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No One Writes Back

ebook

Communication—or the lack thereof—is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque. No One Writes Back is the story of a young man who leaves home with only his blind dog, an MP3 player, and a book, traveling aimlessly for three years, from motel to motel, meeting people on the road. Rather than learn the names of his fellow travelers—or invent nicknames for them—he assigns them numbers. There's 239, for example, who once dreamed of being a poet, but who now only reads her poems to a friend in a coma; there's 109, who rides trains endlessly because of a broken heart; and 32, who's already decided to commit suicide. The narrator writes letters to these men and women in the hope that he can console them in their various miseries, as well as keep a record of his own experiences: "A letter is like a journal entry for me, except that it gets sent to other people." No one writes back, of course, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some hope that one of them will, someday . . .


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Publisher: Columbia University Press

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781564789945
  • Release date: November 16, 2013

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781564789945
  • File size: 253 KB
  • Release date: November 16, 2013

Formats

OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Fiction Literature

Languages

English

Communication—or the lack thereof—is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque. No One Writes Back is the story of a young man who leaves home with only his blind dog, an MP3 player, and a book, traveling aimlessly for three years, from motel to motel, meeting people on the road. Rather than learn the names of his fellow travelers—or invent nicknames for them—he assigns them numbers. There's 239, for example, who once dreamed of being a poet, but who now only reads her poems to a friend in a coma; there's 109, who rides trains endlessly because of a broken heart; and 32, who's already decided to commit suicide. The narrator writes letters to these men and women in the hope that he can console them in their various miseries, as well as keep a record of his own experiences: "A letter is like a journal entry for me, except that it gets sent to other people." No one writes back, of course, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some hope that one of them will, someday . . .


Expand title description text