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9780472056958

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"""Gandal vividly captures the emotions he experienced during a difficult research and writing project. An excellent read full of humor and intellectual and emotional depth. Anyone who is a writer or a want-to-be writer will appreciate this book.""--Nancy Gentile Ford, author of Americans All! Foreign-born Soldiers in World War I ""If you can only read one book this season about Michel Foucault, the Lost Generation writers, the mobilization of American troops during World War I, the mid-life crisis of a male academic, getting new pets, and the mendacious world of amateur tennis, make this the one. Keith Gandal's memoir traces his own journey to make the subtle but necessary psychic shifts on the road to uncovering truths hidden in plain sight--about other writers, scholars and himself. It is all told in an engaging, headlong pace that reaches a memorable climax. I couldn't put it down.""--Daniel Andries, Senior Producer, WTTW ""This is a remarkable book. If the reader can survive having their consciousness deconstructed in the first few chapters, then they can settle in to enjoy every word. Truly original. The persona of the narrator resonates with an American tradition of the paranoid, ironic, self-reflexive voice. Is this academic memoir, detective fiction, cultural history, or comic novel? Actually it is all of these.""--Gavin Jones, author of Reclaiming John Steinbeck: Writing for the Future of Humanity ""A fascinating 'whodunit' by a writer tracking other writers―and himself―through the labyrinth of the writing life, Firsthand gives us an entirely new, continually surprising perspective on the scholar's vocation.""--Eric Sundquist, author of Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America"

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Keith Gandal is Professor of English with a Joint Appointment in American Studies and Creative Writing at The City College of New York.

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