{"product_id":"the-man-i-never-was-paperback","title":"The Man I Never Was - 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\u003eTheodore Sjogren\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe source of this story is a cache of seven notebooks found at a remote site in the northwest high desert by a geology student. The anonymous author-the lack of attribution crucial-is finally discovered to be an autistic genius who many years earlier disappears. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe student's mentor, upon retirement, seeks the source of the find and puts together \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethis book. Essentially the notebooks are the diary of the last member of a family whose handed-down wealth allows him to circle the country for eighteen years, living on trains, in stations, and camping more or less randomly in the surrounding wilds.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrior to this, the diarist lives in a mansion, cloistered in the in-house library built by a father who has achieved some renown as a scientist. But the father has not the genius of the son. In the son's own words: \"While he built the library, I put it to use.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe son's publications in science journals earn him an invitation to join a university. Then things fall apart. His father commits suicide, his mother (a complex figure) is likely murdered, whereby at her funeral our subject is whisked away by a random female mourner we never get to know.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat's where this diary (his journey) begins. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Man I Never Was asks: what defines identity - places, persons, events? Can its roots and causes be identified, found through exploration? Where in one's untold pages can formative triggers and trajectories be discovered, altered, erased? Seeking answers our subject travels into his past, present and future circuitously seeking (perhaps cleverly evading) an anchoring self, all the while testing if predestination is all and immutable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMovement and the strangeness of a self in alien spaces is the centrifugal force driving the novel. While the tale never slows or gets lost in detail, the reader is drawn to focus on the existential exploration of a personal reality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSjogren began his writing life while subsistence living on Florida's Big Pine Key, fishing, gathering, embedded in and contending with existence in its most basic form. From the beginning, living through and within spaces colors and directs his literary sense, first in \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ean old Ford, then traveling nearly a million miles on motorcycles, going repeatedly across \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe country and down into Central America to Panama. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFinally he \"settles\" on charter boats sailing around the Caribbean while raising a family on a houseboat on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Man I Never Was is the second volume of a trilogy-The Separated Woman being the first-augmenting and redefining the form of existential expression in the modern novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 216\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.49 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e June 19, 2022\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47244340461817,"sku":"9781977251756","price":31.27,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/bjNyZGpaZEl6Tkp4TkN3L0d3ZU04Zz09.webp?v=1768591208","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/the-man-i-never-was-paperback","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}