These Possible Lives

New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggy’s strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quincey’s early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb “”spoke of ‘Lilliputian rabbits’ when eating frog fricassse””; Henry Fuseli “”ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams””; “”Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers””; and “”Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke.”” In a book of “”blue devils”” and night visions, the Keats essay opens: “”In 1803, the guillotine was a common child’s toy.”” And poor Schwob’s end comes as he feels “”like a ‘dog cut open alive'””: “”His face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief.”” Fleur Jaeggy’s essays-or are they prose poems?-smoke of necessity: the pages are on fire. —- ISBN: 9780811226875 | ISBN10: 0811226875 | ISBN-13: 978-0811226875