In the House of My Fear: A Memoir - Hardcover

Agee, Joel

3.18

17 ratings by Goodreads

9781593760458: In the House of My Fear: A Memoir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1593760450 ISBN 13: 9781593760458

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2004

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In the spring of 1964, Joel Agee, not quite at home in his native New York (having spent much of his boyhood and youth behind the Iron Curtain), accidentally ingests a sizeable dose of LSD. All at once he is thrown from the precincts of bohemian normalcy into a whirl of bizarre synchronicities, symbols and omens. Nothing is ever the same again. His brilliant, mentally ill younger brother is descending into a psychic netherworld without chemical inducement, and the culture at large, not to be outdone for surreal extremeness, is undergoing a mutation of its own: apocalypse and utopia appear to be equally imminent.
A small inheritance comes Joel’s way. Together with his wife and their infant daughter, he emigrates in search of kindred souls a picaresque journey that takes him through Spain, England, Italy, Switzerland, and France. On the way, a fantastic project takes root in his imagination: to exorcize his brother’s madness by transforming his own consciousness, first with "acid," then in a quest for enlightenment under the tutelage of spiritual teachers. Thirty years later, a sobered Joel Agee now the author of the widely reviewed memoir, Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany sets himself the task of recounting his adventures.

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From the Publisher:

From the Publisher In the spring of 1964, Joel Agee, not quite at home in his native New York (having spent much of his youth behind the Iron Curtain), accidentally ingests a sizeable dose of LSD. He is thrown from the precincts of bohemian normalcy into a whirl of bizarre synchronicities, symbols, and omens. His brilliant, mentally ill younger brother is descending into a psychic netherworld without chemical inducement, and the culture at large is undergoing a mutation of its own. A small inheritance comes Joel's way. Together with his wife and their infant daughter, he emigrates in search of kindred souls. On the way, a fantastic project takes root in his imagination: to exorcize his brother's madness by transforming his own consciousness, first with "acid," then in a quest for enlightenment under the tutelage of spiritual teachers. Thirty years later, a sobered Joel Agee sets himself the task of recounting his adventures. Somewhere, he knows, the ghosts of past terrors-his own and his brother's, who died by his own hand at the age of twenty-seven-are still trapped and crying for release. To find them, to save them, he must write his way into the house of his fear.

"Here is the proverbial ‘fear and trembling’ become an instrument of exploration, reflection. A writer’s search for meaning and purpose, for a secure sense of identity, told clearly, compellingly, will surely prompt in grateful readers the high compliment of a similar intensity of moral introspection." —Robert Coles, author of The Mind's Fate: A Psychiatrist Looks At His Profession.

"This voluptuously rendered account of a life lived with . . . unbounded curiosity . . . is among the most wonderful of memoirs I have ever read." —Jamaica Kincaid, author of Lucy

"Formally daring, ruthlessly honest, and written in limpid, expressive prose, [this book] explodes the clich�s and conventions of most non-fiction." —Siri Hustvedt, author of What I Loved

"So rich in incident, so vividly told, and often so buoyantly funny, Agee’s miraculous book soars beyond glib classification." —Erik Wensberg, co-author of Modern American Usage

"This book chronicles a harrowing journey into . . . a hell from which many people never return, let alone go on to describe [in] such lucid, poetic realism." —Peter Fenner, author of The Edge Of Certainty

"An unclassifiable work, hugely ambitious, exasperatingly self-conscious, but also, at its best, piercingly eloquent and intelligent. This is no ordinary memoir . . ." —Morris Dickstein

Review:

"An unclassifiable work, hugely ambitious, exasperatingly self-conscious, but also, at its best, piercingly eloquent and intelligent. No ordinary memoir . . ." -- Morris Dickstein

"Daring, beautiful, and deeply satisfying, as when we find ourselves in the presence of someone who tells the absolute truth." -- O Magazine, January, 2005

"Formally daring, ruthlessly honest, and written in limpid, expressive prose, [this book] explodes the clich�s and conventions of most non-fiction." -- Siri Hustvedt, author of What I Loved

"So rich in incident, so vividly told, and often so buoyantly funny, Agee’s miraculous book soars beyond glib classification." -- Erik Wensberg, co-author of Modern American Usage

"This voluptuously rendered account of a life lived with . . . unbounded curiosity . . . is among the most wonderful memoirs I've ever read." -- Jamaica Kincaid, author of Lucy

"With lucid, poetic realism, this book chronicles a harrowing journey into . . . a hell from which many people never return." -- Peter Fenner, author of The Edge Of Certainty

Here is the proverbial "fear and trembling" become an instrument of exploration, reflection. Grateful readers will cherish this work. -- Robert Coles, author of The Mind's Fate

This voluptuously rendered account of a life lived with unbounded curiosity's among the most wonderful of memoirs I've ever read." -- Jamaica Kincaid, author of Lucy

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