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The crane wife : a memoir in essays / CJ Hauser.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Doubleday, [2022]Edition: First editionDescription: x, 308 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780385547079
  • 0385547072
Uniform titles:
  • Essays. Selections
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Blood: twenty-seven love stories -- Act one: the mechanicals -- Hepburn qua Hepburn -- The man behind the curtain -- The crane wife -- Kind of deep blue -- Act two: The Fantasticks -- The lady with the lamp -- Mulder, it's me -- Nights we didn't -- Act three: Dulcinea quits -- The second Mrs. de Winter -- The two-thousand-pound bee -- Unwalling Jackson's castle -- The fox farm -- Uncoupling -- Siberian watermelon.
Summary: "CJ Hauser expands on her viral essay sensation, "The Crane Wife," in a brilliant collection of essays that echo the work of Cheryl Strayed in their revelatory observations of romantic love. CJ Hauser uses her now-beloved title essay as an anchor around which to explore the narratives of romantic love we are taught and which we tell ourselves, and the need to often rewrite those narratives to find an accurate version of ourselves in them. Told with a late-night barstool directness, through the sort of giddy confidences that usually pass between friends, Hauser relates, in dark and often funny ways, the pain of feeling out of sync with the world when you're going through the motions of a life story that doesn't match your reality. With unlikely guides from Katharine Hepburn to Defense Department robots to whooping cranes to golden era SNL comedians to Special Agent Dana Scully, Hauser grapples with the art she loves to mine new understanding of what these sorts of narratives might have to offer as a way forward. These essays follow Hauser as she dismantles the narrative expectations she carried inside her, letting go of the roles she performed to make others comfortable, and seeking joy by tending relationships with community and chosen family--love stories in their own right. The essays capture the daily work of trying, if sometimes failing, to architect a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a sort of home, to live in. The Crane Wife and Other Essays asks what more inclusive storytelling about family and love and growth might offer us all. A book for anyone who's ever been in love with love, anyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would, and anyone who ever wondered: am I doing this right?"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography HAUSER, C H376 Available 33111010865232
Adult Book Adult Book Northport Library Biography HAUSER, C H376 Available 33111009441359
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation "The Crane Wife" with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. From friends and lovers to blood family and chosen family, this "elegant masterpiece" (Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger ) asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer ​us all.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE GUARDIAN, GARDEN & GUN

"Hauser builds their life's inventory out of deconstructed personal narratives, resulting in a reading experience that's rich like a complicated dessert--not for wolfing down but for savoring in small bites." --The New York Times

" Clever, heartfelt, and wrenching."
-- Time

"Brilliant."
-- Oprah Daily

Ten days after calling off their wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, they realized they'd almost signed up to live someone else's life.

What if you released yourself from traditional narratives of happiness? What if you looked for ways to leave room for the unexpected? In Hauser's case, this meant dissecting pop culture touchstone, from The Philadelphia Story to The X Files , to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. They attended a robot convention, contemplated grief at John Belushi's gravesite, and officiated a wedding. Most importantly, they mapped the difference between the stories we're asked to hold versus those we choose to carry.

Told with the late-night barstool directness of your wisest, most bighearted friend,  The Crane Wife is a book for everyone whose path doesn't look the way they thought it would; for everyone learning to find joy in the not-knowing and to build a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a new sort of home to live in.

"CJ Hauser expands on her viral essay sensation, "The Crane Wife," in a brilliant collection of essays that echo the work of Cheryl Strayed in their revelatory observations of romantic love. CJ Hauser uses her now-beloved title essay as an anchor around which to explore the narratives of romantic love we are taught and which we tell ourselves, and the need to often rewrite those narratives to find an accurate version of ourselves in them. Told with a late-night barstool directness, through the sort of giddy confidences that usually pass between friends, Hauser relates, in dark and often funny ways, the pain of feeling out of sync with the world when you're going through the motions of a life story that doesn't match your reality. With unlikely guides from Katharine Hepburn to Defense Department robots to whooping cranes to golden era SNL comedians to Special Agent Dana Scully, Hauser grapples with the art she loves to mine new understanding of what these sorts of narratives might have to offer as a way forward. These essays follow Hauser as she dismantles the narrative expectations she carried inside her, letting go of the roles she performed to make others comfortable, and seeking joy by tending relationships with community and chosen family--love stories in their own right. The essays capture the daily work of trying, if sometimes failing, to architect a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a sort of home, to live in. The Crane Wife and Other Essays asks what more inclusive storytelling about family and love and growth might offer us all. A book for anyone who's ever been in love with love, anyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would, and anyone who ever wondered: am I doing this right?"-- Provided by publisher.

Blood: twenty-seven love stories -- Act one: the mechanicals -- Hepburn qua Hepburn -- The man behind the curtain -- The crane wife -- Kind of deep blue -- Act two: The Fantasticks -- The lady with the lamp -- Mulder, it's me -- Nights we didn't -- Act three: Dulcinea quits -- The second Mrs. de Winter -- The two-thousand-pound bee -- Unwalling Jackson's castle -- The fox farm -- Uncoupling -- Siberian watermelon.

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