Description
Book SynopsisEssays considering what it means to love art, culture, and people in an age of accelerating disaster. This is a book about loving thingsbooks, songs, peoplein the shadow of a felt, looming disaster. Through lyrical, funny, heart-wrenching essays, Peter Coviello considers pieces of culture across a fantastic range, setting them inside the vivid scenes of friendship, dispute, romance, talk, and loss, where they enter our lives. Alongside him, we reencounter movies likeThe Shining, shows likeThe Sopranos; videos; poems; novels by Sam Lipsyte, Sally Rooney, and Paula Fox; as well as songs by Joni Mitchell, Gladys Knight, Steely Dan, Pavement, and the much-mourned saint of Minneapolis, Prince. Navigating an overwhelming feeling that Coviello calls endstrickenness, he asks what it means to love things in calamitous times, when so much seems to be shambling toward collapse. Balancing comedy and anger, exhilaration and sorrow, Coviello illuminates the strange ways the things we cherish
Trade Review“
Is There God After Prince?—great title, that—is Chicago writer Coviello’s cultural thoughts centered around a sharp theme: If we’re headed for collapse, what does it mean to love anything deeply? Particularly the seemingly ephemeral, like Chance the Rapper or 'The Sopranos.' It’s an anxious, heady collection." * Chicago Tribune *
"Omnibus of brainy, exuberant essays that explore with insight and nuance an extraordinary range of subjects. . . . In
Is There God After Prince?, there is so much clear seeing and close listening and expansive thinking." * NewCity *
"Coviello navigates. . . a world obsessed with nostalgia for the past and the impending disaster of the future. Exploring our yearning for entertainment amid turmoil, Coviello examines how art’s meaning transforms alongside us.
The Sopranos, Gladys Knight, Sally Rooney,
The Shining, Joni Mitchell, Paula Fox, Steely Dan—no piece of culture evades his gaze. Through the lens of what Coviello calls 'enstrickenness,' he wonders: Is there genuine hope to be found through sentimentality?" * The Millions, "Most Anticipated: The Great 2023 Book Preview" *
"Coviello reflects on myriad opportunities for connection through critical engagement with the arts in his intriguing essay collection . . . . Using the arts as a springboard, the book engages in the critical examination of personal, professional, and society-wide relationships, tying these to broad themes including love, fulfillment, and grief. This solidifies Coviello’s thesis—that 'one thing criticism might do—or try to do—is chart the ways certain cherished things (songs, poems, movies, etc.) fold . . . worlds together and, for a blazing instant or two, make them sensible to one another.' A thought-provoking essay collection,
Is There God after Prince? elevates the idea that emotional attachment to the arts can be a catalyst for reflection, memory formation, and relationship building." * Foreword Reviews *
"An exquisitely written romp through Coviello’s pop culture favorites." * Publishers Weekly *
"To say that this collection takes the reader on a personal expedition is an understatement. Coviello’s elegant use of language keeps the often complex stream-of-consciousness strapped to a critical foundation. As in life, even in view of a nearing end, these essays contain multitudes." * Booklist *
“Coviello is our bard of ardor, of nuanced connection, of passionate critical engagement with objects of art and each other. There is God, or at least life, after Prince, for a little while, anyway, but it’s up to us to seek vibrancy and feeling and new meaning in a world that seems too ready to close up shop. Coviello’s essays are beautiful demonstrations of our task.” -- Sam Lipsyte, author of "No One Left to Come Looking for You" and "The Ask"
"It feels like the world is leaving us—by dying—but in a voice at once ardent and incisive, Coviello refuses to leave the world. With essays on Henry James and post-punk, love and college radio,
Is There God after Prince? is a joyous cry of praise and protest. Reading this book is like spending an evening on a barstool next to your sharpest, warmest-hearted, and best-read friend: you emerge with a reading list and a renewed will to live." -- Emily Ogden, author of "On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays"
"Is There God after Prince? is a book that pushes back, with loving acuity and occasional fury, against the lazy, pre-chewed truisms of our op-ed titans. The impassioned encounters with books, songs, and people that fill these chapters reflect not so much a host of obsessions as an attachment to life itself."
-- Gustavus Stadler, author of "Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life"
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Praisesongs and Descants
Overture: Talk, Talk
Part I: Sounds
Is There God after Prince?
The Last Psychedelic Band
Karaoke for the People
The Everyday Disaster
What We Fight about When We Fight about Doctor Wu
Part II: Ceremonies
Love in the Ruins
Circumstance
Joy Rounds First
Loving John
The Impostor
Part III: Kids
Easy
Our Noise
Where I Want to Be
Ghost Stories
Rhapsody for the Crash Years
Part IV: Sentences
So-Called Normal People
Say Chi City
Our Man in the Fifteenth
Hollow
Killing Joke
Part V: Ends
My Thoughts Are Murder
Mercy Hours
In the Maze
Anthony and Carmela Get Vaccinated
Afterword: Exit Wounds
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
