This One Will Hurt You
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
The powerful essays in Paul Crenshaw’s This One Will Hurt You range in subject matter from the fierce tornadoes that crop up in Tornado Alley every spring and summer to a supposedly haunted one-hundred-year-old tuberculosis sanatorium that he lived on the grounds of as a child. They ruminate on the effects of crystal meth on small southern towns, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and the ongoing struggle of being a parent in an increasingly disturbing world. They surprise, whether discovering a loved one’s secret, an opossum’s motivation, or the unexpected decision four beer-guzzling, college-aged men must make. They tell stories of family and the past, the histories of small things such as walls and weather, and the faith it takes to hold together in the face of death.
With eloquence, subtle humor, and an urgent poignancy, Crenshaw delivers a powerful and moving collection of nonfiction essays, tied together by place and the violence of the world in which we live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Essayist Crenshaw (coauthor of Text, Mind, and World: An Introduction to Literary Criticism) explores in his tender solo debut growing up and living in rural America and coming to terms with unsettling memories. In the opening essay, "After the Ice," Crenshaw eloquently recounts his nephew's brutal death at the hands of the boy's stepfather, weaving this tragedy into an evocation of Arkansas's stark winter landscape and a reflection on the malleability of memory. The following essays examine literature for example, Denis Johnson and Flannery O'Connor's works and significant regional history, both recent and long ago. "Cold" looks at crystal meth's emergence and devastating effects on his former hometown of Booneville, Ark., combining elegy with critique. "Girl on the Third Floor" discusses a local landmark, the sprawling, now abandoned Nyberg Building, on whose grounds he and his mother once lived, tracing it back to the late 19th- and early 20th-century boom in building tuberculosis sanitariums. Crenshaw's evocative descriptions of place the Nyberg stands "among the surrounding pine trees like an undiscovered city or an old monument carved to forgotten gods" balances well with his confessional style. Throughout this fine collection, Crenshaw proves a deeply self-reflective narrator, able to expose his innermost worries while remaining keenly aware of the world around him.
