Join John West to discuss “Lessons and Carols.”
BOOK DISCUSSION DETAILS
Friday, May 5, 2023 – 6:00pm
Oblong Rhinebeck
6422 Montgomery Street
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Registration Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/john-west-lessons-carols-in-conversation-with-mark-wunderlich-tickets-601703189437
About the Author:
John West is a technologist and writer, currently reporting the news with code at the Wall Street Journal, where his work has won multiple awards and been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Previously, he worked at the MIT Media Lab and the digital publication Quartz. He holds an MFA in writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College. He lives in Boston with his partner, their daughter, and a cat.
About the Book:
Maybe redemption is not a place you find, but a system of mapmaking. Sketch a land. Pencil in dragons. Imagine it real, resplendent, and broken under a waxing moon.
Lessons and Carols is a genre-bending memoir that explores the aftershocks of alcoholism and mental illness through a fresh look at the powers of poetry, ritual, and community. As a new parent, West grapples with his own fragmented recovery and grief for the friends he lost to addiction, asking if anyone can really change, or if we are always bound to repeat the past.
Echoing the form of a traditional Anglican Christmas service of stories and songs, West’s lyrical prose invites readers into an unorthodox rendition of the liturgy called Lessons and Carols. Each December, a faithful circle of irreligious friends assembles to eat and sing and re-imagine an old story about love made flesh. In that gathering’s glow, resentments turn to quiet wonder at the ways a better world can appear.
Both tender and bracing, West’s poetic meditation of the possibilities of change will resonate deeply with anyone who has tired of their own destructive loops. In this stirring account of recovery, redemption remains elusive—and also a promise as tangible as a newborn.
Hardscrabble winter, gray and lonely, requires Christmas. Or, rather, in its depths, I require Christmas: words no longer cold, chrome, and barren, but alive, golden, cradled in my arms.
