In this Book
- How to Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
summary
Winner of the 2012 PEN Ackerley Prize
Duncan Fallowell sets out to odd corners of the world in pursuit of some extraordinary and improbable characters who were in most cases momentarily famous—or infamous—and then simply disappeared. The first to disappear is the author himself—to a ghostly hotel on a Mediterranean island. His subjects, though unmet or hardly met, live for the reader with remarkable vividness, such as the German artist who bought a large island in the Hebrides and vanished immediately afterward, to the astonishment of its inhabitants. Fallowell tracks down the recluse who inspired Evelyn Waugh's creation Sebastian Flyte, the legendary love object of Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, who wants both to forget the past and to cling to it. He even pursues the ultimate disappearance—the death of Princess Diana—and the miasma of shock, wonder, and grief that followed, writing "Mystification is absolutely essential to our feeling of being alive."
Duncan Fallowell sets out to odd corners of the world in pursuit of some extraordinary and improbable characters who were in most cases momentarily famous—or infamous—and then simply disappeared. The first to disappear is the author himself—to a ghostly hotel on a Mediterranean island. His subjects, though unmet or hardly met, live for the reader with remarkable vividness, such as the German artist who bought a large island in the Hebrides and vanished immediately afterward, to the astonishment of its inhabitants. Fallowell tracks down the recluse who inspired Evelyn Waugh's creation Sebastian Flyte, the legendary love object of Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, who wants both to forget the past and to cling to it. He even pursues the ultimate disappearance—the death of Princess Diana—and the miasma of shock, wonder, and grief that followed, writing "Mystification is absolutely essential to our feeling of being alive."
In these highly original adventures, How to Disappear winds through the eerie abyss that can open up between someone—or something—being both real and phantom.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. 2-7
- Chapter One: Sailing to Gozo
- pp. 3-38
- Chapter Three: Waiting for Maruma
- pp. 103-158
- Chapter Four: Who was Alastair Graham?
- pp. 159-218
- Chapter Five: Beyond the Blue Horizon
- pp. 219-236
- Acknowledgements
- pp. 237-246
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299292430
Related ISBN(s)
9780299292409
MARC Record
OCLC
862888535
Pages
184
Launched on MUSE
2013-08-13
Language
English
Open Access
No