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Thomas Heise's adventurous Moth; or how I came to be with you again is a densely lyrical poetic narrative. The story follows the narrator’s real and imagined journeys through time and space in search of his unknown mother, in flight from his unknown father, and in pursuit of his lost love. Traveling through his past, and across several cities in Europe in the present, he ruminates on the hypnotic rhythm of train travel, insomnia, desire, the nature of memory, and modern art. Moth recalls W.G. Sebald, Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, and especially Antonioni's films, where viewers experience a mysterious sense of washed-out beauty and trouble. Heise's language is precise and his lush, unfolding sentences offer a great, gorgeous pleasure. Moth is a haunting, one-of-a-kind novel that will stay with the reader for a long, long time.
Price: $15.95
Pages: 192
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Imprint: Sarabande Books
Publication Date:
02 July 2013
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781936747573
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical, POETRY / American / General, FICTION / Psychological, FICTION / Literary
"Neither memoir, poem, nor novel, Moth is somehow all three—an effusive ramble through the space of language and the language of memory. Written during a period of intensely disorienting insomnia, Heise’s “autobiography of fever” recalls the orphanage of the author’s childhood, an affair he had with a psychiatrist, and a peripatetic adulthood.... Heise seems capable of doing anything with words, and this book is a diagram of life’s “internal chambers” that ventures into bleary territory hitherto thought unspeakable."
--Publishers Weekly
"With Moth; or how I came to be with you again, Thomas Heise has written a deeply moving account of loss, migration, and memory that blurs the line between poetry and prose.... Subtle turns of wit temper the book's melancholy with understated, ambivalent humor. This combination is one of Moth's many treasures."
--Montreal Review of Books
"It's impossible to convey in a few lines the enormous pleasures of this book–the beauty of the design, the incandescent prose, its rigor and intelligence. A deeply melancholic and moving work of art."
–-Carole Maso
"Thomas Heise's Moth; or how I came to be with you again is a machine of occluded and crystalline memory, performing permutations of the highest order—loss, losing, lust, lost. The book’s calculating engine searches and searches through its fine-toothed gears for the infinite solution to be derived when one divides one by zero. The silence between the words, between the pages is terrific."
--Michael Martone
--Publishers Weekly
"With Moth; or how I came to be with you again, Thomas Heise has written a deeply moving account of loss, migration, and memory that blurs the line between poetry and prose.... Subtle turns of wit temper the book's melancholy with understated, ambivalent humor. This combination is one of Moth's many treasures."
--Montreal Review of Books
"It's impossible to convey in a few lines the enormous pleasures of this book–the beauty of the design, the incandescent prose, its rigor and intelligence. A deeply melancholic and moving work of art."
–-Carole Maso
"Thomas Heise's Moth; or how I came to be with you again is a machine of occluded and crystalline memory, performing permutations of the highest order—loss, losing, lust, lost. The book’s calculating engine searches and searches through its fine-toothed gears for the infinite solution to be derived when one divides one by zero. The silence between the words, between the pages is terrific."
--Michael Martone
Thomas Heise is the author of Horror Vacui: Poems (Sarabande, 2006) and Urban Underworlds: A Geography of Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2010). He is an Associate Professor of English at McGill University and divides his time between Montreal and New York City.
A Note
Recollection
Oslo, Winter 2011
Berlin, Winter 2009
Berlin, Winter 2009
Berlin, Winter 2009
New York
Recollection
Oslo, Winter 2011
Oslo, Winter 2011
Oslo, Spring 2010
Copenhagen, Spring 2010
Copenhagen, Fall 2010
Copenhagen, Winter 2010
New York
Recollection
New York
Oslo, Winter 2011
Prague, Summer 2010
Oslo, Summer 2010
Berlin, Summer 2011
Berlin, Late Fall 2011
Berlin, Late Fall 2011
Recollection
Oslo, Winter 2011
Berlin, Winter 2009
Berlin, Winter 2009
Berlin, Winter 2009
New York
Recollection
Oslo, Winter 2011
Oslo, Winter 2011
Oslo, Spring 2010
Copenhagen, Spring 2010
Copenhagen, Fall 2010
Copenhagen, Winter 2010
New York
Recollection
New York
Oslo, Winter 2011
Prague, Summer 2010
Oslo, Summer 2010
Berlin, Summer 2011
Berlin, Late Fall 2011
Berlin, Late Fall 2011