Dead Languages Trade paperback - 1998

Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1998. Reprint paperback edition. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. Signed by author. Cover has slight wear and soiling.. First edition. Trade paperback Glued binding. 246 p. Graywolf Rediscovery. From Wikipedia: "David Shields (born July 22, 1956) is an American author of nonfiction and fiction, although much of his work resists generic classification. Shields, born in Los Angeles in 1956, graduated from Brown University in 1978, Honors in English Literature, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. In 1980, he received an MFA in Fiction, with honors, from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Shields' first novel, Heroes, was published in 1984. From 1985 to 1988, he was a visiting assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. In 1989, he published his second novel, Dead Languages, a book about a boy who stutters so badly that he worships words. Shields' third book, Handbook for Drowning: A Novel in Stories (1992), marked the beginning of his shift from traditional literary fiction toward collage, the blurring of genres, essay, and autobiography. This shift continued and deepened in such books as Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (1996), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (1999), Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Autobiography (2002), and The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (2008). Shields' next book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf, 2010), argues for the obliteration of distinctions between genres, the overturning of laws regarding appropriation, and the creation of new forms for a new millennium. Shields is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. He is also a member of the faculty in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. His work has been translated into twenty languages. Shields lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter. Much of Shields' work embodies and enacts a critique of traditional categories within art and culture, such as the boundary between fiction and nonfiction; for instance, in Reality Hunger, in which he argues for the abandonment of the traditional novelistic form because of its inadequacy in dealing with what he views as an increasingly fragmentary culture. Shields writes, "I find it very nearly impossible to read a contemporary novel that presents itself unselfconsciously as a novel, since it's not clear to me how such a book could convey what it feels like to be alive right now." In its place, he advocates "collage" forms such as the lyric essay, prose poetry, and the "anti-novel, built from scraps." Shields' books have generally been published to wide acclaim."