HARRYMAN, Carla
The Words: After Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories and Jean-Paul Sartre

In this challenge to the separation of literary genres, Carla Harryman takes as her points of departure two entirely disparate texts. Exploding Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideal of imagined autonomy in his autobiography, The Words, and inspired by the grotesque play of Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, Harryman begins with her own account of an impossible and contemporary childhood. In a world of recollected futurity, nihilists, chairs, amazons, ghosts, and spool babies, “We, the stranded” concoct illusions of spontaneous creativity. [publisher's note]

Cover art by Leslie Scalapino & Jess.

Published by O Books, 1999
Design by Guy Bennett
Literature