The Pedestrian - by Valerie Hsiung (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A poet's novel, a body, a house, haunting and haunted by an unnamed horror. Emerging from the uncanny space of lullaby and ghost story, The pedestrian meanders down a labyrinth of divinatory time where crimes require a more defective detective. To understand the source of this text's trauma, the reader must become an emotional detective, tracing the wound by its shadow. Meaning emerges through obfuscation, suggestion, and echo--courting what cannot be seen head-on to create a haunted grammar of grief. The pedestrian operates like an inverted pastoral, turning kitchens into underworlds, sidewalks into sacred sites--it "listens" as much as it speaks, responding to forces beyond itself.

Review Quotes

"Halfway between Kafka's Singer and Melville's Scrivener, Hsiung's Naif wields syntax as both tuning fork and sensor, sounding a singular diphthong at once cosmic and quasi-comic." --Joyelle McSweeney, in praise of The Naif "A new way of living may yet prevail, thanks to Hsiung's encouragement, akin to the spores of a mushroom, or to winning the lottery, waiting for us all along, as though in advance of the beginning." --Roberto Tejada

About the Author

Valerie Hsiung is a poet and the author of eight collections of poetry, prose, and hybrid writing, including The Naif (Ugly Duckling Presse), The only name we can call it now is not its only name (Counterpath), To love an artist (Essay Press), and please (CSU). Born in the Year of the Earth Snake and raised by Chinese-Taiwanese immigrants in Cincinnati, Ohio, she now lives in the mountains of Colorado where she turns wooden vessels, alchemizes natural fragrance, and teaches at Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.