Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse

About the Author:

Kathleen Norris is the author of eleven books, including The Cloister Walk and The Virgin of Bennington, and has received awards from the Guggenheim and Bush foundations. Norris published seven books of poetry.  Her first book of poems was entitled Falling Off and was the 1971 winner of the Big Table Younger Poets Award. Soon after, she settled down in her grandparents' home in Lemmon, South Dakota, where she lived with her husband, the poet David Dwyer, for over twenty-five years. She now divides her time between Hawaii and South Dakota

Synopsis:

In ACEDIA & ME, the acclaimed author KATHLEEN NORRIS explicates and demystifies the forgotten but utterly relevant concept of acedia, a term that has often been understood as spiritual sloth, but really signifies the serious malady of being unable to care. With great insight and candor, Norris explores acedia through the geography of her life as a writer; her marriage and the challenges of commitment in the midst of grave illness; and her keen interest in the monastic tradition.

She writes of her and her husband David’s battles with acedia and its clinical cousin, depression, and traces acedia’s path through literary and religious history, exposing the damage it does not only to individual lives but also to our culture as a whole, as we are desensitized by ever more intrusive distractions and lose the ability to care about what is truly important. Thus, she finds that we struggle with “restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair.”

"Acedia & Me" - Signed Edition

$16.00

Model: BEC9781594484384

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