A World of Light

A World of Light

$24.95

SKU: 9780803243187
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Description

From the winner of the 2004 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction
 
In his award-winning memoir In the Shadow of Memory, Floyd Skloot told the hard story of coming to terms with a brain-ravaging virus. A World of Light, written with the same insight, passion, and humor that distinguished the earlier volume, moves Skloot’s story from the reassembly of a self after neurological calamity to the reconstruction of a shattered life. More than fifteen years after a viral attack compromised his memory and cognitive powers, Skloot now must do the vital work of recreating a cohesive life for himself even as he confronts the late stages of his mother’s advancing dementia. With tenderness and candor, he finds surprising connection with her where it had long been missing, transforming the end of her life into a time of unexpected renewal.
 
At the same time, Skloot and his wife are building a rich new life at the center of a small isolated forest on a hillside in rural Oregon, where a dwindling water supply and the bitter assaults of the weather bring an elemental perspective to his attempts to make himself once more at home in the world. By turns poignant, funny, and frightening, A World of Light balances the urgency to capture fragmented, fleeting memories with the necessity of living fully in the present.
Floyd Skloot is the author of ten previous works, including In the Shadow of Memory (available in a Bison Books edition), and the winner of numerous awards, including the 2004 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, Nonfiction Finalist for the 2003 Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and Finalist for the “Art of the Essay” PEN Award. His work has been featured in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science Writing, The Best Spiritual Writing, The Pushcart Prize, and The Art of the Essay.
“A World of Light is an engaging, sobering, and inspiring book. By no means is it a light read, but its pages will prove rewarding to those interested in the mysteries of human memory and its decline. The literary gifts of the writer shine brightly through despite his post-encephalitic state. Tragedy is leavened with humor, and the reality of dementia comes to be accommodated with empathy and understanding. . . . Equally impressive is the courage of the author to write such a book, with its requisite immersion not only in his mother’s dimentia but his own vexing cognitive challenges. Never indulging in self-pity, Skloot has presented a book well worth reading.”—Neurology Today
“A World of Light sheds a warm bright light on so many things, a round house in the snow, the connection and disconnections our minds make, memory and the tricks it plays, but mostly on a heart’s looking back to see beyond.”—Beverly D’Onofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys and Looking for Mary
“A World of Light is much more than a memoir: part history, part science, part baseball and literature and Broadway and art. But above and beyond all that, Floyd Skloot’s beauty of a book reveals for us the importance, for better and worse, of life and love, and why we must remember, and remember, and remember.”—Bret Lott, author of Jewel and Fathers, Sons, and Brothers
“A powerful and poignant book that sings along because of Skloot’s elegant style, irresistible humor, and unique perspective. Indeed, only someone with his unusual background could have written it. By turns smart, funny, observant, and insightful, he is the perfect guide to the world of dementia.”—Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses and An Alchemy of Mind
“Skloot has developed a style and voice that are distinctly his own. To combine passion and clarity of vision, humor and the horrific, is not easy, but Skloot’s essays pack enough wisdom to convince us that he is a man larger than the sum of his frustration and grief. . . . A World of Light is Skloot at his strongest and most affecting. His brain virus, awful as it was and still is, has made him an exceptional writer and an equally exceptional person.”—Sanford Pinsker, The Sewanee Review
“A cool, accomplished essayist excavates his past, including a bout of lost memory and his mother’s Alzheimer’s.”—Editors’ Choice, New York Times Book Review

Additional information

Weight 1 oz
Dimensions 1 × 6 × 9 in