A book that dances between modes, concerned about the fantasy of reinvention.

After leaving Chicago for Europe, Jessa Crispin follows the routes of writers, artists and other displaced figures who built lives elsewhere, using exile as the key and somewhat annoyingly tacky/true saying, 'your troubles following wherever you go'. 

She floats between Berlin, Sarajevo and Trieste, writing alongside figures such as Nora Barnacle, William James, Igor Stravinsky and Rebecca West, particularly focused on the women who have been reduced to appendages of more famous men, or tidied into cultural footnotes after death. The result is restless, funny and deliberately unsentimental, particularly around this asymmetry of genius; the allowing of destructive behaviour by celebrated men being absorbed into the mythology of creation, while the people surrounding them are remembered largely according to whether they helped or impeded the work. 

University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2015. First edition, first printing paperback. Signed by Jessa Crispin on the title page. Very light shelf wear to covers and edges. Internally clean and unmarked apart from the author’s signature; binding firm. Near fine condition.