Meghan Daum

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Illinois

And Other Subjects of Discussion

Winner of the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction

"Daum is her generation's Joan Didion." --Nylon

Nearly fifteen years after her debut collection,My Misspent Youth, captured the ambitions and anxieties of a generation, Meghan Daum returns to the personal essay withThe Unspeakable, a masterful collection of ten new works. Her old encounters with overdrawn bank accounts and oversized ambitions in the big city have given way to a new set of challenges. The first essay, "Matricide," opens without flinching:

People who weren't there like to say that my mother died at home surrounded by loving family. This is technically true, though it was just my brother and me and he was looking at Facebook and I was reading a profile of Hillary Clinton in the December 2009 issue ofVogue.

Elsewhere, she carefully weighs the decision to have children--"I simply felt no calling to be a parent. As a role, as my role, it felt inauthentic and inorganic"--and finds a more fulfilling path as a court-appointed advocate for foster children. In other essays, she skewers the marriage-industrial complex and recounts a harrowing near-death experience following a sudden illness. Throughout, Daum pushes back against the false sentimentality and shrink-wrapped platitudes that surround so much of contemporary American experience and considers the unspeakable thoughts many of us harbor--that we might not love our parents enough, that "life's pleasures" sometimes feel more like chores, that life's ultimate lesson may be that we often learn nothing.
But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the New Age search for the "Best Possible Experience," champions the merits of cream-of mushroom-soup casserole, and gleefully recounts a quintessential "only-in-L.A." story of playing charades at a famous person's home.
Combining the piercing insight of Joan Didion with humor reminiscent of Nora Ephron's, Daum dissects our culture's most dangerous illusions, blind spots, and sentimentalities while retaining her own joy and compassion. Through it all, she dramatizes the search for an authentic self in a world where achieving an identity is never simple and never complete.

The Unspeakable

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A master of the personal essay candidly explores love, death, and the counterfeit rituals of American life In her celebrated 2001 collection, My Misspent Youth, Meghan Daum offered a bold, witty, defining account of the artistic ambitions, financial anxieties, and mixed emotions of her generation. The Unspeakable is an equally bold and witty, but also a sadder and wiser, report from early middle age. It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide," Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital. Elsewhere, she writes searchingly about cultural nostalgia, Joni Mitchell, and the alternating heartbreak and liberation of choosing not to have children. Combining the piercing insight of Joan Didion with a warm humor reminiscent of Nora Ephron, Daum dissects our culture's most dangerous illusions, blind spots, and sentimentalities while retaining her own joy and compassion. Through it all, she dramatizes the search for an authentic self in a world where achieving an identity is never simple and never complete.

Category - Non Fiction / Literary Criticism

Format - Hardcover

Condition - Excellent

Listed - A year ago

Views - 1

Ships From - Illinois

Est. Publication Date - Nov 2014

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Category - Non Fiction / Literary Criticism

Format - Hardcover

Condition - Excellent

Listed - A year ago

Views - 1

Ships From - Illinois

Est. Publication Date - Nov 2014

Additional Information

Publisher Description

The Unspeakable

By:

$5.00

Condition

Format

Meet the seller

Discover more

The Unspeakable

By: Meghan Daum

'The Unspeakable' readers also enjoyed:

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