Awards
- Commended for Oregon Book Awards (Creative Nonfiction) 2009
Overview
In his three previous memoirs, Floyd Skloot grappled with the brain-ravaging virus that struck him at forty-one. He was, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted, ""shaping the experience of crippling illness into dazzling literature."" Sifting through memories and observations to discover how circumstance and nature conspired to make him the writer he is, Skloot enacts in this book the very process he describes, the shaping of a writer's life. Among the influences of family and close friendship, experience and popular culture, he uncovers a unique and telling perspective on the forging of a writer's individual sensibility. At the same time, his book explores fundamental questions about how life shapes the creative spirit-and how, in turn, the writer makes sense of it all and gives life a new and meaningful shape in the form of literature.
Full Product Details
Author: Floyd Skloot
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Imprint: Bison Books
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 21.60cm
Weight: 0.454kg
ISBN: 9780803211193
ISBN 10: 0803211198
Pages: 252
Publication Date: 01 September 2008
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
This is a great mind at work examining itself. This is where literature comes from. Katharine Weber, author of Triangle and The Music Lesson Floyd Skloot hits it just right, taking life seriously and the comically, poignantly evolving self with just a pinch of necessary salt. The Wink of the Zenith gives us an American coming-of-age that is completely unique but at the same time packed with the recognition force of archetypes. Sven Birkerts, author of My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time Like the Hardy Boys, the literary sleuths of his boyhood, Floyd Skloot has put together and followed clues into his past after a terrifying brain virus impaired his memories. The remarkable rediscoveries recorded in these essays, told with a prime storyteller's art, relocates these lost histories, freshens their artifacts, and brings back to life their personae and dominions. The Wink of the Zenith is a triumph on several levels. Hilary Masters, author of Last Stands: Notes from Memory
"""This is a great mind at work examining itself. This is where literature comes from."" Katharine Weber, author of Triangle and The Music Lesson ""Floyd Skloot hits it just right, taking life seriously and the comically, poignantly evolving self with just a pinch of necessary salt. The Wink of the Zenith gives us an American coming-of-age that is completely unique but at the same time packed with the recognition force of archetypes."" Sven Birkerts, author of My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time ""Like the Hardy Boys, the literary sleuths of his boyhood, Floyd Skloot has put together and followed clues into his past after a terrifying brain virus impaired his memories. The remarkable rediscoveries recorded in these essays, told with a prime storyteller's art, relocates these lost histories, freshens their artifacts, and brings back to life their personae and dominions. The Wink of the Zenith is a triumph on several levels."" Hilary Masters, author of Last Stands: Notes from Memory"
Author Information
Floyd Skloot is the author of five books of fiction, seven collections of poetry, a collection of essays, and three previous memoirs including In the Shadow of Memory and A World of Light, both available in Bison Books editions. He is the winner of three Pushcart Prizes, the most recent for his essay ""The Voice of the Past,"" which appears in The Wink of the Zenith.
