Neck Deep and Other Predicaments: Essays

Neck Deep and Other Predicaments is an innovative and engaging nonfiction debut by “an original new voice” (Publishers Weekly) and the winner of the 2006 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize In this sparkling nonfiction debut, Ander Monson uses unexpectedly nonliterary forms—the index, the Harvard Outline, the mathematical proof—to delve into an equally surprising mix of obsessions: disc golf, the history of mining in northern Michigan, car washes, topology, and more. He reflects on his outsider experience at an exclusive Detroit-area boarding school in the form of a criminal history and invents a new form as he meditates on snow.Outline toward a theory of the mine versus the mind and the Harvard outline --I have been thinking about snow --Cranbrook Schools : adventures in bourgeois topologies --Index for X and the origin of fires --Fragments : on dentistry --Subject to wave action : a there and a back (with orchestral accompaniment) --The long crush --Failure : a meditation, another iteration (with interruptions) --After form and formlessness : bodies, boats, and bathing --The big and sometimes colored foam : four annotated car washes --Afterword: Elegy for telegram and Starflight