The Ghosts of Birds [Paperback]

Eliot Weinberger  in his original essays no less than in his work as atranslator, editor, and critic  is a masterful curator. He is arestorer, an arranger, a presenterA new book of essays proves to be as erudite, compelling, and delightfully strange as we have come to expect from Eliot Weinberger.These exhaustively researched pieces are richly detailed and unfailingly interesting...dazzles as a repository of knowledge and interpretation.Over time, Weinberger has become known for his unclassifiable prose, a mode in the twilight between prose poetry, amateur philological essay, and literary criticism.In The Ghost of Birds, part of which is a continuation of the serial essay begun in An Elemental Thing,Eliot Weinberger further establishes himself as one of our singular andsingularly great essayists. A modernist with the horror and absurdityof the 20th century behind him, Weinbergers collectionwhich moves frommedieval Irish legends to contemporary politics and poetryis tingedhumor and grace, fully alive to the weirdness of the world.Combining scholarly authority with a moral allegiance to the arcane, the translator and editor Weinberger creates genre-bending essays and prose poems to help us see the world anew. This eclectic collection spans centuries and cultures and might make you wonder if there is anything its author doesnt know.My favorite essayist is Eliot Weinberger. His remarkable breadth of calm concern is impressive.His essays use lists, collages of information, and sometimes, as poetry does, varying line breaks. They dont read like anyone elses work.A master of the infinite commentary on the astonishing variety of the world & I envy those who have not yet discovered him.One remains in silent amazement: How does he find these stories? How does he know everything?As is often the case with brilliant writers, an Eliot Weinberger sentence cannot be mistaken for that of anyone else.The brilliant net of details that Weinberger casts anlƒ#