The Long Take: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Awards:   Long-listed for Man Booker Prize 2018 (UK) Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 2018 (UK) Short-listed for Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year 2018 (UK) Short-listed for The Goldsmiths Prize 2018 (UK) Winner of Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018 (UK) Winner of The Goldsmiths Prize 2018 (UK)
Author:   Robin Robertson
Publisher:   Pan Macmillan
ISBN:  

9781509886258


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   21 March 2019
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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The Long Take: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize


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Awards

  • Long-listed for Man Booker Prize 2018 (UK)
  • Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 2018 (UK)
  • Short-listed for Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year 2018 (UK)
  • Short-listed for The Goldsmiths Prize 2018 (UK)
  • Winner of Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018 (UK)
  • Winner of The Goldsmiths Prize 2018 (UK)

Overview

Full Product Details

Author:   Robin Robertson
Publisher:   Pan Macmillan
Imprint:   Picador
Dimensions:   Width: 13.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 19.60cm
Weight:   0.176kg
ISBN:  

9781509886258


ISBN 10:   1509886257
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   21 March 2019
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Reviews

A blisteringly beautiful vision of America rotting in the aftermath of the Second World War . . . Robertson's book is stylish, daring, high concept and amazing. * Evening Standard * The Long Take is written in precise, deliberate English of lyric grandeur. True literature at its most compelling. -- Eileen Battersby Robin Robertson's wonderful new book is hard to classify. It would be possible to review The Long Take as if it were a novel, even a thriller of sorts . . . This is a poetic work in which human degradation is afforded fleetingly beautiful expression . . . It reads at time as a secular Pilgrim's Progress and many of it's sequences put me in mind of Denis Johnson's reports from the abyss of drugs and drink. * Literary Review * Robertson has chosen a supremely uncomfortable, recognizable flashpoint in US history, an almost perfect mirror image of the nation today: crude, newly unleashed material ambitions mix with off-the-chart levels of fear and paranoia. -- Todd McEwen * Sunday Herald * The Long Take, by Robin Robertson, is a narrative in verse set in the immediate post-war years in America, that is at once heartbreaking and bracing. Think of it as the best black and white 1940s movie you will ever encounter in print. -- John Banville * Guardian, Best summer books 2018 * The Long Take is a bullet of a book. It is deeply noir, scything open post-war Los Angeles to show us a living, breathing city: a complicated social setting with cinema layered into its very fabric, a place growing at the expense of many of its most vulnerable citizens. It is a bold book - both imaginative and brave - but, more than that, it is a book that hits its target. It flies. It feels true. -- Ryan Gattis, author of <i>All Involved</i> Having held his readers in the grip of many small tales, Robin Robertson now launches into a full narrative telling, which is alive with the details of post-war American life as well as the jumpy subjective life of its protagonist. The Long Take will thrill you with its shadowy mysteries and cinematic intensity. -- Billy Collins The words flow like the frames of a classic film masterpiece. -- Mike Hodges, filmmaker, <i>Get Carter</i>, <i>Croupier</i>, <i>I'll Sleep When I'm Dead</i> Modern, complex, political ... The Long Take is very much in line with the tradition that inspired it, not least when Robertson emphasizes the dead streets of Los Angeles , and the possibility that the United States, with its hatred of the other, might soon turn fascist... The Long Take's larger theme is the capacity of greed and politics to turn hope into despair. In this way, the poem speaks to the present as well as to the past. * Los Angeles Review of Books * The beauty of The Long Take lies in Robertson's seemingly effortless ability to evoke the magic of cinema on every page . . . One of the most moving records in recent times of human fragility, ambition, injustice, violence, and our deeply troubled path through cities and nature...The Long Take will be remembered for its unparalleled originality, and an uncompromising power of storytelling that transcends the boundaries of film, fiction and poetry. -- Kit Fan * Poetry Review * Like all of Robertson's work, I approached The Long Take with great anticipation, for few writers so expertly pull the curtains back on the many collective fictions, both ancient and new, that constitute our understanding of the world. All of Robertson's extraordinary gifts as a writer are on display here: his probing intelligence and wit, the strangely tactile beauty of his lines, and his stubborn refusal to ignore all that lingers unaccounted for at the edges of our vision. I was genuinely bowled over by it. -- Kevin Powers, author of <i>The Yellow Birds</i> Robertson has cast a national, cultural, psychological and class outsider of vibrant and seedy post-war America into a palpable anti-hero eerily resonant with our contemporary world. The result is a ravishing achievement. -- Ocean Vuong, author of <i>Night Sky with Exit Wounds</i>, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize This is a poem-cum-novel by Scottish writer Robin Robertson, the prize-winning author of five previous poetry collections, which is a cinematic road trip through America. It's from the point of view of Walker, a discharged World War II combat vet. Rather than return to Canada at the end of the war, he drifts from New York to Los Angeles to San Francisco. There are flashbacks to the war but he basically walks through an America which changes around him. It's an incredible achievement, showing how poetry can reach the parts narrative prose can't. -- Irvine Welsh * Metro * As a work of art, this dreamlike exploration is a triumph; as a timely allegory, it is disturbingly profound... One of the first major achievements of 21st-century English-language literature. * Financial Times * Composed in a mixture of verse and prose, The Long Take is a book with a big heart. The beauty of the language will seduce the reader from the very start. How do we put ourselves back together in a damaged world? . . . By taking this long journey west - across New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles - Robin Robertson tells a universal story. With its undeniable beauty; quiet, modest but strong pull, this book will shift something in your soul. By the time you have finished reading it, you won't quite be the same. -- Elif Shafak The Long Take shows it is perfectly possible to write poetry which is both accessible and subtle, which has a genuine moral and social conscience . . . This is a major achievement and will linger long in the reader's mind -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman on Sunday * `Absolutely stunning...his beautiful verse describes things better than any picture could... The language is astonishing.' -- Arifa Akbar * Front Row * A beautiful, vigorous and achingly melancholy hymn to the common man that is as unexpected as it is daring . . . The Long Take is a masterly work of art, exciting, colourful, fast-paced - the old-time movie reviewer's vocabulary is apt to the case - and almost unbearably moving. -- John Banville * Guardian * The Long Take is like a film noir on the page. A book about a man and a city in shock, it's an extraordinary evocation of the debris and ongoing destruction of war even in times of peace. In taking a scenario we think we know from the movies but offering a completely different perspective, Robin Robertson shows the flexibility a poet can bring to form and style. -- Man Booker judges' citation


The lyric poem, common to these times, can be said to contain a tiny story. Having held his readers in the grip of many small tales, Robin Robertson now launches into a full narrative telling, which is alive with the details of post-war American life as well as the jumpy subjective life of its protagonist. The Long Take will thrill you with its shadowy mysteries and cinematic intensity. -- Billy Collins The Long Take remarkably captures linguistic styles of 1940s American writing - Saroyan and Steinbeck. As it progresses into the mid-50s we're hearing Ginsberg and Baldwin...you will be washed in all these when you read this poem... Robertson has chosen a supremely uncomfortable, recognizable flashpoint in US history, an almost perfect mirror image of the nation today: crude, newly unleashed material ambitions mix with off-the-chart levels of fear and paranoia. The only difference is that then it was Russkies and immigrants, and now, uh . . . -- Todd McEwen * Sunday Herald * The Long Take shows it is perfectly possible to write poetry which is both accessible and subtle, which has a genuine moral and social conscience . . . Robertson manages a remarkable strike rate for keeping the language unsettling and honed, often by judicious assonance and alliterations . . . This is a major achievement and will linger long in the reader's mind -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman * The words flow like the frames of a classic film masterpiece. -- Mike Hodges, filmmaker, <i>Get Carter</i>, <i>Croupier</i>, <i>I'll Sleep When I'm Dead</i> Robin Robertson is instantly recognisable as a poet of vivid authority, commanding a surprised, accurate language of his own. The evocative truth and the crystalline ring of his words, line by line, make a kind of hope in themselves. -- W.S. Merwin Robin Robertson is a fearless and thrilling poet. -- Marina Warner <b> </b> The Long Take is a bullet of a book. It is deeply noir, scything open post-war Los Angeles to show us a living, breathing city: a complicated social setting with cinema layered into its very fabric, a place growing at the expense of many of its most vulnerable citizens. It is a bold book - both imaginative and brave - but, more than that, it is a book that hits its target. It flies. It feels true. -- Ryan Gattis, author of <i>All Involved</i> <b><i> </i></b> Like all of Robertson's work, I approached The Long Take with great anticipation, for few writers so expertly pull the curtains back on the many collective fictions, both ancient and new, that constitute our understanding of the world. All of Robertson's extraordinary gifts as a writer are on display here: his probing intelligence and wit, the strangely tactile beauty of his lines, and his stubborn refusal to ignore all that lingers unaccounted for at the edges of our vision. I was genuinely bowled over by it. -- Kevin Powers, author of <i>The Yellow Birds</i> An inter-genre tour de force, The Long Take is a restless reimagining of conventional poetics. Through the poem's protagonist, Robertson has cast a national, cultural, psychological and class outsider of vibrant and seedy post-war America into a palpable anti-hero eerily resonant with our contemporary world. With syncopated rhythms, staccato dialogue and jump-scenes, the book weaves dizzying, jazz-like meditations on PTSD, masculinity, betrayal and salvation by embodying, in sound, scent and sixth-sense, one of America's most hopeful and devastating decades. The result is a ravishing achievement. -- Ocean Vuong, author of <i>Night Sky with Exit Wounds</i>, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize <b> </b> Robin Robertson, one of the finest lyric poets of the age, flexes his artistic reach in a continuous narrative of more than two hundred pages, a beautiful, vigorous and achingly melancholy hymn to the common man that is as unexpected as it is daring. Here we have a poet, at the peak of his symphonic powers, taking a great risk, and succeeding gloriously... The Long Take is a masterly work of art, exciting, colourful, fast-paced - the old-time movie reviewer's vocabulary is apt to the case - and almost unbearably moving. -- John Banville * Guardian *


Author Information

Robin Robertson was brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland and now lives in London. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has published five collections of poetry and has received a number of honours, including the Petrarca-Preis, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and all three Forward Prizes. His selected poems, Sailing the Forest, was published in 2014.

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