An invigorating, continuously surprising book about the serious nature of laughter. Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughterâs revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadirâs experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied. Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Kareninaâs morphine addiction, Freudâs un-Freudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers, to âNot Jokes,â Abu Ghraib, Frantzâs negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, and how poetry can wake us up. At the center of the book, however, is the authorâs relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventionsâfrank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinkingâare like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from oneâs true self and hinting at ways one might be called back to it. A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.
Price history
Aug 17, 2022
€8.61