Synopses & Reviews
A new collection of prophetic essays from one of the sharpest practitioners of the formMark Slouka writes from a particular vantage point, one invoked by Thoreau, who wished “to improve the nick of time . . . to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future.” At this bewildering convergence, Slouka asks us to consider what it means to be human and what we must revive, or reject, in order to retain our humanity in the modern world.
Collected over fifteen years, these essays include fascinating explorations of the relationship between memory and history and the nature of “tragedy” in a media-driven culture; meditations on the transcendent “wisdom” of the natural world and the role of silence in an age of noise; and arguments in defense of the political value of leisure time and the importance of the humanities in an age defined by the language of science and industry. Written in Sloukas supple and unerring prose, celebratory, critical, and passionate, Essays from the Nick of Time reawakens us to the moment and place in which we find ourselves, caught between the fading presence of the past and the neon lure of the future.
Review
"Along with poetry, essays are one of Graywolf Press's great strengths. They recently published Geoff Dyer's remarkable collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, and in 2009 they published Stephen Burt's excellent , an essay collection about reading contemporary poetry that was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Mark Slouka's Essays from the Nick of Time, which came out last November, was a bit overshadowed by all the holiday blockbusters, but it was one of the best books, of essays or otherwise, published last year." Jill Owens, Powells.com (Read the entire Powells.com review)
About the Author
Mark Slouka is the author of a collection of stories, Lost Lake; a book of nonfiction, War of the Worlds; and two novels, Gods Fool and The Visible World. He is a contributing editor to Harpers Magazine and teaches at the University of Chicago.