{"product_id":"9781566897198","title":"Lesser Ruins","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of \u003ci\u003eReinhardt's Garden\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSaint Sebastian's Abyss\u003c\/i\u003e comes a breathless new novel of delirious obsession. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life's work—a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way—from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son's relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists' colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor's memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLaced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, \u003ci\u003eLesser Ruins\u003c\/i\u003e is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity's ecstatic, agonizing search for meaning through art.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mark Haber","offers":[{"title":"Coffee House Press |  Paperback \/ softback | Trade paperback (US) |  2024-10-18","offer_id":45663904989439,"sku":"9781566897198","price":27.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0329\/9075\/7001\/files\/81Z0n7fLZfL._AC_UF1000_1000_QL80.jpg?v=1718208421","url":"https:\/\/riverbookshop.com\/products\/9781566897198","provider":"River Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}