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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">The English Department presents
a reading by acclaimed novelist <b>Lydia Millet</b>, 12:30 p.m.,
Thursday, March 6, Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, room
319.<br><br>
Lydia Millet is the author of six novels, most recently <i>How the Dead
Dream</i> (Counterpoint January 2008). Her fifth, <i>Oh Pure and Radiant
Heart</i>, was shortlisted for Britain's Arthur C. Clarke Prize, and an
earlier novel, <i>My Happy Life</i>, won the 2003 PEN-USA Award for
Fiction. Also an essayist and critic, Millet lives in the desert outside
Tucson, Arizona, where she works as a writer and editor at the nonprofit
Center for Biological Diversity.<br><br>
She will be reading from her new novel, <i>How the Dead Dream</i>, the
first book in a trilogy, which introduces T., a young developer with a
reverence for money and the institutions of capital. Always restrained
and solitary, he has just fallen in love for the first time when his
orderly, upwardly mobile life is thrown into chaos by the appearance of
his unbalanced mother, who comes to live with him after his father's
sudden desertion. In the wake of a series of devastating losses, T.
begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species, and is soon
breaking into zoos at night to be with animals that are the last of their
kind.<br><br>
<br>
Review Excerpts<br><br>
"The writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an
experience that precedes language itself."<br><br>
<div align="right">-- Salon<br><br>
</div>
"It's hard, in fact, to convey how invigorating Millet's fiction is,
how intelligent and thematically rich, how processes of thought are
themselves made urgent and lively through the specificity of her
observations and sentences that offer startlement, small and large. This
isn't fiction that tells us how to live. Instead, it dramatizes the power
of attentiveness to an expanded, if terribly flawed and potentially
dying, world, attentiveness being a kind of tenderness, which is a kind
of love."<br><br>
<div align="right">-- The Globe and Mail<br><br>
</div>
""How the Dead Dream" synthesizes the two styles of
Millet's fiction -- the harrowing and the madcap -- with a new elegance.
The chapters are longer, the narrative voice more coherent, and, as a
result, the outrage in her fiction achieves an unprecedented depth of
focus."<br><br>
<div align="right">-- The San Francisco Chronicle<br><br>
</div>
"Wonderful secondary characters abound in this end-time novel,
including T.'s spacey mother, his over-the-top gay father, a saucy
paraplegic friend, a testosterone-driven egomaniac investor and
fraternity brothers straight off the set of "Animal
House"...Millet sees the natural world with clear-eyed urgency and
the social landscape with wisecracking, dark humor. How the Dead Dream is
an edgy telegram on behalf of nature and its singular beasts. As Millet
writes: "The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was
passing unnoticed." "<br><br>
<div align="right">-- Kansas City Star<br><br>
</div>
"<i>How the Dead Dream</i> focuses on the quiet existential crisis
that arises from living in a dying world... Yes, there's an argument for
environmental protection here, but what more profound is Millet's
understanding of the loneliness and alienation in a world being poisoned
to death."<br>
<div align="right">-- Washington Post<br><br>
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</div>
"Millet's got a visionary sensibility, marked by a voice that is by
turns biting and dark. Her books take on the absurdity of contemporary
American culture, poking at it from the outside in...Millet's sixth
novel,<i> How the Dead Dream</i>...may finally get her the attention she
deserves." <br>
<div align="right">-- Los Angeles Times<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"Millet, a writer of encompassing empathy and imaginative lyricism
and a satirist of great wit and heart, takes readers on an intelligently
conceived and devastating journey into the heart of extinction...her
extraordinary leap of a novel warns us that as the splendor and mystery
of the natural world is replaced by the human-made, our species faces a
lonely and spiritually impoverished future." <br>
<div align="right">-- Booklist (starred review)<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"A frightening and gorgeous vision of human decline." <br>
<div align="right">-- Utne Reader<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"Millet proves no less lyrical, haunting or deliciously absurd in
her brilliant sixth novel than in her fifth...an involving character
study and a stunning meditation on loss--planetary and
otherwise--Millet's latest unfolds like a beautiful, disturbing
dream." <br>
<div align="right">-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"With wry, brilliant dialog and insightful existential musings,
Millet delves deep into the meaning of humanity's destructive connection
to nature and the consequences of the extinction of both animals and
love. Absorbing and not to be missed; highly recommended." <br>
<div align="right">-- Library Journal (starred review)<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"The reader's sympathy never flags...the suffering of a selfish,
greedy fortune-builder remains heartwrenching. The intelligent,
sharp-humored charm of her narrative voice aligns the reader with T. from
the start. In lyrical passages that trace T.'s deeper musings, Millet
makes the personal universal, raising the stakes so that each realization
has the weight of a revolution. And, like all revolutions, it's an untidy
process, leaving the future uncertain." <br>
<div align="right">-- BookPage<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"For a long time, Lydia Millet has had the makings of a great
novelist. At least two of her five previous books have hinted at how far
her gifts might take her, but her latest, <i>How the Dead Dream</i>,
brings all her strengths into an impressive balance...she has pulled off
her funniest, most shrewdly thoughtful and touching novel. If Kurt
Vonnegut were still alive, he would be extremely jealous." <br>
<div align="right">-- The Village Voice<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"What Millet has managed to do with <i>How the Dead Dream</i> and
2005's wonderful atomic fable <i>Oh Pure and Radiant Heart</i> is to
write fiction that confronts social issues without falling into shrill
hectoring or dull didacticism...her steady hand and subtle voice are what
make them work as well as they do." <br>
<div align="right">-- The Believer<br><br>
<br>
</div>
"American culture loves its stories of hubris, downfall and ruin as
of late, but it takes a writer of Millet's sensitivity to enjoy the way
down this much." <br>
<div align="right">-- Eye Weekly <br>
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Pericles Lewis <br><br>
Professor of English and Comparative Literature <br>
Director of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature<br>
Yale University<br><br>
U.S. Mail: P. O. Box 208299, New Haven CT 06520-8299 <br>
On-campus/Courier: 451 College St., Room 102 <br>
Tel: (203) 432-2732, Fax: (203) 432-0136, email:
pericles.lewis@yale.edu<br>
Website:
<a href="https://webspace.yale.edu/pericleslewis/" eudora="autourl">
https://webspace.yale.edu/pericleslewis/</a></blockquote>
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