{"product_id":"the-fatigue-artist-paperback","title":"The Fatigue Artist - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eLynne Sharon Schwartz\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Fatigue Artist is a refreshingly candid story about life, love, and survival in the contemporary world. A writer living in New York City, Laura is overwhelmed by a mysterious lethargy and retreats to her bed where she reflects on the loves and losses of her recent past and seeks the cure to her perplexing tiredness. Fortified by the Eastern teachings of her Tai Chi instructor and the nurturing attentions of friends and a acupuncturist, Laura crawls out of her somnambulism with intelligent determination in search of peace and resurrection. The Fatigue Artist is both a moving chronicle of a woman's search for meaning and a wry depiction of modern urban life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eLynne Sharon Schwartz \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Lynne Sharon Schwartz grew up in Brooklyn, New York, \u003cbr\u003e in the 1950s, in a middle-class family. Her father was a tax\u003cbr\u003e lawyer, her mother a homemaker. Strongly influenced by\u003cbr\u003e her immigrant grandparents, Schwartz had a large, extended \u003cbr\u003e family with strong traditions and European values. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e As a child, she remembers noticing the details of\u003cbr\u003e things -- conversations, emotion, faces. By age seven, she\u003cbr\u003e was a writer, her themes were often philosophical and\u003cbr\u003e moral. \"I wrote one about how the world came into\u003cbr\u003e being,\" she says. \"And it was a kind of a deist vision of\u003cbr\u003e God who was...a kind scientist....I wasn't a genius or anything, \u003cbr\u003e I mean, I wrote like a seven-year old. But I thought\u003cbr\u003e about things. And my parents were wonderful. They\u003cbr\u003e encouraged me.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e With a Bachelor's degree from Barnard and a Master's\u003cbr\u003e degree from Bryn Mawr, Schwartz completed her course\u003cbr\u003e work for a Doctorate in comparative literature, when her\u003cbr\u003e life changed direction. She says, \"I was just about to write\u003cbr\u003e my thesis, in 1972, and I couldn't face it; every topic I\u003cbr\u003e thought of was no good, and every time I went down in\u003cbr\u003e the NYU stacks I'd just get sick. Then suddenly it dawned\u003cbr\u003e on me: I was a little over thirty, and if I was going to\u003cbr\u003e write, I'd better write. I had thought it would happen -- I\u003cbr\u003e would wake up one day and be a writer -- but I didn't do\u003cbr\u003e it. That has a lot to do with the way women are brought\u003cbr\u003e up: you expect that things will happen to you, not that\u003cbr\u003e you should go and pursue them. So I dropped the Ph.D., \u003cbr\u003e went home, and wrote.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e For many years she wrote short stories, and in 1972\u003cbr\u003e was approached by an editor who suggested she string a\u003cbr\u003e series of shorts stories together into a longer novel. The\u003cbr\u003e result was her brilliantly acclaimed first novel, \u003ci\u003eRough\u003cbr\u003e Strife\u003c\/i\u003e, an intimate psychological portrait of a marriage in\u003cbr\u003e trouble. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Perhaps because of her family background, as well as\u003cbr\u003e her years of studying European literature, Schwartz feels\u003cbr\u003e an affinity to 19th-century writers. Marcel Proust and\u003cbr\u003e Henry James are her literary idols and she was also influenced \u003cbr\u003e by the poets, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Keats. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"The way they use language has remained in my ear,\" she\u003cbr\u003e says, \"and in my writing I try to keep a sense of the stages\u003cbr\u003e the language has passed through, and the way poets use\u003cbr\u003e it.\" She acknowledges that she is going against the current\u003cbr\u003e literary trend with its spare style but isn't particularly\u003cbr\u003e concerned about the criticism. She says, \"I can't write\u003cbr\u003e that way because I simply don't see life that way. For me, \u003cbr\u003e every gesture, every sentence, every interaction is taught\u003cbr\u003e with meaning, with layers of complexity, and I can't write\u003cbr\u003e as if that weren't true.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Fatigue Artist\u003c\/i\u003e is Schwartz's fifth novel, and her\u003cbr\u003e most autobiographical. In 1991, after a period of great\u003cbr\u003e stress, she found herself sick with Chronic Fatigue\u003cbr\u003e Syndrome. For three or four months, she lay in bed with\u003cbr\u003e only the strength to talk on the phone. In many ways, the\u003cbr\u003e calls were life sustaining, and as she gradually felt better.\u003cbr\u003e She began to write down the anecdotes and stories her\u003cbr\u003e friends told her, as well as her own observations of what\u003cbr\u003e was going on around her in the contemporary world.\u003cbr\u003e Determined to use what life had to offer, she turned the\u003cbr\u003e illness into a witty and humorous novel of introspection\u003cbr\u003e and healing. \"When I noticed all these...things happening\u003cbr\u003e around me, I kept thinking, I'll use it, I'll use it,\" she says.\u003cbr\u003e \"It's not going to be a waste of time. I have a friend, a\u003cbr\u003e very old, close friend, and whenever we're going through\u003cbr\u003e anything difficult, we say to each other, 'Why worry?\u003cbr\u003e Why? Some day all of this will become literature.'\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Lynne Sharon Schwartz currently lives in New York\u003cbr\u003e City with her husband and has taught writing and literature \u003cbr\u003e at Columbia, Boston, and Rice universities and at the\u003cbr\u003e Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has\u003cbr\u003e received numerous awards, and has been given grants for\u003cbr\u003e her fiction by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation\u003cbr\u003e and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her newest\u003cbr\u003e book, \u003ci\u003eRuined by Reading\u003c\/i\u003e, will be published in May. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOTHER WORKS BY LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRough Strife\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBalancing Acts\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDisturbances in the Field\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLeaving Brooklyn\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Lynne Sharon Schwartz Reader: \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSelected Prose and Poetry \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Melting Pot and Other Subversive Stories\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAquatinted with the Night\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReading Group Discussion Points \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOther Books With Reading Group Guides\u003cbr\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 320\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.71 x 8.01 x 5.27 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e July 25, 1996\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48757453553913,"sku":"9780684824680","price":25.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/iU6m2vtzor9780684824680.webp?v=1785946575","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/the-fatigue-artist-paperback","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}