The Whalestoe Letters: From House of Leaves

(Paperback)

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Description

Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Li vre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love. Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.

Reviews

From the madhouse, Johnny Truants mother writes some of the most tender, chilling, faux-psychotic writing Ive ever read. This dangerous, lucid, confused but very eloquent lady . . . is playful, apologetic, crazed, paranoid, self-abasing, cunninga tigress with a gift for gab.
Robert Kelly, The New York Times Book Review

The Whalestoe Letters are dazzling.
Steven Moore, The Washington Post

Danielewski has a songwriters heart.
John Freeman, Time Out New York

Author Bio

Mark Z. Danielewski was born in 1966.