Acquainted With The Night
Many books of essays look like this one, superficially. Someone interested in something writes enough to let you know more about it than you ever thought you could want to know. Journalism, tout court. Christopher Dewdney's text about what happens in the dark differs from the work of most other essayists by virtue of his being a poet, not a journalist. (Though he is a journalist of another kind, having kept a natural history journal for 30 years. ) His vocation brings to this work a greater-than-usual stylistic range and a piercing attention to the oddest details. Dewdney divides the night into 12 chapters, beginning at 6 p. m. Within each chapter, the most heterogeneous subjects are pitched together and quickly, brightly illuminated: fierce-toothed fishes in lightless, deepest ocean; the universal dark before the stars; the relative dark within the womb; light pollution in cities at night; Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen. Pick an hour. "It is 2 a. m. and most people are dreaming": a few cars drive home; it's time for last call in the clubs and bars; familiar stars wheel. Having first expanded the chapter's title, "Stargazing: the mythology and science of the night sky, " Dewdney riffs for 39 pages on astronomy, on who calls what constellations what, and why. The style is usually simple and direct, perfect for telling how a policeman stays awake while on the graveyard shift (with coffee, tea, and Coke), how Dewdney learns in a sleep-disorder clinic that he has mild sleep apnea. But there are plenty of gutsy passages in which his calling breaks through and the prose rises in pitch to meet its great subject: "Night is my country, my lover, and after sunset I fill with a kind of restless euphoria--twilight's power flows through my body . . . the same cosmic night in which the galaxies swirl is inside all substance, inside us, an eternal, brilliant night within and beyond all matter, for all time. " --Ted Whittaker Author(s): Christopher Dewdney. Binding Paperback. Publisher(s): Harper Perennial Canada. Label: Harper Perennial Canada.
| Manufacturer: | Harper Perennial Canada |
| Part Number: | |
| Lowest Price (CAD): | $15.85 |
Product Features |
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| Author : | Christopher Dewdney |
| Brand : | HarperCollins |
| Format : | Paperback |
| Kid's Book Categories : | General |
| Language : | English |
| Large Print : | No |
| Publisher : | HarperCollins |
| Signed Copy : | No |
| Title : | Title A-B |
| Year Published : | 2005 |
