Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
From the author of Margaret the First and SPRAWL comes a prose collection like no other, where different styles of writing and different spaces of experience create a collage of the depths and strangeness of contemporary life.
Danielle Dutton's endlessly inventive books have been praised as "strikingly smart and daringly feminist" (Jenny Offill), "brilliantly odd" (The Irish Independent), and "beguiling" (The Wall Street Journal). In Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other, four distinct sections operate like Joseph Cornell boxes, each offering its own vibrant proposal for what contemporary writing might be.
"Prairie" is a cycle of stories set in the Midwest, a surreal landscape of wildflowers, ominous rivers, violence, virtual reality, art, fear, and loss. The conceptual work in "Dresses" reconsiders the canon through the lens of its garb, like a wild literary closet. "Art" turns to essay, examining how works of visual art and fiction relate to one another, a theme central to the whole book. The final section, "Other," collects pieces in irregular ("other") forms, stories-as-essays or essays-as-stories that defy category and are hilarious or heartbreaking for reasons as inexplicable as the abiding beauty and strangeness of all of Dutton's work.
Synopsis
From the "strikingly smart and daringly feminist" (Jenny Offill) author of Margaret the First and SPRAWL comes a prose collection like no other, where different styles of writing and different spaces of experience create a collage of the depths and strangeness of contemporary life.
"Luminous" (The Guardian) and "brilliantly odd" (The Irish Independent), Danielle Dutton's writing is as protean as it is beguiling. In the four eponymous sections of Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other, Dutton imagines new models for how literature might work in our fractured times.
"Prairie" is a cycle of surreal stories set in the quickly disappearing prairieland of the American Midwest. "Dresses" offers a surprisingly moving portrait of literary fashions. "Art" turns to essay, examining how works of visual art and fiction might relate to one another, a question central to the book, while the final section, "Other," includes pieces of irregular ("other") forms, stories-as-essays or essays-as-stories that defy category and are hilarious or heartbreaking by turns.
Out of these varied materials, Dutton builds a haunting landscape of wildflowers, megadams, black holes, violence, fear, virtual reality, abiding strangeness, and indefinable beauty.