Brief in the way a razor's slice is brief, remarkable essays by a peerless stylist
New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggy's strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quincey's early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb ?spoke of 'Lilliputian rabbits' when eating frog fricassse?; Henry Fuseli ?ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams?; ?Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers?; and ?Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke.? In a book of ?blue devils? and night visions, the Keats essay opens: ?In 1803, the guillotine was a common child's toy.? And poor Schwob's end comes as he feels ?like a 'dog cut open alive'?: ?His face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief.? Fleur Jaeggy's essays?or are they prose poems??smoke of necessity: the pages are on fire.
