A new collection of prophetic essays from one of the sharpest practitioners of the form
Mark Slouka writes from a particular vantage point, one invoked by Thoreau, who wished “to improve the nick of time . . . to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future.” At this bewildering convergence, Slouka asks us to consider what it means to be human and what we must revive, or reject, in order to retain our humanity in the modern world.
Collected over fifteen years, these essays include fascinating explorations of the relationship between memory and history and the nature of “tragedy” in a media-driven culture; meditations on the transcendent “wisdom” of the natural world and the role of silence in an age of noise; and arguments in defense of the political value of leisure time and the importance of the humanities in an age defined by the language of science and industry. Written in Slouka’s supple and unerring prose, celebratory, critical, and passionate, Essays from the Nick of Time reawakens us to the moment and place in which we find ourselves, caught between the fading presence of the past and the neon lure of the future.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Citing E.B. White's comment on Thoreau, Harper's contributing editor Slouka describes his efforts, as Thoreau did, to navigate the impulse to both celebrate and fix the world. The essays in this powerful collection are divided into two sections: the more personal "Reflections" and the more political "Refutations"--but Slouka is never an either/or writer. In "Blood on the Tracks," for example, he works backwards from a horrific train accident in Connecticut to unravel the lives of the victims, the media's fleeting obsession with tragedy, and his own tenuous connection to the story. "Historical Vertigo," from 2003, juxtaposing time spent in Prague with his first introduction to e-mail, still resonates in an era of text-messaging and Twitter. Some of Slouka's sharpest political barbs are reserved for former President George W. Bush, particularly in "Quitting the Paint Factory" and "Democracy and Deference." But it is perhaps the somber "One Year Later"--written on the first anniversary of September 11 for Harper's--that stands above the rest in this fearless collection as Slouka wrestles with the sense of exceptionalism and lack of historical context that characterized so many Americans' response to tragedy. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
“[Slouka's] ruminative breadth is delicious, utterly likeable and impressive. A unique and valuable voice.”—Edward Hoagland
“Is anyone in America now writing essays that equal Mark Slouka's? I very much doubt it. He's got an uncanny instinct for the crucial topics and waxes brilliantly on education, nature, the burden of history, our current political fix, the true function of writers and writing, silence and cyber-culture. In a way, Slouka descends from Kafka and Melville, two of our darkest writers. But in these superbly eloquent, stunningly original essays, there's a shimmering dash of hope that's all his own.”—Mark Edmundson
“Mark Slouka's dazzling responses to our broken world expose the molten core of the essayist's impulse—the heroic attempt to find (and make) meaning in the midst of chaotic disarray. These pieces, written during our pivotal age of technological, political and economic change, form a riveting cultural panorama. The writing here is of the highest order, the thinking brilliant but never showy, the voice immediate, often wry, always with a pulse, the fat of self-regard entirely burned away in the light of candor. Mark Slouka has written an essential manual for the citizen reader, a landmark collection.”—Patricia Hampl
“Mark Slouka's Essays from the Nick of Time arrives in that very nick, offering up not just a suite of vital contemplations of private and public life, but also, in effect, proposing how to confront—and, yes, take joy in—the bewildering complexity of the world as we find it. Slouka's imagination is excitingly elastic, completely tuned to the ways that past insistently impinges on the present, and his self-scouring moral sense is as exact and exacting as Baldwin's or Orwell's. This book goes on the short shelf marked: essential.”—Sven Birke...
Description:
A new collection of prophetic essays from one of the sharpest practitioners of the form
Mark Slouka writes from a particular vantage point, one invoked by Thoreau, who wished “to improve the nick of time . . . to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future.” At this bewildering convergence, Slouka asks us to consider what it means to be human and what we must revive, or reject, in order to retain our humanity in the modern world.
Collected over fifteen years, these essays include fascinating explorations of the relationship between memory and history and the nature of “tragedy” in a media-driven culture; meditations on the transcendent “wisdom” of the natural world and the role of silence in an age of noise; and arguments in defense of the political value of leisure time and the importance of the humanities in an age defined by the language of science and industry. Written in Slouka’s supple and unerring prose, celebratory, critical, and passionate, Essays from the Nick of Time reawakens us to the moment and place in which we find ourselves, caught between the fading presence of the past and the neon lure of the future.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Citing E.B. White's comment on Thoreau, Harper's contributing editor Slouka describes his efforts, as Thoreau did, to navigate the impulse to both celebrate and fix the world. The essays in this powerful collection are divided into two sections: the more personal "Reflections" and the more political "Refutations"--but Slouka is never an either/or writer. In "Blood on the Tracks," for example, he works backwards from a horrific train accident in Connecticut to unravel the lives of the victims, the media's fleeting obsession with tragedy, and his own tenuous connection to the story. "Historical Vertigo," from 2003, juxtaposing time spent in Prague with his first introduction to e-mail, still resonates in an era of text-messaging and Twitter. Some of Slouka's sharpest political barbs are reserved for former President George W. Bush, particularly in "Quitting the Paint Factory" and "Democracy and Deference." But it is perhaps the somber "One Year Later"--written on the first anniversary of September 11 for Harper's--that stands above the rest in this fearless collection as Slouka wrestles with the sense of exceptionalism and lack of historical context that characterized so many Americans' response to tragedy. (Nov.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
“[Slouka's] ruminative breadth is delicious, utterly likeable and impressive. A unique and valuable voice.”—Edward Hoagland
“Is anyone in America now writing essays that equal Mark Slouka's? I very much doubt it. He's got an uncanny instinct for the crucial topics and waxes brilliantly on education, nature, the burden of history, our current political fix, the true function of writers and writing, silence and cyber-culture. In a way, Slouka descends from Kafka and Melville, two of our darkest writers. But in these superbly eloquent, stunningly original essays, there's a shimmering dash of hope that's all his own.”—Mark Edmundson
“Mark Slouka's dazzling responses to our broken world expose the molten core of the essayist's impulse—the heroic attempt to find (and make) meaning in the midst of chaotic disarray. These pieces, written during our pivotal age of technological, political and economic change, form a riveting cultural panorama. The writing here is of the highest order, the thinking brilliant but never showy, the voice immediate, often wry, always with a pulse, the fat of self-regard entirely burned away in the light of candor. Mark Slouka has written an essential manual for the citizen reader, a landmark collection.”—Patricia Hampl
“Mark Slouka's Essays from the Nick of Time arrives in that very nick, offering up not just a suite of vital contemplations of private and public life, but also, in effect, proposing how to confront—and, yes, take joy in—the bewildering complexity of the world as we find it. Slouka's imagination is excitingly elastic, completely tuned to the ways that past insistently impinges on the present, and his self-scouring moral sense is as exact and exacting as Baldwin's or Orwell's. This book goes on the short shelf marked: essential.”—Sven Birke...