A Wanderer in the Perfect City - Lawrence Weschler
I got this book from Nate for Christmas in 2001 and have read it in bits and pieces in between other books, and finally finished it. Weschler is a writer for the New Yorker, and this is a collection of what he calls his "passion pieces": pieces about people and their passions. The essays were originally written between 1985 and 1990, and then this book (published in 1998) adds followup notes to some of the essays. There's a wide range of stories, from the overenthusiastic Indian who's convinced he's discovered the greatest living Expressionist painter, to a variant on chess, to a failed bookstore, to a rocket scientist-cum-investment banker-cum-clown.
It's an excellent collection, and just about every piece made me want to experience whatever it was that Weschler was describing: I wanted to see Shapinsky's paintings, visit the Lousiana Museum in Denmark, wander around New York City and look for the Julius Knipl vitrines. Weschler not only found good stories to tell, but told them in a way that passed along the passion in them. Thanks, Nate!
Fed to jonathan's brain | July 12, 2006
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