num_pages: 320
description: Charmingly eccentric and utterly unforgettable...with hand on heart I can truly say that I also loved every word of it.Simon Winchester author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded Moses Harvey was the eccentric Newfoundland reverend and amateur naturalist who first photographed the near-mythic giant squid in 1874 draping it over a shower curtain rod to display its magnitude. In Preparing the Ghost what begins as Moses's story becomes much more as fellow squid-enthusiast Matthew Gavin Frank boldly winds his narrative tentacles around history creative nonfiction science memoir and meditations about the interrelated nature of them all. In a full-hearted lyrical style reminiscent of Geoff Dyer Frank weaves in playful forays about his research trip to Moses's Newfoundland home Frank's own childhood and family history and a catalog of bizarre facts and lists that recall Melville's story of obsession with another deep-sea dwelling leviathan. Though Frank is armed with impressive research what he can't know about Harvey he fictionalizes quite explicitly as a way of both illuminating the scene and exploring his central theme: the big beautiful human impulse to obsess.Matthew Gavin Frank has made a book into a curiosity cabinet one dedicated to the storied giant squid. A mysterious but seductive mix of history creative non-fiction memoir and poetry Preparing the Ghost is written with contagious passion. In this original book Frank weaves his imagination through historys gaps and keeps the reader riveted with the lure of the unknown and dark sultry prose. - Megan Mayhew Bergman author of Birds of a Lesser ParadisePreparing the Ghost is the most original book I have read in years. Opening with an arresting image that literally haunts him Matthew Gavin Frank unstrings history and reweaves a narrative from its threads from fiction and news reporting and his own life to remind us that every experience is a story braid. To remind us that life and love and death--all are beauty. Lidia Yuknavitch author of The Chronology of Water and Dora: A HeadcasePreparing the Ghost is a triumph of obsession a masterful weaving of myth and science of exploration and mystery of love and nature. Here Matthew Gavin Frank delivers my favorite book-length essay since John D'Agata's About a Mountain and with it he stakes a claim to his own share of the new territory being forged by such innovators of the lyric essay as Eula Biss and Ander Monson. Matt Bell author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the WoodsInventive original and endlessly interesting Preparing the Ghost is a gorgeous exploration of myth history language and imagination all swirling around the mysterious and evocative figure of the giant squid. This book is a journey through passion obsession fear and adventure and the hunger to behold what lurks within the depths of the sea. To look into a squid's eyes is like looking into infinity one squid-obsessed character declares as Matthew Gavin Frank leads us deeper and deeper into this dazzling account of strangeness and danger and the longing to see.Catherine Chung author of Forgotten CountryPreparing the Ghost reads like a cross between Walt Whitman and a fever dream. Who would think squid and ice cream go together? I remained riveted to the very last word. Sy Montgomery author of The Good Good PigThe shortest distance between two people is a great story. This one is incredible. You will embrace Preparing the Ghost like a friend you won't want to leave.Bob Dotson New York Times bestselling author of American Story: A Lifetime Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things.Matthew Gavin Frank reinvents the art of research in extraordinarily imaginative ways. His meditation on the briefly known and the forever unknowable courts lore (both family and creaturely) invites the fantastical heeds fact and turns the human drive to notate and list into a gesture of lyrical beauty.Lia Purpura author of On Looking and Rough Likeness
language: English
title: Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer
publisher: Liveright