Neck Deep and Other Predicaments: Essays

by Ander Monson

Overview

Neck Deep and Other Predicaments is an innovative and engaging nonfiction debut by "an original new voice" (Publishers Weekly) and the winner of the 2006 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize

In this sparkling nonfiction debut, Ander Monson uses unexpectedly nonliterary forms—the index, the Harvard Outline, the mathematical proof—to delve into an equally surprising mix of obsessions: disc golf, the history of mining in northern Michigan, car washes, topology, and more. He reflects on his outsider experience at an exclusive Detroit-area boarding school in the form of a criminal history and invents a new form as he meditates on snow.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555974596
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	01/23/2007
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.11(w) x 8.92(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Ander Monson is the author of the novel Other Electricities and the poetry collection Vacationland. He lives in Michigan and is editor of the magazine DIAGRAM and of the New Michigan Press.

Editorial Reviews

Elizabeth Bishop often remarked that she wanted poems and prose that register the mind in motion rather than at rest. Bishop would have loved the work of Ander Monson, as much for his yearning mind as his quick, restless, precise motion. ‘I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT SNOW,' Monson writes in Neck Deep. Yes, indeed, and one of the many copious and surprising things he's also obviously been thinking about is the new American essay, of which he is the latest Edison, to touch on the title of his earlier novel, Other Electricities. For Monson the essay is something like a schematics for our fiercest longings and most ecstatic inventions. Every time I turn to it I'm astonished all over again by the majesty of this book.” —Robert Polito, Judge

From the Publisher

…Monson, one must admit, is pretty darn clever. Calling him an essayist is a bit of stretch—he's more like a daft, spoofing technician of not-quite-literary forms.
—The New York Times

Matthew Price