avoiding smug truisms and easy cliches.
Large print edition from Chivers North Amer (April 1, 1994)
9780792719311 | details & prices | 152 pages | 5.75 × 8.50 × 0.75 in. | 0.50 lbs | List price $19.95
About: Distinguished poet Donald Hall reflects on the meaning of work, solitude, and love"The best new book I have read this year, of extraordinary nobility and wisdom.
The price comparison is for this edition
Large print edition from Chivers North Amer (April 1, 1994)
9780792719328 | details & prices | 152 pages | 5.75 × 8.75 × 0.75 in. | 0.85 lbs | List price $19.95
About: Distinguished poet Donald Hall reflects on the meaning of work, solitude, and love"The best new book I have read this year, of extraordinary nobility and wisdom.

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