Trying to Be: A Collection

With lyrical precision and aching intimacy, Trying to Be moves through history, memory, and the performance of ephemeral identity, as John Haskell assembles a quiet manifesto for how to think, how to live, and how to feel ourselves in our bodies.

Trying to Be is a book about presence, absence, and the intricate art of inhabiting one’s own life. John Haskell—known for his genre-defying literary voice—moves through a series of intimate, sharply observed portraits: Francis Bacon and his doomed ...