Mystery Is Not Despair: Notes from Hidden Spaces

(Paperback)

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In Farewell Transmission, Will McGrath guides us on a rambling quest into the enlightenment of other lives. Funny and heartbreaking, intimate and galvanizing, these essays venture from Yemen to Lesotho to the Bronx and beyond. We find Caravaggio at an Arizona homeless shelter and meet Elvis in rural Canada. We encounter diamond miners and professional wrestlers, night watchmen and righteous ex-consthose wilderness prophets too frequently cropped from the picture.

This is a book of hiddenness: of secret lives and ghost stories and obscure passions. Whether hes unraveling the fraught history of a noose in Namibia or wandering the Driftless Area with a modern-day goatherd, McGrath is on an excavation into landscapes rarely seen. Like Leslie Jamisons The Empathy Exams and John Jeremiah Sullivans Pulphead, these essays pulse with electric prose and vivid characters, seeking out the invisible forces that bind us across our wondrous and troubling planet.

Farewell Transmission is a book about paying attention: to the concealed lives we encounter every day, and to the hidden worlds that exist within our own.

Reviews

Praise for Everything Lost Is Found Again

"Subtle, witty, and well-observed, McGrath's narrative is a chronicle of spiritual growth and a memorable love letter to the remote African kingdom that stole his heart. A warmly humane memoir." -Kirkus Reviews

"A wonderful book, keenly observed, a breezy, thought-provoking read. ... McGrath is a likable, curious guide, embracing whatever adventures come along." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"An endearing combination of insightful commentary and sympathetic comedy. This is a book in the best tradition of travel writing. ... Laugh-out-loud moments are balanced by heart-warming interludes, and altogether, this is an illuminating and enjoyable read that reminds readers of the essential oneness of humanity." -Booklist

"It is messy, often overwritten, sometimes jumbled. But above all it is joyful. McGrath tells his stories, even the tragic ones, with hope and humorthe greatest defenses against despair." -Asymptote

Author Bio

Will McGrath has worked as a reporter, homeless shelter caseworker, public radio producer, UPS truck loader, Burger King mayo-applicator, ghostwriter, and ghosteditor, in slightly different order. He spent twenty months living in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho the subject of his book,Everything Lost is Found Again(Dzanc Books 2017), which won the Disquiet Open Borders Book Prize in 2017. He has written for The Atlantic,Pacific Standard,Foreign Affairs, Guernica, andRoads & Kingdoms,among other magazines and journals. His writing has won nonfiction awards including the 2014 Felice Buckvar Prize and has been translated into Chinese, Hungarian, and Japanese.