A HANDBOOK FOR DROWNING.

Shields, David.

ISBN 10: 0679401113 / ISBN 13: 9780679401117

Published by New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. dj, 1991

About this Item

SIGNED hardcover first edition - First printing. Shields' third book and first collection of short stories. Cover praise from Walker Percy and others. SIGNED on the front endpaper. 178 pp. Very near fine in a like dustjacket. Bookseller Inventory # 36636

Bibliographic Details

Title: A HANDBOOK FOR DROWNING.

Publisher: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. dj

Publication Date: 1991

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

"Shields's lucid prose succinctly illuminates the larger context of Jaffe's life. . . . It's even better at capturing the small picture."--Timothy Hunter, Cleveland Plain Dealer

In Handbook for Drowning, Walter Jaffe grows up in a family obsessed with social justice; Walter fixates on his own mortality.  The novel's pointillistic structure reflects the gap between the grief Walter feels for his dying mother and the impersonal rationality he's been taught to practice."

About the Author:

David Shields is the author of nine other books, including Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Shields has received a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is a professor in the English department at the University of Washington. Since 1996 he has also been a member of the faculty in Warren Wilson College's low-residency MFA Program for Writers, in Asheville, North Carolina. His work has been translated into twenty languages.