{"title":"Jay Parini","description":"\u003cp\u003eJay Parini's works traverse the boundaries between historical fiction and reflective memoir, offering richly imagined narratives that explore significant literary and cultural figures. Readers can expect thoughtful storytelling that illuminates the complexities of creative lives and the eras they inhabit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith a keen eye for biography and the arts, Parini’s writing invites contemplation on the enduring importance of poetry, literature, and cultural heritage. His books resonate with a deep appreciation for the interplay between individual experience and artistic expression.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"borges-and-me","title":"Borges and Me","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'For readers who already admire Borges, this memoir will be a delicious treat. For those who have yet to read him, Parini provides the perfect entry point to a writer who altered the way many think of literature' - \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn frantic flight from the Vietnam War, Jay Parini leaves the United States for Scotland. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The pair embark on a trip to the Scottish Highlands; and on the way, the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBorges and Me\u003c\/em\u003e is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical tour of an era – like our own – in which uncertainties abound, and when – as ever – it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'This is a jewel of a book. Very funny, clever, moving, luminous with love of literature and landscape. Parini's portrait of both Borges and Scotland is exquisite, deeply affectionate, sometimes comically irritable ... It's hard to conceive of how an old and frail blind man could have had such psychological force, such unworldly innocence, such redeeming sway over others, but Jay Parini persuades us fabulously in a high-style Borgesian marriage of fiction and history' - \u003cstrong\u003eIAN McEWAN\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45706142286060,"sku":"9781838850234","price":27.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781838850234.jpg?v=1725883906"},{"product_id":"borges-and-me-by-jay-parini-9781838850227","title":"Borges and Me","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'This is a jewel of a book. Very funny, clever, moving, luminous with love of literature and landscape. Jay Parini's portrait of both Borges and Scotland is exquisite, deeply affectionate, sometimes comically irritable. He uses all a novelist's art, all his smoke and mirrors, to let the great man step shambolically from these pages to trap and beguile us, like a modern Ancient Mariner, with his brilliant, freely associative and heady metaphysics and literary table talk. And all his constant demands. My laughter (at poor Parini's long night in bed with his subject) kept my wife awake. But by the end, I was damp around the eyes; I was sad to let this little cast of characters go... I read it in a greedy gulp.'\u003c\/em\u003e - Ian McEwan\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this evocative work of what the author in his Afterword calls 'autofiction' or 'a kind of novelised memoir', Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland. He was in frantic flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he met famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBorges was blind, in his seventies and frail. Parini was asked to look after him while his translator was unexpectedly called away. When Borges heard that Parini owned a 1957 Morris Minor, he declared a long-held wish to visit the Scottish Highlands, where he hoped to meet a man in Inverness who was interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. As they travelled, the charmingly garrulous Borges took Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry. As Borges's world of labyrinths, mirrors and doubles shimmered into being, their escapades took a surreal turn.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBorges and Me\u003c\/em\u003e is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical tour of an era - like our own - in which uncertainties abound, and when - as ever - it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46543211266284,"sku":"9781838850227","price":39.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/19487093482842.jpg?v=1749738556"},{"product_id":"benjamins-crossing-by-jay-parini-9781786892850","title":"Benjamin's Crossing","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThere is no such thing as history, you see. It's a dream, perhaps even a dream of a dream...\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWalter Benjamin is dead. One of the most radiant minds of the twentieth century has been snatched away by death in a small town on the border between Spain and France. His thousand-page manuscript, carried the length of France during his flight from the Nazis, has vanished with him, never to be recovered.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJay Parini's extraordinary work traces Benjamin's steps back through time, from the salons of Berlin to the winding roads of Catalonia. A tale of escape and pursuit, \u003cem\u003eBenjamin's Crossing\u003c\/em\u003e dramatises one of the most moving peripheral episodes of the Holocaust; and above all, it is a love story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47595788173548,"sku":"9781786892850","price":27.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781786892850-benjamin-s-crossing.jpg?v=1777907282"},{"product_id":"why-poetry-matters-by-jay-parini-9780300151466","title":"Why Poetry Matters","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhy Poetry Matters\u003c\/em\u003e is a brief, passionate book about the nature of poetry and its use in the world. Poetry doesn’t matter to most people, observes Jay Parini at the opening of this book. But, undeterred, he commences a deeply felt meditation on poetry, its language and meaning, and its power to open minds and transform lives. By the end of the book, Parini has recovered a truth often obscured by our clamorous culture: without poetry, we live only partially, not fully conscious of the possibilities that life affords. Poetry indeed matters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA gifted poet and acclaimed teacher, Parini begins by looking at defences of poetry written over the centuries. He ponders Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus, and moves on through Sidney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Eliot, Frost, Stevens, and others. Parini examines the importance of poetic voice and the mysteries of metaphor. He argues that a poet’s originality depends on a deep understanding of the traditions of political poetry, nature poetry, and religious poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWriting with a casual grace, Parini avoids jargon and makes his case in concise, direct terms: the mind of the poet supplies a light to the minds of others, kindling their imaginations, helping them to live their lives. The author’s love of poetry suffuses this insightful book—a volume for all readers interested in a fresh introduction to the art that lies at the centre of Western civilisation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47601353916652,"sku":"9780300151466","price":32.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780300151466-why-poetry-matters.jpg?v=1777998320"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/jay-parini.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}