Serious face : essays / Jon Mooallem.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mooallem, Jon, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mooallem, Jon.

American essays--21st century.

American essays.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

ix, 308 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Random House, [2022]

Summary:

"Beneath the self-assured and serious faces we wear, every human life is full of longing, guesswork, and confusion--a scramble to do the best we can and make everything up as we go along. In these wide-ranging essays, Jon Mooallem chronicles the beauty of our blundering and the inescapability of our imperfections. He investigates the collapse of a multimillion-dollar bird-breeding scam run by an aging farmer known as the Pigeon King, intimately narrates a harrowing escape from California's deadliest wildfire, visits an eccentric Frenchman building a town at what he claims is the center of the world, shadows a man through his first day of freedom after twenty-one years in prison, and more--all with a deep conviction that it's our vulnerability, not our victories, that connect us. Mooallem's powers of perception have established him as one of the most distinctive, empathic, and clear-sighted narrative journalists working today. The Wall Street Journal has called his writing "as much art as it is journalism," and Jia Tolentino has praised his "grace and command." In Serious Face, Mooallem brings to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets, telling their stories with empathy, humor, insight, and kindness. These elegant, moving essays form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience: our audacity and fallibility, our bumbling and goodwill. In moments of calamity and within the extreme absurdity of everyday life, can we learn to love the people we really are, behind the serious faces we show the world?" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

A house at the end of the world

Why these instead of others?

This is my serious face

Can you even believe this is happening? (A monk seal murder mystery)

The outsiders

At the precise center of a dream

We have fire everywhere

This story about Charlie Kaufman has changed

Swing state

Birdman

A cloud society

Neanderthals were people, too

Take me out.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9780525509943

0525509941

OCLC:

1265004402