Page 7 - The University of Wisconsin Press Spring 2013
Basic HTML Version
JUNE
LC: 2012040153 PR
184 PP. 5 ¼ X 7
½
E-BOOK $16.95 ISBN 978-0-299-29243-0
A trade imprint of the University
of Wisconsin Press
• wisconsin edition for sale only in the
U. S. AND DEPENDENCIES, CANADA, AND
THE PHILIPPINES. PRIOR EDITION: DITTO
PRESS, UK, 2011, CLOTH ISBN 0-956-79523-4
• Visit
Winner of the 2012 PEN / Ackerley
Prize for Memoir
olished jewels of consciousness,
presented with this author’s trade-
mark mixture of profundity, wit and
joyful naughtiness. They drink the
elixir of loss, though with an eye
fixed on the horizon.”
Christopher
Silvester,
Daily Express
MEMOIR / BIOGRAPHY / TRAVEL / GAY & LESBIAN INTEREST
“A strange and wonderful book. Fallowell is a marvelous raconteur
who seems incapable of writing a dull sentence.”
James Magruder, author
of
Sugarless
Duncan Fallowell sets out to odd corners of the world in pursuit of some extraor-
dinary and improbable characters who were in most cases momentarily famous—
or infamous—and then simply disappeared. The first to disappear is the author
himself—to a ghostly hotel on a Mediterranean island. His subjects, though unmet
or hardly met, live for the reader with remarkable vividness, such as the Ger-
man artist who bought a large island in the Hebrides and vanished immediately
afterward to the astonishment of its inhabitants. Fallowell tracks down the recluse
who inspired Evelyn Waugh’s creation Sebastian Flyte, the legendary love object of
Waugh’s novel
Brideshead Revisited
, who wants both to forget the past and to cling
to it. He even pursues the ultimate disappearance—the death of Princess Diana—
and the miasma of shock, wonder, and grief that followed, writing “Mystification is
absolutely essential to our feeling of being alive.”
A highly original exploration of exposure, withdrawal, escape, and failing to
belong,
How to Disappear
winds through the eerie abyss that can open up between
someone—or something—being both real and phantom.
Duncan Fallowell
writes novels, history, autobiography, travel, libretti, lyrics,
and journalism. Most recently, he is author of the novel
A History Of Facelifting
and the travel book
Going As Far As I Can
. His essays, interviews, and reviews
have appeared in a broad range of magazines and journals, including
Vanity Fair
,
Playboy
,
The Paris Review
,
Esquire
,
Harper’s
,
GQ
,
The Times
,
The Guardian
, and
Prospect.
He is based in London.
UWPRESS
.
WISC
.
EDU
7
O f r e l a t e d i n t e r e s t
“This deeply felt, humorous and wisdom-
filled book takes us on a gay man’s journey
hiking across Corsica but, even more,
takes the reader on a charged journey—
like something out of Dante, at times—that
explores nuanced corners of life, loss and
love in our queer lives: our most intimate
infernos, purgatories and paradises.”
—Tim Miller,
Windy City Times
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2007
LC: 2007011728 DC 256 PP. 6 × 9
5 DRAWINGS
E-BOOK $9.99 ISBN 978-0-299-22323-6
