{"product_id":"the-monstrous-and-the-marvelous-9780872863545","title":"The Monstrous and the Marvelous","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith the great Renaissance voyages to the New World came the popularity of Wunderkammern, or cabinets of wonders, in which newly discovered monsters and marvels could be displayed. Like such a cabinet, this collection of essays surveys the monstrous and the marvelous—as transmuted in the alembic of Rikki Ducornet''s open-hearted vision—in literature, art and film. For her, excess anomaly, and heterodoxy entice the imagining mind to embrace otherness, enlarge the world and regenerate Eden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"We need writers to look at difficult issues in a sophisticated manner. Ducornet has done this. She is a mirror of our innermost selves and she gives us back to outselves. Despairing, hopeful, active, contemplative, fractured but surviving, playful, even happy sometimes (in our cash), whole.\"—\u003cem\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Ducornet playfully investigates works of literature, art, and film that create ruptures in our sense of normality. . . . [She] shows how the road of excess indeed leads to the palace of wisdom. Most important, however, her ability to transfix and communicate her sense of wonder becomes wondrous in itself, making these essays read with the same quirky delight as her fiction.\"—\u003cem\u003eRain Taxi\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Rikki Ducornet is a writer fascinated by the ways the concrete and illusory can be interwoven. [In this] quietly resplendent book of essays . . . she manages to create her own cabinet of marvels as she infects her readers with the sweet venom of language.\" —Bart Schneider, \u003cem\u003eThe Ruminator\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"City Lights Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51742344839511,"sku":"9780872863545","price":13.29,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780872863545.jpg?v=1758384393","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-monstrous-and-the-marvelous-9780872863545","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}