Execute the Office : Essays with Presidents

Colin Rafferty

ISBN 10: 193609732X / ISBN 13: 9781936097326

Editore: Baobab Press Feb 2021, 2021

Riguardo questo articolo

Neuware - Most books about the presidents are either biographies or political science tomes, hundreds of pages long. If they cover the full list of presidents, then they often devolve into lists of trivia. Execute the Office seeks to balance both halves of the creative nonfiction genre by writing succinct essays that are invested as much in lyrical writing and experimental forms as they are with factual accuracy.

Codice articolo 9781936097326

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Execute the Office : Essays with Presidents
• Editore: Baobab Press Feb 2021
• Data di pubblicazione: 2021
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 193609732X
• ISBN 13: 9781936097326
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 208 L x 140 A x 10 P (millimetri) 208 millimetri di larghezza per 140 millimetri di altezza per 10 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 249 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Colin Rafferty's Execute the Office uses lyric prose and formal invention to explore the humanity, or lack thereof, that thrived in each of the forty-five American presidents. Whether these powerful individuals were celebrated for infamous deeds and heroism, or forgotten as placeholders in the annals of American history, too often presidents are commemorated by the sterility of simple fact. Execute the Office builds upon factual accuracy with essays that are equally invested in lyricism and experimental forms. To balance these factions, Execute the Office uses constraint, metaphor, allusion, and epiphany to explore not just the facts and artifacts of history, but describe the connections between those facts and human nature. These essays discuss the modes in which we remember through death songs, footnotes, infinite rooms, evacuation routes, and nomenclatures, to name a few examples, engaging with history from fresh perspectives. Execute the Office contains histories in and of unusual objects. While unfamiliar at first, they soon become distinct, unforgettable, profound, human.

Informazioni sull?autore

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Colin Rafferty grew up on the Kansas side (which makes a difference). In third grade, he unhesitatingly told an autograph dealer that the label on a Lincoln autograph was wrong—he was the sixteenth president, not the seventeenth. Later, Rafferty attended land grant universities (Kansas State, Iowa State) and eventually got an MFA from the University of Alabama. He writes about monuments and memorials (Hallow This Ground, Break Away Books, published in 2016), presidents (Execute the Office), and more generally public and private histories. In doing research for Execute the Office, he visited the graves of 28 presidents, toured the homes of another 16, and, for reasons still unbeknownst to him, was allowed to handle a four-page letter written by George Washington. Rafferty has taught nonfiction writing at the University of Mary Washington since 2008, developing classes on nonfiction of place, the lyric essay, and writing for multimedia. Since 2012, he has lived in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Elizabeth, and their dog in the same neighborhood where Patrick Henry gave the “give me liberty or give me death” speech in the presence of two future presidents. He is surrounded by history.