Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life - Softcover

Norris, Kathleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594484384 ISBN 13: 9781594484384

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2010

Synopsis

The extraordinary New York Times bestselling masterpiece from "one of the most eloquent yet earthbound spiritual writers of our time" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Kathleen Norris had written several much loved books, yet she couldn't drag herself out of bed in the morning, couldn't summon the energy for her daily tasks. Even as she struggled, Norris recognized her familiar battle with acedia, a word she had discovered in early Church text years earlier. Fascinated by this "noonday demon", so familiar to those in the early and medieval Church, Norris knew she must restore this forgotten but important concept to the modern world's vernacular. An examination of acedia in the light of psychology, spirituality, the healing powers of religious practice, and Norris's own experience, Acedia & Me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always insightful.

About this title

About the Author:

Kathleen Norris is the award-winning, bestselling author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; The Cloister Walk; and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, in various anthologies, and in her own three volumes of poetry. She divides her time between South Dakota and Hawaii.

From AudioFile:

Kathleen Norris tackles with great acumen the biblical topic of acedia--the inability to care. Norris uses autobiography and academic analysis to demonstrate the term's modern relevance. The book is a smart, compelling read, especially when Norris discusses her husband's suicidal breakdown and acedia's role in her writing. Unintentionally ironic, Norris's narration is as dispassionate and devoid of vitality as the affliction of acedia that she so eloquently details. Norris even misses the punch lines of her own jokes, flatly delivering her own wit as if reading a weather report off a cue card. It was an unfortunate choice to have ACEDIA AND ME read by the author, especially given the topic's relevance to depressed and distracted cultures. J.T. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1594484384
• ISBN 13: 9781594484384
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334