Anywhere Out of the World: Essays on Travel, Writing, Death |
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Anywhere Out of the World: Essays on Travel, Writing, Death
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by Nicholas Delbanco
Sales Rank: 2056466
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List Price: $33.00
$33.00
At Amazon
on 11-27-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 208 pages
Published by: Columbia University Press February 11, 2005
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0231133847
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0231133845
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 12 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
The life of a writing professor may strike some people as fairly tame and unglamorous, but Delbanco (The Lost Suitcase) offers up this collection of essays as evidence to the contrary. Though travel gets top billing in the list of subjects the collection purportedly covers, the journeys in this book are more literary than literal: the title essay explores the idea and practice of travel writing in all of its many forms. But Delbanco has done a fair amount of globe-trotting himself, as is evident in the highly readable "Letter from Namibia," the one piece devoted exclusively to a voyage, and in not-so-casual asides ("we too passed through the Hindu Kush from Kabul to Jalalabad") and anecdotes (in one essay, he describes how he was "one of those fortunate few" selected to visit the Rockefeller estate in Sicily). Unfortunately, Delbanco's writing too often recalls dry university lectures; his dissections of books, particularly in his sprawling essays on Ford Madox Ford and John Fowles, can be tiresome. The essays are also, as he readily acknowledges, filled with "literary name-dropping" and quotations, a technique he explicitly endorses in the final essay, "In Defense of Quotation," which takes its inspiration from the fact that so many cities share the same name (i.e., France's Paris and Texas's Paris). This essay is a nice bookend to the persuasive opening piece, "In Praise of Imitation," but the contents in between, while sometimes engaging, are unlikely to appeal to anyone but devotees of literary criticism.
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Product Review
"A guide bleu for the literary armchair." -- Kirkus "These essays combine Delbanco's personal reflections with his well-informed grasp of literary tradition, which results in compelling meditations on the shifting nature of travel writing, death and loss in both literature and life." "His stories are rich in insight, making even a momentary perusal of Anywhere Out of the World worthwhile." -- Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times "Delbanco's "Letter from Namibia" is as compelling and original a piece of travel writing as one is likely to find, paying meticulous attention to both physical surroundings and human companions." -- Wayne Hoffman, Washington Post "The outstanding piece in the collection, 'Letter from Namibia', reveals a novelist's eye for detail." -- Eric J. Iannelli, Times Literary Supplement
A delightfully aimless, somewhat rueful collection of nine essays on places visited and friends lost. Novelist/memoirist Delbanco (The Lost Suitcase, 2000, etc.; Writing/Univ. of Michigan) is a writer's writer, always in search of a fresh story, turn of phrase, or book to read-indeed you can read his essays in great part for the gallery of titles he lists in each. He titles his own collection after a phrase from Baudelaire ("n'importe o hors du monde") and begins with an old-fashioned defense of imitation as "the route-not perhaps the only route, but a well-traveled one-to originality." Writing, he believes, is an act of discovery, recounting everything from the epic movement of people to a personal transformation. In the eponymous essay, Delbanco regrets the "wide-eyed and improvisational" style of such intrepid early travel writers as Marco Polo or Mary Kingsley, who truly ventured out to discover terra incognita. By contrast, he finds, modern travel writing has more to do with recovery: "the writer reports on information gained or innocence long lost." Modeling himself after the earlier form in "Letter from Namibia," Delbanco recounts a visit he made as a young man in the late 1960s to an isolated African farm, diligently cataloguing the plethora of curious animals, the daily workings of the farm, and the personalities he met. "Northern Lights" ambles through literature by writers such as Dinesen, Conrad, and Nabokov, who found their voices by delving into raw and unfamiliar worlds. "The Dead" contains cameo appearances by several deceased mates; Delbanco describes his friendship with writer John Gardner, as well as a hilarious 1973 luncheon with James Baldwin and his flamboyant entourage in Provence. "On Daniel Martin" is a close reading of John Fowles's novel, while "Strange Type" meditates on the richly ambivalent meanings offered by inadvertently transposed letters. Overall, the collection makes up in quirkiness what it lacks in cohesion. A Guide Bleu for the literary armchair. (Kirkus Reviews)
Reader Reviews
Delbanco is a master! Every word carefully chosen, every phrase artfully assembled. His ability to evoke an image, thought, sensation is remarkable. This little book is not just about travel to foreign lands, scribbling, and sickness; but about the very personal self-discovery such activities could engender. very highly recommended
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Anywhere Out of the World: Essays on Travel, Writing, Death
Available from Amazon
Price: $33.00
Updated on 11-27-2008.
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