{"title":"Autofocus Books","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"failure-is-the-only-subject","title":"Failure Is the Only Subject","description":"A SEARING EXPLORATION OF FAILURE—PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL—THROUGH THE LENS OF DOCUMENTARY FILM AND THE PRISM OF SELF \/\/ In Failure Is the Only Subject, we encounter David Shields—memoirist, novelist, and filmmaker—undergoing psychoanalysis in the aftermath of divorce and in the throes of an addictive new relationship. Struggling to piece his life back together, Shields watches (and rewatches) documentaries about human disappointment by such groundbreaking directors as Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Kitty Green, Adam Curtis, and Michael Winterbottom. \/\/ Contemplating the filmmakers' choices, Shields asks painful questions about his life, any life, life itself. What happens when the mask falls off and we come face-to-face with the abyss within? Is there a way to bear such harrowing knowledge—about ourselves and the world? Renowned for his discomfiting candor, Shields is at his best here: unsparing in his scrutiny.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510242976117,"sku":"9781957392424","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781957392424.jpg?v=1787130581"},{"product_id":"the-father-of-the-man","title":"The Father of the Man","description":"On a hot August day, Beowulf Sheehan and his assistant Chika arrive at the Santa Fe Institute to meet and photograph Cormac McCarthy, writer of masterpieces such as Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, auteur of the Southern Gothic, and figure renowned for avoiding the public eye. Their day together takes them from the light of Santa Fe to the shadows of Cormac's home, exploring his art and life as they go, making what would become Cormac's author portrait for his novels The Passenger and Stella Maris and, less than one year after they are published, the image used to announce the global news of his passing. \u003ci\u003eThe Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy\u003c\/i\u003e is a recounting of that great day, a photo essay (including many pictures published for the first time), an homage to Cormac and his art, and a reflection of Cormac's work to serve as a lens through which Beowulf Sheehan better sees, understands, and loves his own father.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510244417909,"sku":"9781957392493","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781957392493.jpg?v=1787130583"},{"product_id":"disenchanted","title":"Disenchanted","description":"How your expectations are shattered is as formative as the truth that replaces them. \/\/ In the essays of Disenchanted, Kaycie Hall catalogues the most acute shocks of disillusionment to reclaim the complexity and depth of her experiences – a stake for identity and sense-making that has found new urgency in motherhood. From boyfriends who hid heroin addictions to a buried rivalry in friendship, from miscarriage to antidepressant withdrawal, Kaycie is prompted to revisit her own poisoned fantasies. With hard-won wisdom and resolute vulnerability, she overcomes the fierce maternal urge to protect her son from the inevitable pains of life, because it is in these heartbreaks and blunders that one becomes a person.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510245269877,"sku":"9781957392509","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781957392509.jpg?v=1787130583"},{"product_id":"what-a-house-can-hold","title":"What a House Can Hold","description":"\"Writers only know how to begin,\" Laura Childs Gill declares in one of her many attempts to trace the origin of the desires that upended her comfortable life. Did it begin when she asked B. to get a beer? Or was the impulse inherited along her paternal side, a lineage of writers who'd also fallen in love outside of marriage – who'd also always been leaving? \/\/ In What a House Can Hold, Gill's meditative essays take form around her inability to neatly narrativize her domestic and creative crises. Visiting the houses of Dickinson, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, driving through the Florida Keys with her father, the Mojave Desert with her mother, and the American South alone, Gill searches for answers to her questions about how one leaves, and builds, a home. At once about the loss of a previous self and the acceptance of a new one, What a House Can Hold contends with, and exemplifies, what happens when the structures designed to contain us – marriages, homes, habits, self-mythologies – no longer can.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510246089077,"sku":"9781957392516","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781957392516.jpg?v=1787130584"},{"product_id":"muscle-memory","title":"Muscle Memory","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57695205556597,"sku":"9781957392530","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781957392530.jpg?v=1793031930"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/publisher-autofocus-books.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}