I'll Be Your Mirror
In his third book of essays, David Lazar blends personal meditation on sex and death with considerations of popular music and coping with anxiety through signing, bowling, and other distractions. He sets his work apart as both in the essay and of the essay by throwing himself into the form's past—interviewing or speaking to past masters and turning over rocks to find lost gems of the essay form.
I'll Be Your Mirror further expands the dimensions of contemporary nonfiction writing by concluding with a series of aphorisms. Surreal, comical, and urban moments of being, they are part Cioran, part Kafka, and part Lenny Bruce. These are accompanied by Heather Frise's illustrations, whose looking-glass visions of motherhood—funny and grotesque—meet the vision of the aphorist in this most unusual nonfiction book.
“David Lazar is a writer’s writer’s writer.”—M. F. K. Fisher
"David Lazar asks to be known and seen, as Montaigne asjed to be known and seen in his Essais. . . . This collection is a weird and wonderful conglomeration of form that invites the reader to ruminate with a brilliant and savvy mind. . . . There is no posturing here, but a sophisticated sifting through the moments, memories and relationships that comprise a single life, thoughtfully engaged with the world, reflecting much more than its own singularity." —Angela Pelster-Wiebe, author of Limber
"In David Lazar's essays, the ostensible subjects become mindstream explorations in which music and memory dance to the intimate mysteries of human love and longing." —Lawrence Sutin, author of A Postcard Memoir and Jack and Rochelle