Overview
"Avoid the Day truly seems to me to push nonfiction memoir as far as it can go without it collapsing into a singularity and I am at a loss for words. You are just going to have to read it." āHelen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
A surreal, high-wire act of narrative nonfiction that redefines the genre,Ā Avoid the DayĀ is part detective story, part memoir, and part meditation on the meaning of lifeāall told with a dark pulse of existential horror. What emerges isĀ an unforgettable study of mortality and the artistās journey.
Seeking to answer the mystery of a missing manuscript by BĆ©la BartĆ³k, and using the investigation to avoid his fatherās deathbed, award-winning magazine writer Jay Kirk heads off to Transylvania, going to the same villages where the āMaster,ā like a vampire in search of fresh plasma, had found his new material in the folk music of the peasants. With these stolen songs, BartĆ³k redefined music in the 20thĀ Century. Kirk, who is also seeking to renew his writing, finds inspiration in the composerās unorthodox methods, but begins to lose his tether as he sees himself in BartĆ³kās darkest and most personal work, theĀ Cantata Profana,Ā which revolves around the curse of fathers and sons.
After a near-psychotic episode under the spell of BartĆ³k, the author suddenly finds himself on a posh eco-tourist cruise in the Arctic. There, accompanied by an old friend, now a documentary filmmaker, the two decide to scrap the documentary and make a horror flick insteadāshot under the noses of the unsuspecting passengers and crew. Playing one of the main characters who finds himself inexplicably trapped on a ship at the literal end of the world,Ā alone,Ā and under the influence of the midnight sun, Kirk gets lost in his own cerebral maze, struggling to answer his most plaguing question: can we find meaning in experience?
This book title, Avoid the Day (A New Nonfiction in Two Movements), ISBN: 9780062356178, by Jay Kirk, published by HarperCollins (January 28, 2020) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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