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The Whalestoe Letters

From House of Leaves

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Paperback
$15.00 US
5.02"W x 8.11"H x 0.34"D   | 4 oz | 28 per carton
On sale Oct 10, 2000 | 104 Pages | 9780375714412
Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love.

Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.

“From the madhouse, Johnny Truant’s mother writes some of the most tender, chilling, faux-psychotic writing I’ve ever read. This dangerous, lucid, confused but very eloquent lady . . . is playful, apologetic, crazed, paranoid, self-abasing, cunning—a tigress with a gift for gab.”
—Robert Kelly, The New York Times Book Review
 
The Whalestoe Letters are dazzling.”
—Steven Moore, The Washington Post
 
“Danielewski has a songwriter’s heart.”
—John Freeman, Time Out New York

© Emman Montalvan

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI was born in New York City and lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of House of Leaves, The Whalestoe LettersOnly Revolutions, The Fifty Year Sword, and The Familiar.


http://www.markzdanielewski.com/

View titles by Mark Z. Danielewski

About

Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love.

Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.

Praise

“From the madhouse, Johnny Truant’s mother writes some of the most tender, chilling, faux-psychotic writing I’ve ever read. This dangerous, lucid, confused but very eloquent lady . . . is playful, apologetic, crazed, paranoid, self-abasing, cunning—a tigress with a gift for gab.”
—Robert Kelly, The New York Times Book Review
 
The Whalestoe Letters are dazzling.”
—Steven Moore, The Washington Post
 
“Danielewski has a songwriter’s heart.”
—John Freeman, Time Out New York

Author

© Emman Montalvan

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI was born in New York City and lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of House of Leaves, The Whalestoe LettersOnly Revolutions, The Fifty Year Sword, and The Familiar.


http://www.markzdanielewski.com/

View titles by Mark Z. Danielewski