Overview

Barrett Swanson embarks on a personal quest across the United States to uncover what it means to be an American amid the swirl of our post-truth climate in this collection of critically acclaimed essays and reportage. A trip with his brother to a New York psychic community becomes a rollicking tour through the world of American spiritualism. At a wilderness retreat in Ohio, men seek a cure for toxic masculinity, while in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, antiwar veterans turn to farming when they cannot sustain the heroic myth of service. And when his best friend’s body washes up on the shores of the Mississippi River, he falls into the gullet of true crime discussion boards, exploring the stamina of conspiracy theories along the cankered byways of the Midwest.   In this exhilarating debut, Barrett Swanson introduces us to a new reality. At a moment when grand unifying narratives have splintered into competing storylines, these critically acclaimed essays document the many routes by which people are struggling to find stability in the aftermath of our country’s political and economic collapse, sometimes at dire and disillusioning costs.

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9781640094185

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Reviews

More than most writers, Barrett Swanson is a first-rate cultural anthropologist. Perceptive, amusing, searching, he scans and gazes past the variety of scrims the world has set out to cloud our vision. His brilliant essays bring so much back into focus, while also noting the American surrealism of the American dream. There is not a weak link in this collection. Every piece is a gem. --Lorrie Moore With potent lucidity and fierce intelligence, Barrett Swanson pierces the superficial arguments that make so much of our moment strange and alienating. The range of these essays is astonishing, but more electrifying still is the agility with which Swanson probes the deep mysteries of masculinity, ecological threat, capitalism, and race to reveal thrilling if terrifying connections. Barrett Swanson is a tremendous writer, and this collection provides one of the truest, most haunting portraits of our time I've ever read. --Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, finalist for the Booker Prize As the narrative of American exceptionalism collapses swiftly and spectacularly all around us, I'm grateful for Barrett Swanson's brilliance and clarity, his affectionate skepticism of our most violent games and lies, his earnest and anxious interrogations of twenty-first-century masculinity. Lost in Summerland is an essay collection of the very highest order: a book that poses more questions than it seeks to answer, a book that has wrestled my empathy for the fucked-up citizens of our tragicomic era and country into new, uncomfortable, gorgeously fruitful places. --Lauren Groff, author of Florida Barrett Swanson is our eloquent guide on this tour through the toxic masculinity industrial complex, disaster capitalism, and other exhibits of a lonely, lost America. In essays that are moving and candid, personal and sweeping, Lost in Summerland seeks alternatives to national myths and tries to name the 'unnamable turbulence' we're living through, to rescue the ineffable from invisibility. --Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory Barrett Swanson achieves a sublime density of intellect and soul in Lost in Summerland, a vivid, immersive, fiercely openhearted survey of the American landscape and spirit. In handsome lyrical prose, with the sensitivity of a cultural seismologist, Swanson finds humor and insight erupting everywhere. His unstinting honesty is that of the best memoirists, who remind us that it is reasonable and perverse and exalted just to be a person, awake, alive, listening for the quiet essence in things. Reality is so palpable in these essays that I found myself nostalgic for moments I had never lived. --Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals Casting a net of electric prose, these essays--miraculously--catch midair the hot shrapnel of an exploding moment. In Swanson's humane and gifted hands, the glowing fragments light a path through our national dreamlife, illuminating America's new paradoxes and precarities. --Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

As the narrative of American exceptionalism collapses swiftly and spectacularly all around us, I'm grateful for Barrett Swanson's brilliance and clarity, his affectionate skepticism of our most violent games and lies, his earnest and anxious interrogations of twenty-first-century masculinity. Lost in Summerland is an essay collection of the very highest order: a book that poses more questions than it seeks to answer, a book that has wrestled my empathy for the fucked-up citizens of our tragicomic era and country into new, uncomfortable, gorgeously fruitful places. --Lauren Groff, author of Florida

More than most writers, Barrett Swanson is a first-rate cultural anthropologist. Perceptive, amusing, searching, he scans and gazes past the variety of scrims the world has set out to cloud our vision. His brilliant essays bring so much back into focus, while also noting the American surrealism of the American dream. There is not a weak link in this collection. Every piece is a gem. --Lorrie Moore With potent lucidity and fierce intelligence, Barrett Swanson pierces the superficial arguments that make so much of our moment strange and alienating. The range of these essays is astonishing, but more electrifying still is the agility with which Swanson probes the deep mysteries of masculinity, ecological threat, capitalism, and race to reveal thrilling if terrifying connections. Barrett Swanson is a tremendous writer, and this collection provides one of the truest, most haunting portraits of our time I've ever read. --Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, finalist for the Booker Prize As the narrative of American exceptionalism collapses swiftly and spectacularly all around us, I'm grateful for Barrett Swanson's brilliance and clarity, his affectionate skepticism of our most violent games and lies, his earnest and anxious interrogations of twenty-first-century masculinity. Lost in Summerland is an essay collection of the very highest order: a book that poses more questions than it seeks to answer, a book that has wrestled my empathy for the fucked-up citizens of our tragicomic era and country into new, uncomfortable, gorgeously fruitful places. --Lauren Groff, author of Florida Barrett Swanson is our eloquent guide on this tour through the toxic masculinity industrial complex, disaster capitalism, and other exhibits of a lonely, lost America. In essays that are moving and candid, personal and sweeping, Lost in Summerland seeks alternatives to national myths and tries to name the 'unnamable turbulence' we're living through, to rescue the ineffable from invisibility. --Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory Barrett Swanson achieves a sublime density of intellect and soul in Lost in Summerland, a vivid, immersive, fiercely openhearted survey of the American landscape and spirit. In handsome lyrical prose, with the sensitivity of a cultural seismologist, Swanson finds humor and insight erupting everywhere. His unstinting honesty is that of the best memoirists, who remind us that it is reasonable and perverse and exalted just to be a person, awake, alive, listening for the quiet essence in things. Reality is so palpable in these essays that I found myself nostalgic for moments I had never lived. --Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals

More than most writers, Barrett Swanson is a first-rate cultural anthropologist. Perceptive, amusing, searching, he scans and gazes past the variety of scrims the world has set out to cloud our vision. His brilliant essays bring so much back into focus, while also noting the American surrealism of the American dream. There is not a weak link in this collection. Every piece is a gem. --Lorrie Moore Full of measured skepticism, Swanson's sharp interrogation of contemporary American life hits hard and true. --Publishers Weekly With potent lucidity and fierce intelligence, Barrett Swanson pierces the superficial arguments that make so much of our moment strange and alienating. The range of these essays is astonishing, but more electrifying still is the agility with which Swanson probes the deep mysteries of masculinity, ecological threat, capitalism, and race to reveal thrilling if terrifying connections. Barrett Swanson is a tremendous writer, and this collection provides one of the truest, most haunting portraits of our time I've ever read. --Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, finalist for the Booker Prize As the narrative of American exceptionalism collapses swiftly and spectacularly all around us, I'm grateful for Barrett Swanson's brilliance and clarity, his affectionate skepticism of our most violent games and lies, his earnest and anxious interrogations of twenty-first-century masculinity. Lost in Summerland is an essay collection of the very highest order: a book that poses more questions than it seeks to answer, a book that has wrestled my empathy for the fucked-up citizens of our tragicomic era and country into new, uncomfortable, gorgeously fruitful places. --Lauren Groff, author of Florida Barrett Swanson is our eloquent guide on this tour through the toxic masculinity industrial complex, disaster capitalism, and other exhibits of a lonely, lost America. In essays that are moving and candid, personal and sweeping, Lost in Summerland seeks alternatives to national myths and tries to name the 'unnamable turbulence' we're living through, to rescue the ineffable from invisibility. --Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory Barrett Swanson achieves a sublime density of intellect and soul in Lost in Summerland, a vivid, immersive, fiercely openhearted survey of the American landscape and spirit. In handsome lyrical prose, with the sensitivity of a cultural seismologist, Swanson finds humor and insight erupting everywhere. His unstinting honesty is that of the best memoirists, who remind us that it is reasonable and perverse and exalted just to be a person, awake, alive, listening for the quiet essence in things. Reality is so palpable in these essays that I found myself nostalgic for moments I had never lived. --Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals Casting a net of electric prose, these essays--miraculously--catch midair the hot shrapnel of an exploding moment. In Swanson's humane and gifted hands, the glowing fragments light a path through our national dreamlife, illuminating America's new paradoxes and precarities. --Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

Author Information

Barrett Swanson's essays have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Believer, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atavist, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and has been anthologized in two editions of The Best American Travel Writing. He was the Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and he and his wife live in Madison, Wisconsin.

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