Overview

Part memoir-through-film, part inquiry into the effect art has on our lives, The Doubles is Scott Esposito's passionate, exquisitely written examination of 14 films that have come to define him. Retelling one film per year, and covering 20 years of Esposito's life from 1996 - 2016, The Doubles shows the development of a mind via film and the formation of self-identity. From classic cinema like A Clockwork Orange to cosmological documentaries like A Brief History of Time to offbeat works like Koyaanisqatsi and major contemporary fare like Boyhood, Esposito's book inquires into the possibilities of a medium that has made us all.

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9781951628031

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Scott Esposito is a true American cosmopolitan--full of ideas and void of pretensions. His way of seeing--inquisitive and gentle--his way of writing--honest and charismatic--are a lifeline out of our self-congratulatory provincialism. --Alvaro Enrigue, author of Sudden Death Framed through the lens of film criticism, The Doubles is, in fact, a book that defies categorization, jump-cutting narrative (cultural and otherwise), memoir, and aesthetic insight into a hybrid that is often surprising and always rigorous. In the process, The Doubles manages to highlight both art's effect and its necessity: the way a work (or works) can get inside us, transforming not only how we think but also who we are. --David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles Readers of Scott Esposito's Conversational Reading blog already know him to be one of the most perspicacious literary critics in America. But to read The Doubles is to discover something else: that he is as thrillingly insightful about film, and about human experience, as he is about literature. With a bounding intelligence, a tremendous--and seemingly effortless--erudition, with enormous soulfulness, energy and wit, Esposito strains his life through the prism of cinema (or is it the other way around?) and arrives at something magnificent: a work of sustained criticism that is itself a work of high art, and a profound meditation on how the art we see becomes who we are. --Matthew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine and Los Angeles Review of Books Senior Editor

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