In the House of My Fear A Memoir

by Agee, Joel

• ISBN13: 9781593761080
• ISBN10: 1593761082
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-05
• Publisher: Counterpoint

Summary

In the spring of 1964, Joel Agee, not quite at home in his native New York (having spent much of his boyhood and youth behind the Iron Curtain), accidentally ingests a sizeable dose of LSD. All at once he is thrown from the precincts of bohemian normalcy into a whirl of bizarre synchronicities, symbols and omens. Nothing is ever the same again. Thirty years later a sobered Joel Agee sets himself the task of recounting his adventures. He begins as a memoirist, but the truth he is seeking is not just that of memory. This book is a rescue mission — to find the ghosts of his past he must write his way into the house of his fear.

Author Biography

Joel Agee is a writer and translator. He has received several prizes, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin in 2008 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s verse play Penthesilea. He is the author of two memoirs--Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany and, more recently, In the House of My Fear. His translation of Prometheus Bound was produced at the Getty Villa in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

PART 1
German Lessons	3	(15)
Eros at Sea	18	(14)
Mrs. Libido	32	(7)
Amy	39	(4)
A Double Life	43	(5)
The Turtle	48	(7)
Enter Stefan	55	(5)
Flights	60	(18)
Carnival	78	(28)
More German Lessons	106	(4)
Amor	110	(7)
The Fury of Symbols	117	(29)
Shards	146	(14)
Stefan's Prophecy	160	(6)
Chance	166	(10)
The Storm	176	(6)
PART 2
Prologue in Hell	182	(7)
Downstream	189	(14)
Es Vive	203	(11)
Antonio Salvador	214	(9)
Can Pep Serreta	223	(30)
A Letter From Stefan	253	(7)
Krishnamurti	260	(8)
Falling	268	(19)
Orange Sunshine	287	(7)
To the Valley of Marvels	294	(23)
Shiva	317	(10)
World's End	327	(7)
A Turn in the Road	334	(7)
Chao Khun	341	(15)
PART 3
Into the Labyrinth	356	(41)
Interlude: Mirrors and Dreams	397	(7)
The Last Day	404	(55)
Duet for One	459	(17)
Coda	476	(7)
Acknowledgments	483