J. D. Daniels is the recipient of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award and The Paris Review's 2013 Terry Southern Prize. His "Letter from Majorca" was selected for The Best American Essays 2013. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Correspondence is his debut book.
"[A] stunning debut . . . Delivered with the storytelling talents
of John Jeremiah Sullivan and brimming with the folkloric,
true-life tales of Breece D'J Pancake, these tales are funny;
unrepentantly realist; and, in their way, awfully elegant . . .
With careful wit, an attention to emotional nuance that reaches
down to the gut, and an astounding ear for dialogue, Daniels writes
with a kind of brutal authenticity that is not easily faked,
whichever side of auto-fiction's hyphen he's writing from." --Diego
Báez, Booklist (starred review) "A fascinating correspondence . . .
Throughout the book, Daniels masterfully hints at other stories
just off the page, revealing much about himself but never too much
. . . The letters here represent a bold and daring contribution to
belles lettres; Daniels is an essayist to watch." --Publishers
Weekly "An essayist who writes like a rattlesnake, his sentences
coiled yet always ready to strike with venomous impact . . .
[Daniels's] spare, elemental prose conjures old haunts, old hurts,
and old friends who are dead or are in prison . . . extraordinary .
. . An uncommonly auspicious debut." --Kirkus Reviews (starred
review) "The Correspondence is one of the best things I've read in
a long time, a whole new music that changes the score of
masculinity, and a new kind of writing too, one that pushes form
and sentence into radical, contemporary shapes. The word 'honesty'
has become something of an irritant in contemporary literary
culture: J. D. Daniels does something more moral than be simply
honest. He invokes the grandeur and abasement of experience with a
tactility of language that makes a psychological landscape of it,
rather as the ancient Greeks did, and his notions of justice and
truth are as richly textured as theirs. I have lent this slim,
meaningful book to one person after another, and received the
confirmation that it has changed their view of the world with its
economy, its potency, its different fall of light."
--Rachel Cusk, author of TRANSIT "Masculinity as vulnerable, smelly
smackdown, personal failure as syntactic delight: In this volatile,
brilliant collection, Daniels recollects in not-quite tranquility a
series of synesthesiac rearrangements of the self. The riveting
swerves of his sentences and of his geographic and spiritual
wanderings will make you keep asking what "here" might be. These
essays pay tribute to 'the world... our common property.'"
--Lisa Cohen, author of ALL WE KNOW
"The Correspondence gives off the unmistakeable crackle of an
original writer who has found a new form. It's hard to say who or
what is meant to be on the receiving end of these "letters," but if
you care about modern life you need to read them."
--John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of PULPHEAD "Daniels sees what
others don't, feels what others won't, and writes what others
can't. He is a blazing virtuoso of the English sentence, an oracle
with a vulnerable and willing heart, and he has produced a
shockingly perfect book."
--Sarah Manguso, author of ONGOINGNESS "J. D. Daniels's The
Correspondence is an epic in fragments: masterly, comic, wise,
daring. It is a book for everyone, from Kentucky to Cambridge to
Kathmandu, though as a reader you may feel that Daniels is
trafficking in secrets, meant for you alone. It is occult. It is so
strong, it will melt the books on the shelves around it. This is a
book that will become a legend, introducing one of the very best
writers in the country. If I could thrust it into every true
reader's hands, I would."
--Mark Greif, author of THE AGE OF THE CRISIS OF MAN "What a
nutjob! Increasingly these three words constitute my highest praise
for - almost my ideal of - a writer, and in this regard J. D.
Daniels takes the biscuit. I love the way he throws out everything,
both in the sense of throwing it all at us, and the opposite:
discarding everything that might be deemed necessary to the seemly
construction of narrative. So The Correspondence gives us the best
of both worlds."
--Geoff Dyer, author of WHITE SANDS "Questions that occurred to me
as I read this brilliant, baffling book: What the hell is this? Who
the hell is this? Is this poetry? How can that sentence be so good?
Can I steal that later? In 130 pages, Daniels shows you just about
everything great prose can do. Books like this are why I read."
--Tom Bissell, author of APOSTLE "Through the speed and shocking
cuts of his prose, Daniels shows us what it is to be a writer now.
Each of these six letters is a modern expression of Baudelaire's
tortured prayer: 'O Lord God grant me the grace to produce a few
good verses, which shall prove to myself that I am not the lowest
of men, that I am not inferior to those whom I despise.'"
--Michael Clune, author of GAMELIFE "J.D. Daniels is a scourge to
an America drunk on fraudulent images of masculinity and to a
literary scene enamored of dainty exhibitionism. A writer so
rigorously on guard against complacency that he's likely to take
any compliment paid him like a slap in the face."
--Marco Roth, author of THE SCIENTISTS
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