The House of Breath

by William Goyen

Overview

Readers can now rediscover one of William Goyen's most important works in this restoration of the original text. The House of Breath eschews traditional conventions of plot and character presentation. The book is written as an ethereal address to the people and places the narrator remembers from his childhood in a small Texas town. More than a story, it is a meditation on the nature of identity, origins, and memory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810150676
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	07/30/1999
Edition description:	1
Pages:	191
Sales rank:	684,360
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

William Goyen was born in Trinity, Texas, served in World War II, and lived much of his life in Taos, New Mexico. He wrote numerous short stories, novels, poems, and plays.

Editorial Reviews

"The House of Breath is not a novel at all but a sustained evocation of the past, a long search for place and identity, and the meaning of an intense personal experience; an attempt to cleanse the heart of its mysterious burden of guilt. . . . The writing as a whole is disciplined on a high plane, and there are long passages of the best writing, the fullest and richest and most expressive, that I have read in a very long time." —Katherine Anne Porter

From the Publisher