This Living Hand: And Other Essays
Written by Edmund Morris
Narrated by Edmund Morris
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
When the multitalented biographer Edmund Morris (who writes with equal virtuosity about Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Beethoven, and Thomas Edison) was a schoolboy in colonial Kenya, one of his teachers told him, "You have the most precious gift of all-originality." That quality is abundantly evident in this selection of essays. They cover forty years in the life of a maverick intellectual who can be, at whim, astonishingly provocative, self-mockingly funny, and richly anecdotal. (The title essay, a tribute to Reagan in cognitive decline, is poignant in the extreme.)
Whether Morris is analyzing images of Barack Obama or the prose style of President Clinton, or exploring the riches of the New York Public Library Dance Collection, or interviewing the novelist Nadine Gordimer, or proposing a hilarious "Diet for the Musically Obese," a continuous cross-fertilization is going on in his mind. It mixes the cultural pollens of Africa, Britain, and the United States, and propogates hybrid flowers-some fragrant, some strange, some a shock to conventional sensibilities.
Repeatedly in This Living Hand, Morris celebrates the physicality of artistic labor, and laments the glass screen that today's e-devices interpose between inspiration and execution. No presidential biographer has ever had so literary a "take" on his subjects: he discerns powers of poetic perception even in the obsessively scientific Edison. Nor do most writers on music have the verbal facility to articulate, as Morris does, what it is about certain sounds that soothe the savage breast. His essay on the pathology of Beethoven's deafness breaks new ground in suggesting that tinnitus may explain some of the weird aural effects in that composer's works. Masterly monographs on the art of biography, South Africa in the last days of apartheid, the romance of the piano, and the role of imagination in nonfiction are juxtaposed with enchanting, almost unclassifiable pieces such as "The Bumstitch: Lament for a Forgotten Fruit" (Morris suspects it may have grown in the Garden of Eden); "The Anticapitalist Conspiracy: A Warning" (an assault on The Chicago Manual of Style); "Nuages Gris: Colors in Music, Literature, and Art"; and the uproarious "Which Way Does Sir Dress?", about ordering a suit from the most expensive tailor in London.
This Living Hand is packed with biographical insights into such famous personalities as Daniel Defoe, Henry Adams, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Truman Capote, Glenn Gould, Jasper Johns, W. G. Sebald, and Winnie the Pooh-not to mention a gallery of forgotten figures whom Morris lovingly restores to "life." Among these are the pianist Ferruccio Busoni, the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, the novelist James Gould Cozzens, and sixteen so-called "Undistinguished Americans," contributors to an anthology of anonymous memoirs published in 1902.
Reviewing that book for The New Yorker, Morris notes that even the most unlettered persons have, on occasion, "power to send forth surprise flashes, illuminating not only the dark around them but also more sophisticated shadows-for example, those cast by public figures who will not admit to private failings, or by philosophers too cerebral to state a plain truth." The author of This Living Hand is not an ordinary person, but he too sends forth surprise flashes, never more dazzlingly than in his final essay, "The Ivo Pogorelich of Presidential Biography."
Related to This Living Hand
Related audiobooks
Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Money Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 42nd Parallel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51919 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hell's Traces: One Murder, Two Families, Thirty-Five Holocaust Memorials Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Rhapsody: Writers, Musicians, Movie Stars, and One Great Building Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5United States: Essays 1952-1992 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why Bob Dylan Matters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gift Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrave Companions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After the Fireworks: Three Novellas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nietzsche On His Balcony Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJudderman: The Eden Book Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Vicious Circle: Mysteries & Crime Stories from the Algonquin Round Table Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eighth Day: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Odessa With Love: Political And Literary Essays from Post-Soviet Ukraine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFinal Chapters: How Famous Authors Died Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUlysses Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Literary Criticism For You
Lord of the Flies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow": A Macat Analysis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51984 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fahrenheit 451 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Of Mice and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5C. S. Lewis: Encountering God's Truth through Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary: Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover: Key Takeaways, Summary & Analysis Included Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing (and Writers): A Miscellany of Advice and Opinions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outsiders Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Common Sense Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Feminist: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thalia Book Club: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird 50th Anniversary Celebration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thalia Book Club: Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for This Living Hand
3 ratings0 reviews