 
|
RequiemAuthor: Curtis White American Literature Series October 2001 288 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 Paperback, 1-56478-308-1 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $11.16—20% OFF! 
|
Book Description
Requiem is a darkly comic novel about what it means to be human in a culture obsessed with sex and death. With a structure loosely based on the Mass for the Dead, this ambitious novel includes letters-to-the-editor, an e-mail correspondence with a porn queen, scenes from the lives of classical musicians, and retellings of biblical stories. In the process, White charts the rise and fall of the Human from the Bible (pre-human), to the Enlightenment (the invention of the human), to the digital age (post-human).
In an America where everyone—including a well-known NPR interviewer—keeps a secret website, and where a modern Prophet can only weep at the stories he hears, Requiem reveals our past, present and future with wit, sadness, and complete honesty.
About the Author
| Curtis White is the author of seven works of fiction and two works of nonfiction. He lives in Normal, Illinois. |  |
Praise
"Philosophy and pornography mingle and mangle each other here in another convention-damning 'novel' from radical fictionalist White as rehashes of bilblical tales and those of classical composers vie for space with the saucier crowd of Internet pornographers and their fans . . . The result is indisputably clever, with a wealth of knowledge and word-wizadry." —Kirkus Reviews"For all the solemnity of its title, Curtis White's sixth book is as much Tristram Shandy as 'The Seven Last Words of Christ.' Which is not to say that it's not also quite serious: The comic and the tragic arguably exist best in a state of neighborly mutual mimicry—and White's achievement in Requiem is to bring off both turns of mood so deftly that the reader scarcely notices his change of voice."—Washington Post
"There isn't an emotional response that Curtis White fails to elicit in his new novel, Requiem. Revulsion, awe, confusion and laughter—especially laughter—rise like steam from this spicy goulash of unconventional storytelling . . . The American novel needs a swift kick in the pants, and White is just the man to deliver it."—San Francisco Chronicle
More Information
Also by Curtis White:America's Magic Mountain
Memories of My Father Watching TV
Monstrous Possibility: An Invitation to Literary Politics
The Idea of Home