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Book Title

I Will Take the Answer

Subtitle
Essays
Author 1
Ander Monson
Body
The idea of connection permeates I Will Take the Answer, Ander Monson’s fourth book of utterly original and intelligent essays. How is our present connected to our past and future? How do neural connections form memories, and why do we recall them when we do? And how do we connect with one another in meaningful ways, across time and space?

In the opening essay, which extends across the book in brief subsequent pieces, a trip through a storm sewer in Tucson inspires Monson to trace the city’s relationship to Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman who shot Gabrielle Giffords and killed six bystanders, along with how violence is produced and how we grieve and honor the dead. With the formally inventive “I in River,” he ruminates on water in a waterless city and the structures we use to attempt to contain and control it. Monson also visits the exuberantly nerdy kingdom of a Renaissance Faire, and elaborates on the enduring appeal of sad songs through the lens of March Sadness, an online competition that he cofounded, an engaging riff on the NCAA basketball tournament brackets in which sad songs replace teams.
 
As personal and idiosyncratic as the best mixtape, I Will Take the Answer showcases Monson’s deep thinking and broad-ranging interests, his sly wit, his soft spot for heavy metal, and his ability to tunnel deeply into the odd and revealing, sometimes subterranean, worlds of American life.

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-64445-011-6
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Pages
Pages
248
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote
A moving and wide-ranging collection of essays by the author of Letter to a Future Lover

About the Author

Ander  Monson
Credit: Aidan Avery
Ander Monson is the author of Letter to a Future Lover; Vanishing Point, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Neck Deep and Other Predicaments. He edits DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press. He lives in Tucson, where he teaches at the University of Arizona.

http://otherelectricities.com/
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Praise

  • “Monson chooses to look at the memory. . . . his looking yields a critical commentary on American consumerism, gun control, trauma, and a bevy of other points. He leaves readers wondering: What violence have we slicked over?”Ploughshares
     
  • "These sturdy yet vulnerable essays will hold up over time."—Pulp Magazine
  • I Will Take the Answer, Monson’s fourth essay collection, is a clutch of cultural studies. . . . His underlying intentions are serious, born of a belief that the more we keep spelunking through our memories of these artifacts, and their own histories, the closer we’ll get to a truer sense of being.”On the Seawall
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