Sympathy of Souls
Essays by Albert Goldbarth

"Goldbarth’s prodigious output is matched only by his erudition. He seems to have read and ingested centuries of history, biology, religion. At home in a dozen different masks, he is witty, irreverent, and full of forgiveness for our human condition." - Maxine Kumin

"[Goldbarth] displays a sprawling, crazy-quilt erudition - in science and myth, history and archeology - and cultivates luxuriant sexual and scatological obsessions. One hesitates to call anything but Rabelais ‘Rabelaisian,’ but when Goldbarth is in full tilt the adjective seems apt . . . a terrific performance." - Peter Schjeldahl, The New York Times

In A Sympathy of Souls, celebrated essayist and poet Albert Goldbarth brilliantly orchestrates an exciting discourse over barriers of time, place, and genre. Goldbarth splices together Jewish history, the history of physics, art history, mythology, and layman’s anthropology with a writing style that combines elements of the literary memoir, the short story, the research essay, and the prose poem. What results is a heady, expansive mix which fuses the ideas and figures of this age and past ages with one man’s life. In these essays, images of the shtetl, Marie Curie’s laboratory, 1950s toy stores, and Leonardo da Vinci’s studio seamlessly merge, demonstrating that the lives and ideas of "souls in sympathy" resonate one off of the other.

Witty, learned, and a lover of language, Albert Goldbarth has been included in The Best American Essays, and his book of poetry Jan. 31 was nominated for a National Book Award. Author of several books including Arts & Sciences and Comings Back, his writings have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. He teaches at Wichita State University.

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