{"product_id":"book-e5tn","title":"Excuse Me While I Disappear","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom a Pulitzer Prize finalist and \"greatly gifted and highly original artist\" comes a masterful collection of stories about the timeless universal struggle to connect (\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoanna Scott, the critically acclaimed author of ten novels and two collections, turns her “incandescent imagination” (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e) back to the craft of the short story, with breathtaking results. Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Venice in the Late Middle Ages, a painter's apprentice finds a way to make his mark on canvases that will survive for centuries. In the near future, after the literary canon has been preserved only on the cloud and then lost, a scholar tries to piece together a little-known school of writers committed to using actual paper. In present day New England, a radio host invites his electrician to stay for dinner, opening up new narrative possibilities for both men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten in prose so naturally elegant, smooth, and precise that it becomes invisible, \u003ci\u003eExcuse Me While I Disappear\u003c\/i\u003e asks what remains of our stories—as individuals and civilizations—after we are gone.","brand":"Hachette Book Group","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49348826005808,"sku":"BDe5tn","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/164134-e5tn-Square.jpg?v=1734235308","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-e5tn","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}