Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
When there is nothing left to burn, Della sets herself on fire. At twenty-seven, she is stuck in the far corner of a parallel America on the verge of collapse, splitting time slinging tofu scramble at the local vegan-friendly diner and counting down the days until the impending birth of her brother Credence's twins forces her out of his house's leaky attic apartment. She collects pictures of historic self-immolators and stares out the skylight of her room while TVs from across the sprawl spew war reports and Presidential battle plans. A breakdown a few years back has sent splinters through her buzzing mind, though something in her still hums with a mercurial urgency, flittering back and forth between fight and flight. Many of those close to her shuffle through the shallow rebellions - hair dye, sex parties, gluttonous self-absorption - of an ineffective counterculture, and while others join the growing people leaving their country behind for a life of escape and eco-tourism, something quiet in her whispers the need to stay. But those bombs keep inching closer, thudding deep and real between the sounds of katydids fluttering in the still of the city night, and the destruction begins to excite her. What begins as terror threats called in to greasy bro-bars across the block boils over into a desperate plot, intoxicating and captivating Della and leaving her little chance for escape.
Zazen unfolds as a search for clarity soured by irresolution and catastrophe, yet made vital by the thin, wild veins of imagination run through each escalating moment, tensing and relaxing, unfurling and ensnaring. Vanessa Veselka renders Della and her world with beautiful, freighting, and phantasmagorically intelligent accuracy, crafting from their shattered constitutions a perversely perfect mirror for our own selves and state.
VANESSA VESELKA is the author of the novel Zazen, which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House and ZYZZYVA, and her nonfiction in GQ, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, The Atavist, and was included in Best American Essays and the anthology Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism. She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex worker, a musician, an independent record label owner, a train hopper, a waitress, and a mother. She lives in Portland, OR.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781935869054 |
| ISBN 10 | 1935869051 |
| Title | Zazen |
| Author | Vanessa Veselka |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Red Lemonade |
| Year published | 2011-05-22 |
| Number of pages | 274 |
| Prizes | Winner of Literary Award (Debut Fiction) 2012, Commended for Oregon Book Awards (Fiction) 2012 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |