{"product_id":"9780819562951","title":"The Front Matter, Dead Souls","description":"\u003cp\u003eLeslie Scalapino is widely regarded as one of the best avant-garde writers in America today. This extraordinary new book is essay-fiction-poetry, an experiment in form, “a serial novel for publication in the newspaper” that collapses the distinction between documentary and fiction. Loosely set in Los Angeles, the book scrutinizes our image-making, producing extreme and vivid images-hyena, Muscle Beach in Venice, the Supreme Court, subway rides-in order for them to be real. Countering contemporary trends toward interiority, Scalapino’s work constitutes a unique effort to “be” objectively in the world. The writing is an action, a dynamic push to make intimacy in the public realm. She does not distinguish between poetry and “real events”: her writing is analogous to Buddhist notions of dreaming one is a butterfly, and becoming aware that actually being the butterfly is as real as dreaming it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wesleyan University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47007996838128,"sku":"9780819562951","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780819562951_p0.jpg?v=1763743774","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780819562951","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}