[VZJ]≫ [PDF] One More Theory About Happiness A Memoir Paul Guest 9780061685170 Books

One More Theory About Happiness A Memoir Paul Guest 9780061685170 Books

Download As PDF : One More Theory About Happiness A Memoir Paul Guest 9780061685170 Books

One More Theory About Happiness A Memoir Paul Guest 9780061685170 Books

This memoir-cum-meditation is a beautiful essay, mesmerizing and compelling in its tale of a poet who strives to become himself, and succeeds, despite exhaustion and despair. The prose economically captures moments that become a complex of emotion.

One example is an interchange between him and his mother, as she is struggling with fatigue in the middle of the night to tend to his soiled bed:
"Oh, Mother," I whispered near the last. "Am I a burden? I don't want to be a burden."
She snapped awake, stopping for the moment.
"A burden? No, how could you be? How could you be? Don't ever think that."

This incident captures with strength and tenderness the mixture of emotions both mother and child feel. He feels a combination of fear, hopeless gratitude, regret at his physically diminished self, and the pain of helplessness. She feels deep physical tiredness, stretched beyond her powers, performing the task in a fog, until a call is made on her emotions. At that point her love, already expressed in half-automatic actions, flows in fully deliberate words.

Guest accomplishes this with words like the "oh" before "mother", with "whispered", "near the last", "snapped". The whole passage is his expression of love to his mother.


Tags : One More Theory About Happiness: A Memoir [Paul Guest] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. “In these lyrical, searing pages, Guest manages to break our hearts and put them back together again.”<br />—Ann Hood In the tradition of Lucy Grealy’s <em>Autobiography of a Face</em>,Paul Guest,One More Theory About Happiness: A Memoir,Ecco,0061685178,American poets;Biography.,Poets, American;21st century;Biography.,Quadriplegics;United States;Biography.,21st century,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,Biography Autobiography,Biography And Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,Personal Memoirs,Poets, American,Quadriplegics,United States

One More Theory About Happiness A Memoir Paul Guest 9780061685170 Books Reviews

really good read with beautiful word images but the story stopped just as it was getting interesting. This should have been a much longer and more detailed book. He would get going on an experience and describe it vividly and then skip ahead to the next experience without filling in the details. That said, he would take my breath away at times with his writing. Hope to read more of his material as he is very talented but needs polish.
good not the best
Paul's story is truly inspiring. His words paint the pictures of his life vividly yet simply, with a tone that isn't smarmy or sacchirin. I highly recommend this read.
This was a touching story told beautifully. Reminds me that life can change in an instant in insane ways. I hope to read more of Paul Guest's work.
A well written, no nonsense, positive chronicle of holding on to life after a devastating experience. I hoped that it would encourage me to "Move On!" and it surpassed my expectations.
I don't normally read books in this genre. That said, I really enjoyed this one. He writes without self-pity and opens up a world that I knew nothing about before I read this book. His style uses some shock tactics but not too many to make it boring. This is the only book of his that I have read and I see that all his poems are on the same subject. Would highly recommend this book but do not know whether I will read any of his others.
Poets rarely write in prose. Drawing lacks the fluidity of paint, and prose lacks the fluidity of poetry. Indelible the impression left by Guest's words lingers long into the evening. However, those used to reading traditional prose may feel a bit disjointed by the memoir. The writer gives us an impression of the situation with only 'just enough' concrete detail to seat us in space and time. Yet, like a good movie, we skim forward and backwards in time (in the short length of a page sometimes) leaving us unsettled and not sure of the timeline proposed. Like life, the poet's prose lets us experience the in and out nature of our lives the way humans do, in reality, experience time. We can be at our desk and also in our mothers arms at the age of seven simultaneously.

Concrete timelines traditionally tied to prose with a beginning, middle, and end are lost in the chaotic flow of experience. Guest does not provide us a story, he provides an experience seared with his titillating talent for just the right adjective, verb, or noun to engender the feeling, the impression, the now of his thoughts. A cacophony or a symphony of sound, sight and emotion.

I expected more pages, but found the two hour read strangely comforting for its emotional weight. He does not bog us down in soliloquy about the tragedy of the accident for himself, but tells us simply I was, I am, I am yet to be. Camus would commend Guest's unsentimental portrayal of the absurd human condition with Guest's own forward momentum despite success or failure. Guest becomes a Sisyphus whose rock becomes words continually sought no matter the resulting tide of accolades for his work or in some cases disdain for it .

We see how uncomfortable we make him with our perceptions and we squeak in our own skin as we read between the lines that the subject beneath our microscope is sentient and savvy; he knows and somehow loves us for our failings less obvious because they are not visible to the naked eye, only to the open heart. The reader's guilt is amplified by the calm and matter of fact author's voice. The intensity of Guest's poetic nature is tempered by the calm way in which he uses the witnessed grief of others to compare his own inability to grieve.

A good read, and an important one in understanding that at the end of the day a physical disability and an emotional disability have equal repercussions to human interaction. The silver chair is not what limits us, it is only the perceptions of others that we allow to limit ourselves that do, in truth, limit us. As he grows to understand his own extraordinary ability for language, society's language of control and expectations loses meaning, until only his need to say what needs saying remains and he is free in spirit from society's struggle to make him sit nicely in his chair and be lauded for his courage. Instead, he gives us reason to laud him for his own gifts garnered through the same struggles as everyone else. He falters as all humans do through the discovery of self through disappointment, failure and at last, love. Beautiful, unapologetic, and mostly perfect.
This memoir-cum-meditation is a beautiful essay, mesmerizing and compelling in its tale of a poet who strives to become himself, and succeeds, despite exhaustion and despair. The prose economically captures moments that become a complex of emotion.

One example is an interchange between him and his mother, as she is struggling with fatigue in the middle of the night to tend to his soiled bed
"Oh, Mother," I whispered near the last. "Am I a burden? I don't want to be a burden."
She snapped awake, stopping for the moment.
"A burden? No, how could you be? How could you be? Don't ever think that."

This incident captures with strength and tenderness the mixture of emotions both mother and child feel. He feels a combination of fear, hopeless gratitude, regret at his physically diminished self, and the pain of helplessness. She feels deep physical tiredness, stretched beyond her powers, performing the task in a fog, until a call is made on her emotions. At that point her love, already expressed in half-automatic actions, flows in fully deliberate words.

Guest accomplishes this with words like the "oh" before "mother", with "whispered", "near the last", "snapped". The whole passage is his expression of love to his mother.