Slow Learner: Essays by Jan Shoemaker
"If I can’t have Jan Shoemaker living next door, and I have accepted that cruel fact, at least I can read every word of Slow Learner from cover to cover and then read it again. The only other insurmountable problem is that I wish I had written it."
--Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It
"Slow Learner is like a walk through the woods with your smartest, funniest, most observant friend—in the excellent company of at least two dogs. Afterward? Wine by the fire. And all the cheese."
--Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays
"What I admire about Slow Learner by Jan Shoemaker is the entire package: her range, her seemingly effortless eye for literary effects, and her complete control of tone. By range I mean she can go from meringue to mystery in a phrase and by literary effects I mean she successfully pulls off more surprises in a paragraph than most writers do in an entire essay. As for tone, she moves assuredly from ridicule to reverence and back, hitting all the emotions in between in every single essay. I laughed all the way through this heartbreaking book. In her view we live in a miracle and are committing a tragedy. No one has said that with more grace, honesty, and generosity of spirit than Jan Shoemaker."
--Steven Harvey, author of The Beloved Republic
“'Where, if anywhere, does nature leave off and the human mind begin?' Jan Shoemaker asks in these provocative, delightful, and eloquent essays. Again and again, Shoemaker braids whimsy and solemnity, inviting readers to eavesdrop not only on her thinking but on the rich and ordinary days that form a life. Here are essays on teaching, traveling, democracy, illness, and grace; and here are essays on pastries, microscopes, seed pods, ferns, skunk cabbage, the Periodic Table, Roman baths, and what is visible and what is not. Slow Learner is a wise and beautifully written reminder of how we find our way in the dark and what it means to live as a learner. I am reawakened to the powerful ways observation and curiosity can serve us. Read this all at once or savor it all year. Pleasure awaits."
--Cindy Hunter Morgan, author of Harborless and Far Company
--Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It
"Slow Learner is like a walk through the woods with your smartest, funniest, most observant friend—in the excellent company of at least two dogs. Afterward? Wine by the fire. And all the cheese."
--Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays
"What I admire about Slow Learner by Jan Shoemaker is the entire package: her range, her seemingly effortless eye for literary effects, and her complete control of tone. By range I mean she can go from meringue to mystery in a phrase and by literary effects I mean she successfully pulls off more surprises in a paragraph than most writers do in an entire essay. As for tone, she moves assuredly from ridicule to reverence and back, hitting all the emotions in between in every single essay. I laughed all the way through this heartbreaking book. In her view we live in a miracle and are committing a tragedy. No one has said that with more grace, honesty, and generosity of spirit than Jan Shoemaker."
--Steven Harvey, author of The Beloved Republic
“'Where, if anywhere, does nature leave off and the human mind begin?' Jan Shoemaker asks in these provocative, delightful, and eloquent essays. Again and again, Shoemaker braids whimsy and solemnity, inviting readers to eavesdrop not only on her thinking but on the rich and ordinary days that form a life. Here are essays on teaching, traveling, democracy, illness, and grace; and here are essays on pastries, microscopes, seed pods, ferns, skunk cabbage, the Periodic Table, Roman baths, and what is visible and what is not. Slow Learner is a wise and beautifully written reminder of how we find our way in the dark and what it means to live as a learner. I am reawakened to the powerful ways observation and curiosity can serve us. Read this all at once or savor it all year. Pleasure awaits."
--Cindy Hunter Morgan, author of Harborless and Far Company
Order Slow Learner
Jan Shoemaker is an essayist and poet. She is the author of the essay collection, Flesh and Stones: Field Notes from a Finite World, and the poetry collection, The Reliquary Earth. A recipient of the Greater Lansing United Nation Association’s Loy LaSalle Award for Outstanding Contributions to Global Education and International Understanding, she was also awarded Confrontation Magazine's Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured on public radio, anthologized, and published in many magazines and journals. She lives in Michigan.
janshoemaker.com
janshoemaker.com