The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead

The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead
ISBN-10
0307268497
ISBN-13
9780307268495
Category
Biography & Autobiography
Pages
256
Language
English
Published
2008-02-05
Publisher
Vintage
Author
David Shields

Description

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers—from Lucretius to Woody Allen—Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.The Thing About Life provokes us to contemplate the brevity and radiance of our own sojourn on earth and challenges us to rearrange our thinking in crucial and unexpected ways.

Other editions

Similar books

  • One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays
    By Scaachi Koul

    Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian ...

  • The Very Last Interview
    By David Shields

    As Chuck Klosterman says, “The Very Last Interview is David Shields doing what he has done dazzlingly for the past twenty-five years: interrogating his own intellectual experience by changing the meaning of what seems both obviously ...

  • Nocturnals
    By Bradford Morrow

    In this volume, readers will encounter the monster of Kowloon, which relies on the imaginations of children in order to exist. Three men embark on a hallucinatory journey into the snowy pitch-dark night of the soul.

  • Other People: Takes & Mistakes
    By David Shields

    The book is divided into five sections: Men, Women, Athletes, Performers, Alter Egos.

  • Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity
    By David Shields

    David Shields reads his own life—reads our life—as if it were an allegory about remoteness and finds persuasive, hilarious, heartbreaking evidence wherever he goes. Winner of the PEN / Revson Award?

  • Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead: A Novel
    By Emily Austin

    With a “kindhearted heroine we all need right now” (Courtney Maum, New York Times bestselling author), Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling and “delightfully weird reminder that we will one day turn to dust and ...

  • By The Time You Read This I'll Be Dead
    By Julie Anne Peters

    I glance over at Santana. He's got a dopey smile on his face. “Roll over. Play dead.” The dog barks its head off. Santana chuckles beside me. “I taught him that.” “Shake.” The dog rolls over, then back again. It stands up and shakes off ...

  • Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
    By David Shields

    The author of the best-selling The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead presents a call for new art forms to match the complexities of the 21st century, exploring how creative expression is being reshaped to reflect today's ...

  • Heroes
    By David Shields

    Ex-jock sportswriter Al Biederman, mired in a midwestern college town, dreaming of glories past and a fantasy future, finds hope and then a moral dilemma in Belvyn Menkus, a basketball phenomenon involved in a recruiting scandal

  • The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU
    By Mike Dooley

    In pages filled with wisdom, humor, and, yes, joy, New York Times best-selling author Mike Dooley explores our most pressing and profound questions about the afterlife—and this life—from the fresh perspective of those who have made the ...