Peter Mendelsund

A messianic tale about a group of professional mourners?a darkly funny novel of grief, mystery and redemption from the author of The Delivery.Ed is a weeper. A professional weeper. He''s a card-carrying member of an eccentric union hired to cry at funerals, wakes, services and burials. It?s an odd job, but his services are sorely needed these days, as the town, the region, the country as a whole has become more or less numb. No one is able to summon a shred of human emotion whatsoever. Not anymore. (What?d be the point? The world?s already gone to hell.)So there?s always work for Ed and his colleagues. But all those cries can wear a man down, and the tears don?t flow quite like they used to, even for a consummate pro like Ed.Then one morning, a stranger comes to town. A scrawny kid with no belongings, no parents, no name, no past. And at precisely the moment of his arrival, people begin to experience something new. Something strange. An onslaught of unbidden feelings, unfamiliar feelings, too many feelings A surrealist story of mourning and messiahs, deserts and droughts, cowboys and junkies, miracles and mass hysteria, the lure of despair and the solace of friendship. Peter Mendelsund?s Weepers is a novel for this age: our age of anesthesia and anger.

In the early days of the pandemic, Peter Mendelsund and his family traveled up to a secluded New Hampshire farmhouse to weather the chaos. There began his journey through a crippling and seemingly intractable depression - which differed in degree but not in kind from episodes that have recurred periodically throughout his life - that brought him to the brink of suicide. Relief came from an unlikely source: painting, something Peter had never contemplated doing before. And yet it became the thing that may very well have saved his life. Bleakly funny, profoundly moving, and - against all odds - truly inspiring, Exhibitionist is not just an account of a mind thinking through its own suffering in real-time, and of the author''s reckoning with his father''s tortured legacy; it''s also the story of the birth of an artist, and a portrait of an artist at work.

Why do some book covers instantly grab your attention, while others never get a second glance? Fusing word and image, as well as design thinking and literary criticism, this captivating investigation goes behind the scenes of the cover design process to answer this question and more. As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history, and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries. Co-authored by celebrated designer and creative director Peter Mendelsund and scholar David Alworth, this fascinating collaboration, featuring hundreds of covers, challenges our notions of what a book cover can and should be.