On the shoreline of knowledge : Irish wanderings / Chris Arthur.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Arthur, C. J. (Christopher John), 1955-

Series:

Sightline books.

Sightline books

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English essays--Irish authors.

English essays.

English literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, c2012.

Summary:

The carefully crafted, meditative essays in On the Shoreline of Knowledge sometimes start from unlikely objects or thoughts, a pencil or some fragments of commonplace conversation, but they soon lead the reader to consider fundamental themes in human experience. The unexpected circumnavigation of the ordinary unerringly gets to the heart of the matter. Bringing a diverse range of material into play, from fifteenth-century Japanese Zen Buddhism to how we look at paintings, and from the nature of a briefcase to the ancient nest-sites of gyrfalcons, Chris Arthur reveals the extraordinary dimensions woven invisibly into the ordinary things around us. Compared to Loren Eiseley, George Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Aldo Leopold, V. S. Naipaul, W. G. Sebald, W. B. Yeats, and other literary luminaries, he is a master essayist whose work has quietly been gathering an impressive cargo of critical acclaim. Arthur speaks with an Irish accent, rooting the book in his own unique vision of the world, but he addresses elemental issues of life and death, love and loss, that circle the world and entwine us all.

Contents:

Contents; Introduction: Going Round in Circles; Chestnuts; Lists; Looking behind Nothing's Door; Pencil Marks; Kyklos; Level Crossing; Absent without Leave, Leaving without Absence; Relics; When Now Unstitches Then and Is in Turn Undone; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Briefcase; The Wandflower Ladder; A Private View; Zen's Bull in the Tread of Memory; Acknowledgments; Notes on the Text

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781609381301

1609381300

OCLC:

821725650