Author Talk: James Marcus on Emerson

Join author James Marcus in a book reading of his new book: Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson, forthcoming from Princeton University Press on March 5, 2024.

Emerson once served as minister of the Second Church in Boston–the only congregation he ever pastored. In 1970, Second Church merged with First Church and we proudly continue to honor Emerson as a former minister.

From the Publisher:

Today we know Ralph Waldo Emerson as the poster boy for self-reliance. In Glad to the Bring of Fear, James Marcus peels back the curtain and reveals a much more three-dimensional figure.

This Emerson is a rebel. He is also a reluctant theological seminary student and erstwhile pastor; a devoted husband and father; and a prototypical American celebrity, one who attracted a cult following on his cross-country lecture circuits and held crowds in thrall with his musings on “the infinitude of the private man.”

Drawing on telling episodes from Emerson’s life alongside landmark essays like “Self-Reliance,” Marcus complicates our understanding of a mythic figure that we thought we knew, and positions Emerson as a true visionary who anticipated the culture wars of contemporary American life.

James Marcus is an editor, translator, and critic who has written and lectured widely on Emerson. His essays and criticism have appeared in leading publications such as The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, and Harper’s Magazine. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.com Juggernaut.

Please attend, please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/858930894427?aff=oddtdtcreator