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The Traces: An Essay - Paperback
$17.95
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by Mairead Small Staid (Author)
The Traces is a ranging inquiry into the seductions of memory and travel, the fragile paradox of desire, and the art of making meaning from a life.
The Traces is a work of memoir and criticism that explores the nature of happiness in art, literature, and philosophy, structured around a season spent in Italy and a reading of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.
Poised between plummeting depressions, the author considers the intellectual merits of joy and the redeeming promise offered by the beauty, both natural and manmade, that surrounds her. Traveling from Florence to Rome to Venice, drawing on the fields of physics, history, architecture, and cartography, and spurred by thinkers from Aristotle and Montaigne to Cesare Pavese and Anne Carson, The Traces is an ecstatic, insightful, and original debut.
Author Biography
Mairead Small Staid is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Phillips Exeter Academy, where she was the Geoge Bennett Fellow. Her essays have appeared in AGNI, The Believer, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Minnesota.
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Returns & Refunds
Standard U.S. returns are accepted for eligible new, unopened items within 30 days of carrier delivery. Returns are by mail. Customers are responsible for standard return shipping, there is no restocking fee, and standard exchanges are not offered. Once an approved return is received and inspected, the refund is issued to the original payment method within 5 business days. Damaged, defective, or incorrect items are handled at no return-shipping cost to the customer.
Return eligibility is subject to the full policy. Opened, read, or unsealed books with broken seals or visible wear are final sale. Digital downloads, gift cards, and personalized products are non-refundable. Original shipping charges are not refunded for standard returns. Contact us within 7 days of delivery about damaged, defective, or incorrect items.
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