In this book, ethnographer and poet Michael Jackson addresses the interplay between modes of writing, modes of understanding, and modes of being in the world. Drawing on literary, anthropological and autobiographical sources, he explores writing as a technics akin to ritual, oral storytelling, magic and meditation, that enables us to reach beyond the limits of everyday life and forge virtual relationships and imagined communities. Although Maurice Blanchot wrote of the impossibility of writing, the passion and paradox of literature lies in its attempt to achieve the impossible--a leap of faith
Cover; Contents; Preface; 1 The Other Shore; 2 The Red Road; 3 Kindred Spirits; 4 Writing under the Influence; 5 A Typewriter Collecting Dust; 6 Writing in Limbo; 7 The Magical Power of Words; 8 Flights of Fancy; 9 Writing Fellowship; 10 There Go I; 11 Love Letters; 12 Writing for Bare Life; 13 Writing So As Not to Die; 14 Chinese Boxes; 15 The Writing on the Wall; 16 Writing out of the Blue; 17 A Storyteller's Story; 18 Writing in the Dark; 19 Writing in the Zone; 20 Writing, Naturally; 21 Writing Workshop; 22 The Books in My Life; 23 Writing Utopia; 24 Writing in Search of Lost Time
25 Writing about Writers26 Writing in Ruins; 27 Writing as a Way of Life; Notes; Acknowledgments
