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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 <b>How the Dead
Dream</b> (Counterpoint). Her fifth, <b>Oh Pure and Radiant Heart</b>,
was shortlisted for Britain's Arthur C. Clarke Prize, and an earlier
novel, <b>My Happy Life</b>, 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, <b>How the Dead Dream</b>, 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>
>From reviews of <b>How the Dead Dream</b>:<br><br>
"The writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an
experience that precedes language itself."<br><br>
<div align="right">-- Salon<br>
</div>
<br>
"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>
</div>
<br>
"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>
</div>
<br>
"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>
</div>
<br>
"<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>
</div>
<br>
"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"><br>
-- Los Angeles Times<br>
</div>
<br>
"At first, T. might seem hard to like -- he's a child who turns
schoolyard bullying into a business, and when he collects for the
unfortunate, he keeps the bulk of the take without a twinge of
conscience. But he's rendered in such complex, fine detail -- as
carefully etched as one of the engravings he studies on the backs of
dollar bills -- that he comes alive, irresistibly sympathetic, both
deadpan and deep."<br><br>
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review <br>
<div align="right"><br>
</div>
<br><br>
"One of the most acclaimed novelists of her
generation."<br><br>
<div align="right">-- Los Angeles Times (profile)<br>
</div>
<br>
"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>
</div>
<br><br>
"A frightening and gorgeous vision of human decline." <br>
<div align="right">-- Utne Reader<br>
</div>
<br><br>
"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"><br>
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)<br>
</div>
<br><br>
"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>
</div>
<br><br>
"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"><br>
-- BookPage<br>
</div>
<br><br>
"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"><br>
-- The Village Voice<br>
</div>
<br><br>
"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"><br>
-- The Believer<br>
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<br><br>
"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>
</div>
<br><br>
<pre>--
Pericles Lewis
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Yale University
P. O. Box 208299, New Haven CT 06520-8299
Address for courier/on-campus: 451 College St., Room 213
Telephone: 203-432-2732
Fax: 203-432-0136
Website:
<a href="https://webspace.yale.edu/pericleslewis/">
https://webspace.yale.edu/pericleslewis/</a>
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