Overview

A poet who crafted thegreatest character in literary history with his engaging anti-hero of Satan, John Milton connected personal experience with the breadth of cosmic epic. HisParadise Lost is a touchstone of English literature. In the latest entry in Ig's celebrated Bookmarked series, author EdSimon considers Paradise Lost within the scope of his ownalcoholism and recovery, the collapse of higher education, the imbecility ofthe canon wars, the piquant joys of labyrinthine sentences, and the exquisiteattractions of Lucifer. Milton is easy to respect and easier to fear, but withthe guidance of Simon, Milton becomes easiest of all to love. Paradise Lost mayhave generated thousands of works of criticism over the centuries, but none ofthem are like this.

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9781632461520

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Reviews

"""If someone had told me back in graduate school that in 2023 I'd develop a newfound respect for Milton, I would have thought they were nuts, yet Simon's book has made me do exactly that. Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost is an informed and precise look at the poet who made so much of English literature possible, and at why his work is still complex and relevant.""--Brian Evenson ""At one point in Simon's buoyant, erudite Heaven, Hell, and Paradise Lost, he evokes the Rubin's vase and its ambiguity: Is it a vase or two people looking at one another? While a canny metaphor in the particular context, I thought the tripartite constellation also an apt description of this volume as whole. At times it appears a double portrait--of Milton and the author as thinkers and humans (sometimes inspired, sometimes as stumbling as us all). In other moments it shows the contours of the vase, an accessible and cogent discussion of Paradise Lost's concepts and aims. Taken in total, it's a compelling, deeply personal argument for Milton's epic in the contemporary moment.""--Emily Nemens, author, The Cactus League ""With verve and an abundance of erudition, Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost manages to be all at once: a travelogue of a trip to Milton's grave, an insightful return to the classic of all classics, and against all odds, a laugh-out-loud funny book. Simon's light touch and depth of knowledge feels akin to what Geoff Dyer or Janet Malcolm do at their best--and yet his voice is entirely his own. Read this one! Savor it."" --Daniel Torday, author, The 12th Commandment"

Author Information

Ed Simon is the editor of Belt Magazine and a staff writer for The Millions. A widely published author, his work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, Poetry, McSweeney's, Aeon, Lapham's Quarterly, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among dozens of others. Simon is also the author of several books, including Printed in Utopia: The Radicalism of the Renaissance and Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology. He has taught literature at several institutions of higher education, and holds a PhD in English from Lehigh University. Simon is from Pittsburgh, where he still lives.

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