Proxies

“This is a momentous work informed by a lifetime of thinking, reading, loving, and reckoning, utterly matchless in its erudition, its precision, its range, its daring, and its grace. I know of no book like it, nor any recent book as thoroughly good, in art or in heart”Maggie Nelson

“Interrogative, unsettling, and brilliant.”Claudia Rankine

“Brian Blanchfield's sentences are modern marvels. They coil, insinuate, embellish - and then land on the tender spot. If Hart Crane had survived to write a book of autobiographical essays, it would resemble Proxies - but would Hart have given us the low-down on frottage? Blanchfield is a staggeringly accomplished stylist, whose artful elucidations deserve to be savored, studied, and, yes, worshipped.”Wayne Koestenbaum

“Early on his humble and stunning Proxies, Brian Blanchfield asks: "In what kind of place is all the hearing overhearing?" He knows, mostly we eavesdrop on ourselves. We call it thinking. There is no delicacy of mind like that one that moves through the facts of its own errors to arrive at understanding, and here, essay by essay, Blanchfield sifts through the astray archive of his memory to recall all what it is he needs to live. These essays remind us, as they discover inside themselves, the deep virtue of saying, "I don't know."”Dan Beachy-Quick