The Wink of the Zenith

In his three previous memoirs, Floyd Skloot grappled with the brain-ravaging virus that struck him at forty-one. He was, as theSan Francisco Chroniclenoted, "shaping the experience of crippling illness into dazzling literature." How such alchemy is performedwhere, in fact, the magic comes fromis the subject of Skloot's new book, a memoir of the making of a writer. Sifting through memories and observations to discover how circumstance and nature conspired to make him the writer he is, Skloot enacts in this book the very process he describes, the shaping of a writer's life. Among the influences of family and close friendship, experience and popular culture, he uncovers a unique and telling perspective on the forging of a writer's individual sensibility. At the same time, his book explores fundamental questions about how life shapes the creative spiritand how, in turn the writer makes sense of it all and gives life a new and meaningful shape in the form of literature.

Floyd Skloot is the author of four novels, most recently Patient 002; six collections of poetry, including The End of Dreams; a collection of essays; and three previous memoirs. His memoir In the Shadow of Memory (available in a Bison Books edition) was named a Best of 2003 nonfiction title by the Chicago Tribune and was a 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award nonfiction finalist. His A World of Light (Nebraska 2005) was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection for 2005.