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The Book

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( 255 ratings, 64 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Book by Mary Ruefle continues her exploration of the everyday through intimate and omniscient prose. Building on her previous works like Dunce and Madness, Rack, and Honey, Ruefle offers reflections that invite readers to ponder both childhood and the ordinary world. The text meditates on memory, existence, and the ongoing relationship between reader and text in a world that will outlast us all.
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Format: Hardback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in arts and culture, lovers of contemporary poetry and prose, and those drawn to reflective, intimate meditations on life and literature.

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"A collection of prose by Mary Ruefle"--

Wave Books

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Following the acclaimed Dunce, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes Mary Ruefle's latest prose publication The Book.

True to its bold title, The Book affirms Mary Ruefle's legacy as (dubbed by Publishers Weekly) 'the patron saint of childhood and the everyday.' With the same curiosity found in Madness, Rack, and Honey and My Private Property, Ruefle's prose here feels both omniscient and especially intimate. 'It seems I believe in a bygone world though I no longer live there,' she writes. 'Will I continue to read about all that is dusty?'

In the spirit of friendship, Ruefle generously invites us to query ourselves as readers and thinkers in a world that will eventually endure without us.

'Straightforward in form, comic and companionable in tone, blessed with the Martian gift of seeing the strange in the ordinary and vice-versa...' - Joel Brouwer, Poetry

'Ruefle's speakers muse in a very deliberate, declarative syntax in a lot of universalities, generalities, and absolutes, speaking often for all of us.' - Adrien Blevins, Ploughshares

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Praised for its straightforward yet comic and companionable tone, the book is celebrated for revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary by notable critics including Joel Brouwer and Adrien Blevins. Reviewers acclaim Ruefle's visionary imagination, melancholy humour, and her ability to connect universal truths through deliberate, declarative prose. Her work is acknowledged as a significant contribution to contemporary American poetry and prose.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781950268849

Publisher: Wave Books

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 19 October 2023

Country: United States

Imprint: Wave Books

Illustration: Illustrations

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 12.0mm

Width: 203.0mm

Height: 139.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 96

About the Author

Mary Ruefleis the author ofmany books, includingDunce(Wave Books, 2019),which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is also the author of My Private Property(Wave Books, 2016),Trances of the Blast(Wave Books, 2013),Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures(Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, andSelected Poems(Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book,Go Home and Go to Bed!artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published inA Little White Shadow(Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she serves as the state's poet laureate.

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  • My Private Property
    "Ruefle can seem like a supernally well-read person who has grown bored with what smartness looks like, and has grown attracted to the other side. She is not writing with a prescription, or at least not one for this earth. Nor is she celebrating the commonplace. She is concentrating on one thing at a time." - New York Times "The...
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  • The Book
    Following the acclaimed Dunce, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes Mary Ruefle's latest prose publication The Book. True to its bold title, The Book affirms Mary Ruefle's legacy as (dubbed by Publishers Weekly) 'the patron saint of childhood and the everyday.' With the same curiosity found in Madness, Rack, and Honey and My Private Property, Ruefle's prose...
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