By Jesse Wood
Originally Published March 18, 2013. Friends of the Library will host a reception for author Eric G. Wilson and his most recent book titled Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can’t Look Away on Friday, March 22, at 6 p.m. at the Watauga County Public Library.
In a biography on his website, Wilson explains that the non-fiction book “explores our many and myriad forms of morbid curiosity and argues that macabre fascination, far from perverse, is essential for a good life.”
“Eric G. Wilson sets out to discover the source of our attraction to the caustic, drawing on the findings of biologists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and artists …Wilson believes there’s something nourishing in darkness,” according to another page on his website.
“To repress death is to lose the feeling of life,” Wilson writes. “A closeness to death discloses our most fertile energies.”
The book was published by Sarah Crichton Books in 2012, and so far has received rave reviews from NPR, Salon.com, The Boston Globe, among others, and has been labeled a “must read” by O: The Oprah Magazine.
Wilson is a professor of English at Wake Forest University and has written several other titles including: My Business Is To Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing, The Mercy of Eternity: A Memoir of Depression and Grace, and Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.
His book will be available for purchase and signings. The event will feature hors d’oeuvres and is catered by Reid’s Catering.
This event is a run-up to the 2013 High Country Festival of the Book, which is to be held at Watauga High School on June 22.
To read excerpt, click to www.salon.com/2012/02/18/the_science_of_rubbernecking.
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