Excuse Me While I Disappear

Stories

By: Joanna Scott

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Hardcover | 16 September 2021 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
304 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.4 x 14.8 x 21.7

Hardcover

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From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and "greatly gifted and highly original artist" comes a masterful collection of stories about the timeless universal struggle to connect (New York Times).

Joanna Scott, the critically acclaimed author of ten novels and two collections, turns her “incandescent imagination” (Publishers Weekly) back to the craft of the short story, with breathtaking results. Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.

In Venice in the Late Middle Ages, a painter's apprentice finds a way to make his mark on canvases that will survive for centuries. In the near future, after the literary canon has been preserved only on the cloud and then lost, a scholar tries to piece together a little-known school of writers committed to using actual paper. In present day New England, a radio host invites his electrician to stay for dinner, opening up new narrative possibilities for both men.

Written in prose so naturally elegant, smooth, and precise that it becomes invisible, Excuse Me While I Disappear asks what remains of our stories—as individuals and civilizations—after we are gone.

Industry Reviews

"Scott, a virtuoso writer of penetrating imagination, not only returns to the short story after several novels... but also creates a heady inquiry into how we perpetually narrate our lives. Venturing into Borgesian territory with each metaphysical bend or surreal twist, Scott, ironic and compassionate, funny and shrewd, considers how the endless torrent of stories we generate fails to fully dispel our inherent inexplicability."--Booklist
A fearlessly intelligent writer.--Louise Erdrich
A greatly gifted and highly original artist...purely and simply wonderful.-- The New York Times Book Review
Joanna Scott is a magician, a conjurer, one of the very best writers at work today.--Bradford Morrow, author of The Diviner's Tale
Joanna Scott is a writer to treasure.--Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
Joanna Scott is among the handful of American writers I will always want to read.--Jay Parini, author of The Last Station
Joanna Scott's writing is always a wonder.--Andrea Barrett, author of Archangel and Ship Fever
One of our wisest, deftest, most knowing prose stylists.--Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule
Scott's prose is sensitive and beautifully crafted. She writes with subtlety, compassion and humor, and her characters are both eminently human and touched with magic and mystery.--The Washington Post
The wit, the magical prose and the daring devices of Scott's writing create an enchantment.--The Nation

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