Bøger af Greg Gerke

Looking back on his earlier selves at a time when all seems lost, a man reflects on a series of abiding memories. But these are not memories of milestones and waymarkers, of the events and experiences that have shaped his life. They are memories of what has occurred in the negative space around his core being-brief encounters, passions thwarted, relationships cut short and desires not pursued-and, in being reflected on, they shape another self that is both powerfully of the world and concealed from it.In his prismatic début novel, In the Suavity of the Rock, Greg Gerke explores an existential crisis that doesn't seek to define a stable self so much as to rescue beauty from instability. With the observant eye and intricate style that characterise his acclaimed essays, Gerke probes at an identity disturbed by its own mercurial nature and asks the essential questions of a life conceived in narrative terms: Do we distort our own self-awareness when we select experiences for retelling? Is there true continuity between our past and present selves, or is an identification with the past a way of chaining oneself to it? And might it be the case that a self is not the source of a story? Might it be, instead, that by forcing fluid experience into a story's form, we manufacture the illusion that our essence isn't chaos?

What does it mean today to experience a work of art? Where can we turn in search of the genuine, the sincere, the truly accomplished? And even if we were to find them, would we know how to acknowledge their value? The essays in See What I See are the fruits of a lifetime spent grappling with these questions. By turns lyrical and arch, they seek answers in the artistic achievements of the great masters--from Gaddis and Gass to Kubrick and Rohmer--as well as in less likely places. For Greg Gerke, the nectar of aesthetic experience is found as often in the human body as in poetry or prose. This new and expanded version of See What I See, with an introduction by noted scholar Steven Moore, is the perfect companion for the bookworm or cinephile.

What does it mean today to experience a work of art? In a culture of triviality and cynicism, at the mercy of the superfluous and ephemeral, where can we turn to find the genuine, the sincere, the truly accomplished?The thirty essays in See What I See are the fruits of a lifetime spent grappling with these questions. By turns lyrical and arch, nostalgic and impassioned, they seek answers in the achievements of the masters as well as in less likely places. For Greg Gerke, aesthetic experience is found as often in the human body as in poetry or prose, as much in being in the world as on celluloid or canvas: in the yearnings, confusions, hopes, and pleasures of a life fully lived.