Afterwords

Reading both philosophical and theological texts, this book presents an argument against nostalgia: against the myth of a Golden Age, against the posture that sees "modernity" as a problem to be solved.

AFTER September 11, 2001, emotions couldn't be clearly defined. There were no WORDS strong enough to justify, avenge, explain, or express the sheer magnitude of this horrifyingly unique moment in history. In this remarkable anthology, compiled by Salon.com's award-winning editorial team, Rick Moody, Janet Fitch, Caroline Knapp, and Jeffrey Eugenides join many contemporary literary talents and reporters in giving a voice to the day that left a stunning roar of silence across America. Dread, fear, heroism, and dignity color these pages from eyewitness accounts of ordinary citizens turned rescue workers, to an escape from the World Trade Center, a report on everyday New Yorkers finding comfort in "terror sex," and stories of miracles in the madness -- like that of a blind man led by his seeing-eye dog down eighty-seven flights of stairs to safety. Afterwords also probes the aftermath of the attacks on the nation and the world's cultural, political, and social fabric through writing ranging from an in-depth interview with controversial social critic Noam Chomsky, to a female Pakistani-American journalist's meeting with a Taliban leader and his wives, and essays on how sheer horror gave way to heartening solidarity, macabre spectacle, and kitschy sentimentality. Immediate, raw, emotional, and empowering, this outstanding collection speaks brilliantly to the simple need to remember and comprehend what happened against that perfect blue sky on September 11, 2001. A portion of the royalties will be donated to the Twin Towers Fund and the Red Cross's Fund for Afghan Children.

"The belief in translation as an act of self-portraiture drives Afterwords, Geoffrey Cook's ambitious reimagining of German poems by Goethe, Heine, Rilke and Brecht. Cook's versions not only transform these foreign texts into English poems in their own right, but enrich and expand his uniquely prismatic voice. Cook brings a contemporary and Canadian tone to his adaptations, which also showcase the exacting craftsmanship for which his first collection, Postscript, was praised. Afterwords is a book that daringly celebrates authorship as a shared project. "Do you / not feel," writes Goethe, "that, in my songs, / I am one and the other, too?" Geoffrey Cook's poetry and translations have been widely published and anthologized. His first book, Postscript (Signal, 2004) was shortlisted for the Alfred G. Bailey and Gerald Lampert Memorial awards. He lives in Sainte-Adáele, Quebec."--

The essays in this collection were written as reviews, mainly for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, on books by or about Alexander Pope, Vincent van Gogh, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, and A. E. Housman, or as introductions to editions of the classical Greek writers, the Protestant mystics, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Tennyson, Grimm and Andersen, Poe, G. K. Chesterton, Paul Valéry, and others. Throughout, these prose pieces reveal the same wit and intelligence--as well as the vision--that sparked the brilliance of Auden's poetry.

Contains imaginary interviews with deceased British and American authors, including Samuel Johnson, Henry James, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, and others.

Fame can be deadly. Out of the wreckage of environmental collapse, the country of Delicatum emerged. Its most popular celebrities are the Famoux, uniquely beautiful stars of a reality TV show called the Fishbowl. In a world still recovering from catastrophe, they provide a 24/7 distraction. Sixteen-year-old Emilee Laurence is obsessed with the Famoux—they provide a refuge from her troubled home life and the bullies at school. When she receives an unimaginable offer to become a member herself, she takes it. Leaving behind everything she’s ever known, Emilee enters a world of high glamour and even higher stakes. Because behind their perfect image lies an ugly truth—an anonymous stalker has been dictating the Famoux’s every move, and being popular really is a matter of life or death.

The Afterwordis the afterword to a best-selling novel that doesn’t exist. It is a stunning, deliriously original work of fiction about the nature of faith in the modern world.