Harvard Author's Bookshelf
My novel as seen in the Author's Bookshelf of the current issue of Harvard Magazine. Be ready for The Book of I, coming this fall.
My novel as seen in the Author's Bookshelf of the current issue of Harvard Magazine. Be ready for The Book of I, coming this fall.
The word is out. THE BOOK OF I is a dark novel. Like the waters of a river deep, or the night behind the moon. I take solace in Kafka: “I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
Artist Liselott Johnsson created this phenomenal image as a conceptual response to central themes in the book: “I am water,” and the ever-threatening “Whiteness.” Here they blend into each other seamlessly. The image of the “I” impersonates Teaston as he straddles the vastness of the sea and the whiteness above. He is immersed in both, but the bold blue color indicates he has the capacity to rise above them.
I.
I am.
I am water, a restless fluid, a voluminous self that goes as deep as the inverted mountains underneath. My body does not hold me; it liberates itself into gutters. I do not run, I flow. And my body joins with the creeks, the rivers, the seas. I am like a drip, a drip that slides until it crashes making a puddle at the end. I am water and I should dribble down the cliff and join with the sea below.
I am not a tangible Teaston.
I am oceanic.
(From THE BOOK OF I)