The Vintage Book of Amnesia An Anthology of Writing on the Subject of Memory Loss

by LETHEM, JONATHAN

• ISBN13: 9780375706615
• ISBN10: 0375706615
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-17
• Publisher: Vintage
• More Book Details
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Summary

Jonathan Lethem is perhaps our most active literary voice mining the genre margins of our culture. In this unique collection he creates an anthology that no one else could. He draws on the work of such unforgettables as Julio Cortazar, who presents a man caught between the ancient and modern worlds unable to say which is real; Philip K. Dick, who tells the story of a man trapped on a spaceship of the somnolent, unable to sleep and slowly losing his mind; Shirley Jackson, who takes us on a nightmarish trip across town with a young secretary; and Oliver Sacks, who presents us with an aging hippie who possesses no memory of anything that has taken place since the early seventies. What Lethem has done is nothing less than define a new genre of literature-the amnesia story-and in the process he invites us to sit down, pick up the book, and begin to forget. Also including: John Franklin Bardin, Donald Barthelme, Thomas M. Disch, Karn Joy Fowler, David Grand, Anna Kavan, Haruki Murakami, Flann O'Brien, Edmund White, and many others.

Author Biography

Jonathan Lethem lives in Brooklyn, New York.  <b>Motherless Brooklyn</b> is coming from Vintage in Fall 2000.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
Dream Science	3	(18)
Thomas Palmer
The Night Face Up	21	(9)
Julio Cortazar
Other People	30	(10)
Martin Amis
Nightmare	40	(16)
Shirley Jackson
Memories of Amnesia	56	(15)
Lawrence Shainberg
Warm	71	(10)
Robert Sheckley
Soul Walker	81	(12)
Brian Fawcett
Cowboys Don't Cry	93	(10)
L. J. Davis
The Second Coming	103	(16)
Walker Percy
Funes, His Memory	119	(8)
Jorge Luis Borges
The Black Curtain	127	(14)
Cornell Woolrich
The Third Policeman	141	(15)
Flann O'Brien
Five Fucks	156	(20)
Jonathan Lethem
Forgetting Elena	176	(8)
Edmund White
Sarah Canary	184	(12)
Karen Joy Fowler
The Last Hippie	196	(31)
Oliver Sacks
Notes Toward a History of the Seventies	227	(10)
Geoffrey O'Brien
Ticket to Ride	237	(11)
Dennis Potter
The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds	248	(6)
Haruki Murakami
Geoffery Sonnabend's Oblilscence: Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter--An Encapsulation	254	(7)
Valentine Worth
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon	261	(19)
Philip K. Dick
The Zebra-Struck	280	(16)
Anna Kavan
The Squirrel Cage	296	(15)
Thomas M. Disch
Louse	311	(10)
David Grand
Game	321	(5)
Donald Barthelme
The Affirmation	326	(13)
Christopher Priest
Kleinzeit	339	(4)
Russell Hoban
Days Between Stations	343	(11)
Steve Erickson
``That in Aleppo Once...''	354	(10)
Vladimir Nabokov
The Deadly Percheron	364	(21)
John Franklin Bardin
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose	385	(16)
Kelly Link
Bibliography	401	(4)
Contributors	405	(6)
Permissions Acknowledgments	411