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Odes to Being Alive
by James Parker
From the vertiginously talented James Parker, a collection of uproarious odes that show how to find gratitude in unexpected places.
Our politics are broken; our world is melting; the next catastrophe looms. Enter James Parker, who for years now has been writing odes of appreciation on subjects from the seemingly minor ("Ode to Naps") to the unexpected ("Ode to Giving People Money") to the seemingly minor, unexpected, and hyperspecific ("Ode to Running in Movies"). Finally collecting Parker's beloved and much-lauded odes in one place, this volume demonstrates the profound power of the form. Each ode is an exercise in gratitude. Each celebrates the permanent susceptibility of everyday humdrum life to dazzling saturations of divine light: the squirrel in the street, the crying baby, the misplaced cup of tea. Parker's odes are songs of praise, but with a decent amount of complaining in there, too: a human ratio of moans. Varied in length but unified in tone, mostly in prose, sometimes toppling into verse, the odes range across music, movies, literature, psychology, and beyond, all through the lens of Parker's personal history. Gathered together, they form an accidental how-to guide to honoring your own experience―and to finding your own odes.
"Parker offers some loose advice for living (give money to panhandlers whole-heartedly, because doing so means participating in 'the same divine economy that big-banged you into being'), but is at his best when poring over life's strange resonances…pays vivid homage to the beauty of the mundane." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Parker is articulate and provocative, seeing the poetry in the ordinary and the wonderful in the world." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"James Parker's book deserves an ode all its own―one that, like the odes it brings together, is apt, quirky, form-breaking, tradition-furthering, and celebratory all at once." ―Paul Elie, author of Reinventing Bach
"Note to readers! This book has two parts. The first is the book itself, the one you read, as James Parker's prose grips on your receptors: here is a seriocomic essayist of the first order, enthusiastic and nervous, spiritual and salty, excited by the very idea of a wide frame of reference, totally on. The second part happens after you've finished, as life seems like a series of further odes waiting to happen, and more inviting because of it." ―Ben Ratliff, author of Every Song Ever and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound
"Parker's dazzlingly erudite mind has found ways to appreciate everything from Proust to dog waste, and somehow make it funny. It's a book as edu-taining as it is inspirational, and his mastery of language ripples easy like Sunday morning. Parker is, in short, brilliant." ―Cintra Wilson, author of Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style
This information about Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Parker is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Since 2011, he has run the Black Seed Writers Group―a weekly writing workshop for homeless, transitional, and recently housed writers―and edited The Pilgrim, a literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
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