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Fragments of a Mortal Mind

A Nonfiction Novel

by Donald Anderson

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Description

We are where we’ve been and what we’ve read, aren’t we? Where else do we get the experience we need to evocatively live?

At once a memoir, a reading journal, and a novel, Fragments of a Mortal Mind is a daring, contemporary commonplace book. Donald Anderson, critically acclaimed author of Gathering Noise from My Life and Below Freezing, shows us how the disparate elements of our lives collect to construct our deepest selves and help us to make sense of it all. Anderson layers his personal experiences and reflections with those of others who have wrestled with inner and outer social, cultural, and political memories that are not as accurate as history might suggest but that each of us believe nonetheless. He challenges the reader’s sense of memory and fact, downplaying the latter in explaining how each of us crafts our own personal histories.

As Anderson weaves his voice among numerous other voices and ideas that rest upon other ideas, we are faced with larger issues of human existence: war, memory, trauma, mortality, religion, fear, joy, ugliness, and occasional beauty. What we have here is a meditation on living in America. We are shown how the world we consume becomes us as we metabolize it. How we, as humans, through our own fragments of memories, influences, and experiences become our true selves. By charting fragments of thoughts over a lifetime, Anderson exposes a way of thinking and perceiving the world that is refreshingly intuitive and desperately needed. Fragments of a Mortal Mind is a powerful masterpiece that closely resembles our lived experiences and is a vivid reflection of our time.

Advance Praise

“A daring and well-conceived book—one that shows us how the disparate elements of our lives gather into the construction of our deepest selves.” —Brian Turner, author of My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir

“Fragments of a Mortal Mind is at turns incisive, funny, and tender, a welcome glimpse inside the mind of a talented writer. Throughout the book Anderson reminds us that as slippery as memory can be, that unwieldiness never diminishes its power.” —Sara Novic, author of Girl at War

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Marketing Campaign:

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national print and digital

advertising, reviewer outreach, and

Edelweiss and NetGalley

promotion

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• Online advertising campaign

• National publicity outreach

• Social media marketing

• Email marketing

Marketing Campaign:

• Pre-publication promotion, including

national print and digital

advertising, reviewer outreach, and

Edelweiss and NetGalley

promotion

• National print advertising

•...

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781948908788
PRICE	$26.00 (USD)

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Additional Information

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Featured Reviews

Jack M, Reviewer

My Recommendation

Fragments of a Mortal Mind: A Nonfiction Novel by Donald Anderson absolutely swept me off my feet. The fragments themselves form a type of coherent whole yet they also encourage the reader to do a little work to fill gaps that likely tell the reader's story rather than Anderson's.

There are so many ways to enjoy this book and they overlap continuously. The fragments are interesting taken as singular or small groups. The placement of these pieces work very well, sometimes reinforcing an idea sometimes juxtaposing two ideas that are oddly complementary and oppositional at the same time.

Taken as a whole, or even in simply larger groups of fragments, they serve to tell at least some aspects of Anderson's life. Yet in doing so they often lead the reader to reflect on their own life and thus tells some aspect of it as well.

Many of these you will want to read to other people, or save as interesting quotes to revisit. The thing is, there are so many that rather than copy most of them it will be easier to just reread the book occasionally. I have added a couple to my file of email signatures to use in my emails.

What I enjoyed most, I think, was how Anderson's use of everything from quotes, news stories, personal experience, and internal pondering validated the way many of us relate to what we read, hear, see, and think. In other words, we piece things together and connect them in ways that make sense to us. Several of the things I read to other people elicited completely different responses. Each of us found different ways into even the shortest of fragments.

This is a book I would recommend to almost everyone. It can be enjoyed as a bunch of short fragments, it can be used as a springboard for a reader's own reflections on life, and it can be appreciated as a nonfiction novel (or a memoir, same thing).

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

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K.M. R, Reviewer

My Recommendation

A wide-ranging meditation on memory, fathers, grandfathers, books, cars, mining, and the mysteries and complexities of life in America. This is the kind of book I am always seeking but rarely find, moving in surprising ways from one subject to the next, from Porcsches to oranges to Chaucer, touching always on reading. A joy. I will certainly reread it, quote it to my writing students, and read Anderson's previous books.

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