PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay longlist
The two thought-provoking, extended essays that make up Stories We Tell Ourselves draw from the author鈥檚 richly diverse experiences and history, taking the reader on a deeply pleasurable walk to several unexpectedly profound destinations. A steady accumulation of fascinating science, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural history鈥攔anging as far and wide as neuro-ophthalmology, ancient dream interpretation, and the essential differences between Jung and Freud鈥攊s smoothly intermixed with vivid anecdotes, entertaining digressions, and a disarming willingness to risk everything in the course of a revealing personal narrative.
鈥淒ream Life鈥 plumbs the depth of dreams鈥攃onceptually, biologically, and as the nursery of our most meaningful metaphors鈥攁s it considers dreams and dreaming every whichway: from the haruspicy of the Roman Empire to contemporary sleep and dream science, from the way birds dream to the way babies do, from our longing to tell them to the reasons we wish other people wouldn鈥檛.
鈥淪eeing Things鈥 recounts a journey of mother and daughter鈥攁 Holmes-and-Watson pair intrepidly working their way through the mysteries of a disorder known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome鈥攅ven as it restlessly detours into the world beyond the looking glass of the unconscious itself. In essays that constantly offer layers of surprises and ever-deeper insights, the author turns a powerful lens on the relationships that make up a family, on expertise and unsatisfying diagnoses, on science and art and the pleasures of contemplation and inquiry鈥攁nd on our fears, regrets, hopes, and (of course) dreams.
鈥淭he whole is seamless, beautifully crafted; the subject matter is universal; the weave of self and other鈥擧erman and scientists, Herman and her daughter鈥攊s masterful.鈥濃擲cott Raab, author, The Whore of Akron
鈥淭his persistently amusing and endearingly eccentric book demonstrates the elasticity and 茅lan of the personal essay in the hands of a consummate practitioner, as well as the plentiful resources of its author鈥檚 consciousness.鈥濃擯hillip Lopate, author, Art of the Personal Essay
鈥Stories We Tell Ourselves is a marvelous inquiry into what dreams can tell us about ourselves鈥攊n short, that some vast part of our experience, cut off from us and made unconscious, can be plumbed by anyone who is curious and persistent enough to pursue the enigmatic language of dreams.鈥濃擜nnie Rogers, author, The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma
2013 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay Longlist
