[A] stunning debut . . . Delivered with the storytelling talents of John Jeremiah Sullivan and brimming with the folkloric, true-life tales of Breece D’J Pancake, these tales are funny; unrepentantly realist; and, in their way, awfully elegant . . . With careful wit, an attention to emotional nuance that reaches down to the gut, and an astounding ear for dialogue, Daniels writes with a kind of brutal authenticity that is not easily faked, whichever side of auto-fiction’s hyphen he’s writing from.” —Diego Báez, Booklist (starred review) “A fascinating correspondence . . . Throughout the book, Daniels masterfully hints at other stories just off the page, revealing much about himself but never too much . . . The letters here represent a bold and daring contribution to belles lettres; Daniels is an essayist to watch.” —Publishers Weekly "An essayist who writes like a rattlesnake, his sentences coiled yet always ready to strike with venomous impact . . . [Daniels's] spare, elemental prose conjures old haunts, old hurts, and old friends who are dead or are in prison . . . extraordinary . . . An uncommonly auspicious debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "The Correspondence is one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, a whole new music that changes the score of masculinity, and a new kind of writing too, one that pushes form and sentence into radical, contemporary shapes. The word ‘honesty’ has become something of an irritant in contemporary literary culture: J. D. Daniels does something more moral than be simply honest. He invokes the grandeur and abasement of experience with a tactility of language that makes a psychological landscape of it, rather as the ancient Greeks did, and his notions of justice and truth are as richly textured as theirs. I have lent this slim, meaningful book to one person after another, and received the confirmation that it has changed their view of the world with its economy, its potency, its different fall of light."— Rachel Cusk, author of TRANSIT "Masculinity as vulnerable, smelly smackdown, personal failure as syntactic delight: In this volatile, brilliant collection, Daniels recollects in not-quite tranquility a series of synesthesiac rearrangements of the self. The riveting swerves of his sentences and of his geographic and spiritual wanderings will make you keep asking what “here” might be. These essays pay tribute to 'the world… our common property.'” — Lisa Cohen, author of ALL WE KNOW "The Correspondence gives off the unmistakeable crackle of an original writer who has found a new form. It's hard to say who or what is meant to be on the receiving end of these "letters," but if you care about modern life you need to read them."—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of PULPHEAD "Daniels sees what others don't, feels what others won't, and writes what others can't. He is a blazing virtuoso of the English sentence, an oracle with a vulnerable and willing heart, and he has produced a shockingly perfect book."— Sarah Manguso, author of ONGOINGNESS "J. D. Daniels's The Correspondence is an epic in fragments: masterly, comic, wise, daring. It is a book for everyone, from Kentucky to Cambridge to Kathmandu, though as a reader you may feel that Daniels is trafficking in secrets, meant for you alone. It is occult. It is so strong, it will melt the books on the shelves around it. This is a book that will become a legend, introducing one of the very best writers in the country. If I could thrust it into every true reader's hands, I would." —Mark Greif, author of THE AGE OF THE CRISIS OF MAN “What a nutjob! Increasingly these three words constitute my highest praise for – almost my ideal of – a writer, and in this regard J. D. Daniels takes the biscuit. I love the way he throws out everything, both in the sense of throwing it all at us, and the opposite: discarding everything that might be deemed necessary to the seemly construction of narrative. So The Correspondence gives us the best of both worlds.”—Geoff Dyer, author of WHITE SANDS “Questions that occurred to me as I read this brilliant, baffling book: What the hell is this? Who the hell is this? Is this poetry? How can that sentence be so good? Can I steal that later? In 130 pages, Daniels shows you just about everything great prose can do. Books like this are why I read.” —Tom Bissell, author of APOSTLE "Through the speed and shocking cuts of his prose, Daniels shows us what it is to be a writer now. Each of these six letters is a modern expression of Baudelaire's tortured prayer: 'O Lord God grant me the grace to produce a few good verses, which shall prove to myself that I am not the lowest of men, that I am not inferior to those whom I despise.'"—Michael Clune, author of GAMELIFE "J.D. Daniels is a scourge to an America drunk on fraudulent images of masculinity and to a literary scene enamored of dainty exhibitionism. A writer so rigorously on guard against complacency that he's likely to take any compliment paid him like a slap in the face."—Marco Roth, author of THE SCIENTISTS
…from the moment you crack [The Correspondence ] open, you're in the presence of an original voice…These essays and stories move high and low at once. Some read a bit like the earthy and doomed short stories of the West Virginia writer Breece D'J Pancake, as tweaked by an ironic miniaturist like Lydia Davis. It's an intoxicating combination.
The New York Times - Dwight Garner
09/19/2016 In this collection of six essays, loosely styled as letters (though not addressed to anyone in particular), Daniels investigates a series of personal subjects and experiences. In the first letter, written from Cambridge, Mass., Daniels details the years he spent training and competing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He enjoys the fighting, for reasons he can barely identify, but there are costs to his personal life. The next letter, written from Majorca, explains how an Israeli ship captain recruited Daniels to work on a boat just as Daniels’s relationships were falling apart at home. His “Letter from Kentucky” is a conflicted but passionate personal odyssey through the region where his family has lived for generations. Here he realizes he can’t help but write about his father: “His aim was to protect me from the darkness all around us, using the darkness inside himself.” The other letters feature profiles of a disturbed, paranoid man, a couple enmeshed in a love triangle, and Daniels’s bizarre experience with something called a “residential group-relations conference.” Throughout the book, Daniels masterfully hints at other stories just off the page, revealing much about himself but never too much. Although the essays mostly lack traditional qualities of letters, they comprise a fascinating correspondence from his world. The letters here represent a bold and daring contribution to belles lettres; Daniels is an essayist to watch. (Jan.)