Dead Languages (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: David Shields
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 19604978
- Setting: San Francisco and Los Angeles
- Principal Characters: Jeremy Zorn, Annette Zorn, Teddy Zorn, Beth Zorn, Sandra, Faith, Audrey Robbins, Barbie Levine, Gretchen
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Journalism or journalists, Politics, Love or romance, Authors or writers, California, West, U.S., Speech, Reporting or reporters
- Locales: Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA
In David Shields’s second novel, Jeremy Zorn relates a picaresque narrative of his life, his adventures comprising a series of obsessions interspersed with failed relationships and capped with the death of his mother. What emerges from this seemingly loose array of anecdotes is a finely drawn Kunstlerroman, a portrait of the conditions that have spawned a young man who turns to writing to compensate for his incapacity to speak clearly.
Writing is only the last of “an endless series of obsessions, overwrought attempts to get beyond a voice that bothered me,” Jeremy...
[The entire page is 2063 words long]
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