Book description
?Traditional autobiography is composed after the experience has passed.
I wrote this book in the very panic of the experiences that inspired it
? ' In his early thirties, Greg Baxter found himself in a strange place.
He hated his job, he was drinking excessively, he was sabotaging his
most important relationships, and he was no longer doing the thing he
cared about most: writing. Strangest of all, at this time he started
teaching evening classes in creative writing ? and his life changed
utterly. A Preparation for Death is a document of the chaos and
discovery of that time and of the experiences that led Greg Baxter to
that strange place ? an extraordinarily intimate account of literary
failure (and its consequences), personal decay, and redemption through
reading, writing, and truth-telling. Studded with vivid, loving
portraits of the people closest to him ? his Austrian grandmother, who
narrowly survived the Second World War; his mother and father, both
described with heartbreakingly close attention; and his cousin Walter,
whose own demons provide a striking counterpoint to the author?s ? it is
above all a stunningly vivid and searching self-portrait: possibly the
most honest book you?ll ever read. Greg Baxter was born in Texas in
1974. For the past ten years he has lived in Dublin, where he works as a
journalist.
