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Penultimates
Penultimates is an intimate and moving book by a master stylist. Farber’s words sear though the page, wounding and healing at the same time.—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The An Intimate History and The Emperor of All Maladies
Weaving together memory and memorials, a clear-eyed view of what it means to face an end (the end?)…PENULTIMATES is a lively, empathetic, funny, and above all compassionate view of the world as Farber has lived and loved it.—Eva Hagberg, author of When Eero Met His Match and How To Be Loved
This is a book about death. It is also a book about surfing. It is a poem. It is also prose, or whatever you want to call it. Mostly, it is a Book of Wisdom in the ancient sense of the term, like what Hesiod or Lao Tzu might have written had they lived into the 21st century, and been possessed of a wicked sense of humor, a vast arsenal of kick-ass quotes, and an indefatigable love of life that bubbles up through every sadness and disappointment.—Morgan Meis, author of The Fate of The Animals and The Drunken Silenus
In Penultimates, Thomas Farber gives us what we need a rich, funny, and searching meditation about questions facing us at the How to live, how to die, what does it mean…A guide we deserve for the passage awaiting us all.—Elizabeth Weil, author of No Cheating, No Dying, coauthor of The Girl Who Smiled Beads
Awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for fiction and, three times, National Endowment fellowships for fiction and creative nonfiction, recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, Thomas Farber has been both a Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundation scholar. His many books include Acting My Age, Here and Gone, The End of My Wits, Brief Nudity, and The Beholder. Former visiting writer at Swarthmore College and the University of Hawai‘i, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Weaving together memory and memorials, a clear-eyed view of what it means to face an end (the end?)…PENULTIMATES is a lively, empathetic, funny, and above all compassionate view of the world as Farber has lived and loved it.—Eva Hagberg, author of When Eero Met His Match and How To Be Loved
This is a book about death. It is also a book about surfing. It is a poem. It is also prose, or whatever you want to call it. Mostly, it is a Book of Wisdom in the ancient sense of the term, like what Hesiod or Lao Tzu might have written had they lived into the 21st century, and been possessed of a wicked sense of humor, a vast arsenal of kick-ass quotes, and an indefatigable love of life that bubbles up through every sadness and disappointment.—Morgan Meis, author of The Fate of The Animals and The Drunken Silenus
In Penultimates, Thomas Farber gives us what we need a rich, funny, and searching meditation about questions facing us at the How to live, how to die, what does it mean…A guide we deserve for the passage awaiting us all.—Elizabeth Weil, author of No Cheating, No Dying, coauthor of The Girl Who Smiled Beads
Awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for fiction and, three times, National Endowment fellowships for fiction and creative nonfiction, recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, Thomas Farber has been both a Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundation scholar. His many books include Acting My Age, Here and Gone, The End of My Wits, Brief Nudity, and The Beholder. Former visiting writer at Swarthmore College and the University of Hawai‘i, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
114 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2024
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January 23, 2024
Penultimates, by Thomas Farber is a new book that came out this month. Here’s the blurb I gave the book: Dwelling on endings and near-endings, as Thomas Farber does in his lyrical and reflective book Penultimates, is paradoxically uplifting. The reader is treated to a series of short, poignant essays that honor the approach and arrival of old age, without trepidation or regret. There is, perhaps, a bit of wistfulness in these pages, but also a sense of gratitude for the accomplishments and courage of many of the people the author has admired over the course of a long life. There is also an air of inevitability, although let us hope, as the title of the collection suggests, that these are not Farber’s last words on the subject.
Displaying 1 of 1 review