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A Stone for Plot Four
A Stone for Plot Four

A Stone for Plot Four

Or Mendez, a Quest

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY

120 Pages, 5.5 x 8.5

Trade Paper, $15.95 (US $15.95) (CA $18.95)

Publication Date: October 2015

ISBN 9781609402815

Rights: WOR

Wings Press (Oct 2015)

Sorry, this item is temporarily out of stock
 

Overview

Over sixty years ago, poet, playwright, and critic John Igo stumbled upon a curious reference to a vanished local literary legend. A brilliant former student at a San Antonio community college, forgotten by none who met him, had gone on to the famed Black Mountain College in the 1930s, and achieved his dream of becoming a staff writer for The New Yorker. And then he vanished. Coincidence and curiosity morphed into an obsession for Igo: Who was Mendez Marks? Why did he die so young, at the height of his swift carreer? A strange history of family secrets, including madness and suicide, emerged along the way. Igo calls his memoir of his sixty-year pursuit of Marks “a verbal example of a contained-space sculpture.” It is a biography wrapped in a memoir wrapped in a psychological case study of a brilliant, original soul.

Reviews

"This is a book of obsessions: those of the brilliant and troubled New Yorker writer Mendez Marks and those of John Igo as he spends years honing in on Marks’s difficult life. Much of that life remains unsolvable mystery, but the real obsessions Marks and Igo share, without ever having met, are crucial and make us human: language, reading, and writing. We are all enriched." —Rosemary Catacalos, author of Again for the First Time; 2013 Poet Laureate of Texas


"If there is a more haunting tale about a San Antonian—or any gifted youth—I don’t know what it is. John Igo has researched and labored for decades to create a lively, generously thorough homage to the interrupted story of the luminous Mendez Marks. Here is a testament to creativity, and to the mysteries and delicacies of the human mind—a deeply caring tribute for an original soul." —Naomi Shihab Nye, author of The Turtle of Oman; Chancellor, Academy of American Poets


"A richly detailed and entertaining profile of a young man who had little patience for pretentiousness, a highly observant eye, an empathetic heart capable of projecting itself far and wide into the human condition, and a style and wit comparable to that of H.L. Mencken." —Ed Conroy, San Antonio Express-News

Author Biography

John Igo is a San Antonio educator, writer, artist, photographer, producer, and critic. Igo has published twelve books of poetry, including The Third Temptation of St. John (National Society of Arts and Letters National Award), God of Gardens (Southwest Writers Conference Publication Award), Alien, Bozzetti and The Mitotes of John Igo. In addition, he has authored several books of prose—including On Poetry and Poetics—and several plays. In 1985, Igo received an Emmy for his script, “Our Children: the Next Generation.”