Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer - Softcover

A mash-up of a meditation on the nature of myth, the magnetic distance between preservation and perseverance, and the sympathetic cravings that undergird pain. In Frank s heart-thumping taxonomy, monstrous behemoths square nicely with butterflies and ice cream. Don t ask me how: read this book! --Mary Cappello, author of Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor who Extracted Them"

In 1874, Moses Harvey eccentric Newfoundland reverend and amateur naturalist was the first person to photograph the near-mythic giant squid, draping it over his shower curtain rod to display its magnitude. In Preparing the Ghost, what begins as Harvey s story becomes spectacularly slippery and many-armed (NewYorker.com) as Matthew Gavin Frank winds his narrative tentacles around history, creative nonfiction, science, memoir, and meditations about the interrelated nature of them all. In his full-hearted, lyrical style, Frank weaves in playful forays about his trip to Harvey s Newfoundland home, his own childhood and family history, and a catalog of peculiar facts that recall Melville s story of obsession with another deep-sea dwelling leviathan. Totally original and haunting (Flavorwire), Preparing the Ghost is a delightfully unpredictable inquiry into the big, beautiful human impulse to obsess."