PGHwrites: Ed Simon’s “American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States” (Book Launch)
Ed Simon presents 50 short chapters that are asynchronously organized works of flash criticism, meant to draw connections across time periods, which each celebrate an aspect of an expanded and broader “America.”
With his finger on the pulse, Ed Simon has assembled 50 powerful tinctures of masterful insight and cultural criticism in his latest work, American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States. The work strives to remind us that before there was the United States, there was America, and that everything we view as “American” has been a 250-year series of inventions and adaptations.
The Declaration of Independence promised to forge a nation dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As a result, American society and culture have always existed within the gulf of our stated aspirations and the actual reality. In American Elegy, Ed Simon takes a hard look at our reality, 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence—a reality in which the United States is succumbing to authoritarianism and the noxious blood-and-soil nationalism that curses the faith in the universal and indispensable America.
In response to this moment, Ed Simon offers a rejoinder, presenting 50 asynchronously organized works of flash criticism, meant to draw connections across time periods, each celebrating an aspect of the “America” that is larger, deeper, and broader than the mere United States. Here, the Great American Novel meets the Great American Songbook; sign language converses with the blues; method acting shares the stage with Afrofuturism, and Superman plays baseball. Defining “literature” as broadly as possible, each of the works profiled critiques the status quo and imagines a better world.
Ed Simon has provided not just an elegy, but a challenge, a celebration, a repository, an archive, and a call to start over, charting a course to a land still undiscovered.
This reading will be followed by a book signing and a public reception with complimentary hors d’oeuvres for all attendees.
You can purchase a copy of Ed’s book, American Elegy, at City of Asylum Bookstore.
The Declaration of Independence promised to forge a nation dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As a result, American society and culture have always existed within the gulf of our stated aspirations and the actual reality. In American Elegy, Ed Simon takes a hard look at our reality, 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence—a reality in which the United States is succumbing to authoritarianism and the noxious blood-and-soil nationalism that curses the faith in the universal and indispensable America.
In response to this moment, Ed Simon offers a rejoinder, presenting 50 asynchronously organized works of flash criticism, meant to draw connections across time periods, each celebrating an aspect of the “America” that is larger, deeper, and broader than the mere United States. Here, the Great American Novel meets the Great American Songbook; sign language converses with the blues; method acting shares the stage with Afrofuturism, and Superman plays baseball. Defining “literature” as broadly as possible, each of the works profiled critiques the status quo and imagines a better world.
Ed Simon has provided not just an elegy, but a challenge, a celebration, a repository, an archive, and a call to start over, charting a course to a land still undiscovered.
This reading will be followed by a book signing and a public reception with complimentary hors d’oeuvres for all attendees.
You can purchase a copy of Ed’s book, American Elegy, at City of Asylum Bookstore.
Photos
