by Amanda Davis
At bottom of this kind of behavior on the part of old, established writers is the undeniable way in which our young selves, and the books that issued from them, invariably seem to reproach us: with the fading of our fire, the diminishment of our porousness to the world and the people in it, the compromises made, the friendships abandoned, the opportunities squandered, the loss of velocity on our fastball. But Amanda never got to live long enough to sense the presence of her fine short stories and of this stirring, charming, beautifully written novel, as any kind of a threat or reproof. She was merely, justly, proud of them. On some level that was not buried very deeply, she knew that she was the real thing. This is, in fact, a characteristic of writers who are (alas it is often found, as well, among those who are not). After Wonder When You’ll Miss Me, she was going to write a historical novel about early Jewish immigrants to the South, or a creepy modern gothic, and then after that she was going to try any one of a hundred other different kinds of novels, because she felt, rightly, that with her command of the English language, and her sharp, sharp mind, and her omnivorous interests, and her understanding of human emotion and, above all, with her unstoppable, inevitable, tormenting, at times even unwelcome compulsion to do the work, the hard and tedious work, she could have written just about any book she damn well wanted to.
And we will never get to read any of them. This and the story collection are all that we have, and the crack in the world falls farther and farther behind us. And Amanda’s there, and we’re here, and I’ve never yet written or read a book, with or without an afterword, that could do anything at all about that.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful for the invaluable assistance of the Djerassi Resident Artists Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, and The Writers Room.
I wish to thank Stephanie Monseau and Keith Nelson for taking me along on the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus spring 1999 tour (and Scotty the Blue Bunny, without whom I would not have survived it), and also Eoin O’Brien and Mike Finn for sharing their stories with me.
For close readings of messy drafts, thank you to Judy Budnitz, Sheilah Coleman, Colin Dickerman, Dave Eggers, Susanna Einstein, Heidi Julavits, Katie McMenamin, Elissa Schappell, and Lucy Thurber.
Gigantic thanks to Colin Dickerman and Rob Weisbach for their early enthusiasm, and to my agent, Henry Dunow, and my editor, Krista Stroever, for all of their insight and energies.
And, finally, thank you to Anthony Schneider, whose unwavering belief, support, and love has made all the difference.
SOME CIRCUS BOOKS THE AUTHOR RECOMMENDS…
Ballentine, Bill. Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas. New York: Rinehart and Co. Inc., 1958.
Bradna, Fred, and Hartzell Spence. The Big Top. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952.
Chalfoun, Michelle. Roustabout. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Chipperfield, Jimmy. My Wild Life. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976.
Douglas-Hamilton, Iain and Oria. Among the Elephants. New York: Viking Press, 1975.
Drimmer, Fredrick. Very Special People. New York: Amjon Publishers Inc., 1973.
Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Circus. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1957.
Feiler, Bruce. Under the Big Top: A Season with the Circus. New York: Scribner, 1995.
Mannix, Daniel P. Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. San Francisco: V Search Publications, 1950.
McKennon, Joe. Horse Dung Trail: Saga of American Circus. Florida: Carnival Publishers of Sarasota, 1975.
Norwood, Edwin P. The Circus Menagerie. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929.
O’Nan, Stewart. The Circus Fire. New York: Doubleday, 2000.
Sloan, Mark. Hoaxes, Humbugs and Spectacle: Astonishing Photographs of Smelt Wrestlers, Human Projectiles, Giant Hailstones, Contortionists, Elephant Impersonators, and much, much, more! New York: Villard Books, 1995.
Wilkins, Charles. The Circus at the Edge of the Earth: Travels with the Great Wallenda Circus. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Inc., 1998.
Wykes, Alan. Circus: An Investigation into What Makes the Sawdust Fly. London: Jupiter Books, 1977.
And any issue of the fantastic James Taylor’s SHOCKED and AMAZED: On and Off the Midway, which is a high-quality ’zine published by Dolphin-Moon Press and Atomic Books of Baltimore, Maryland. www.atomicbooks.com.
About the Author
AMANDA DAVIS’s previous work includes the story collection Circling the Drain. A talented, insightful, and acclaimed young writer, Ms. Davis died in March 2003. Wonder When You’ll Miss Me was her first novel.
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PRAISE FOR
WONDER WHEN YOU’LL MISS ME
“Amanda Davis writes prose that is precise, elegant, and strong, and she tells a story that is at once harrowing and, strangely, filled with adventure.”
—MICHAEL CHABON, author of Summerland
“Amanda Davis writes gently, even poetically, about extraordinary brutality. She has a distinctively creepy, even noirish, sensibility.”
—New York Times Book Review
“I couldn’t put it down…. I LOVED it. I don’t like anything, either. It’s brilliant, sad, funny, amazing, original, and a complete and utter page-turner.”
—KATE CHRISTENSEN, author of Jeremy Thrane and In the Drink
“[A] wonderful high-wire act.”
—Vanity Fair
“This book is a circus Pygmalion—a spectacular tale of injury, heartbreak, and metamorphosis.”
—JONATHAN AMES, author of The Extra Man
“[An] auspicious debut novel. Davis revitalizes the…circus motif with her tensely lyrical prose and full-bodied characterizations.”
—Publishers Weekly
“At the end of this rich and satisfying novel…I did not want to leave.”
—MICHELLE CHALFOUN, author of Roustabout and The Width of the Sea
“Stunning…. This is an astonishing debut: dark, disturbing, and fiercely openhearted.”
—Booklist
“With a whirl of images, plunges of despair, and leaps of hope, this book is the best sort of literary amusement park ride—a carousel for the senses, and a roller-coaster ride for the heart.”
—JUDY BUDNITZ, author of If I Told You Once and Flying Leap
“The real pleasures of this wise and emotionally resonant novel come…from the authenticity of its voice.”
—Time Out (New York)
“Davis has created a lucid, compelling page-turner that defies categorization. This is a stunning novel and Faith’s story is uncomfortably tragic, brutally honest, and beautifully rendered…. Wonder When You’ll Miss Me is, quite simply, a great novel.”
—Bookreporter.com
Also by the Author
Circling the Drain
Copyright
WONDER WHEN YOU’LL MISS ME. Copyright © 2003 by Amanda Davis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780061854057
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