Praise For…
“Pagel is an investigative reporter carefully picking her way through the seemingly random and yet intricately related igneous rocks that form the spiral jetty of her mind. What does it mean for a woman to be “lost in thought,” doing “nothing,” and how does she find her way? By carefully piecing together the connections between the art, psychical events, and people that have led her to the place of writing. Pagel’s prose is a marvel. I stayed up late into the night reading this book, all too willing to be lost in (her, my) thought.”
—Barbara Browning, author of
The Gift “I appreciate
Out Of Nowhere Into Nothing for how gently and generously it cares for the flawed and faulty machine of memory. Pagel is a thoughtful and skilled storyteller, weaving together narratives in a way that centers itself on trust and reliability. Reading this book was like hearing from an old friend, and having all of your favorite recollections painted back in.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest“Out of Nowhere Into Nothing is a radical retelling of loneliness. With the ribbonlike precision of Woolf and Sebald, Pagel writes like ‘a ghost in the company of ghosts.’ Each essay reads not like a honeycomb, but like a ghostcomb. Each essay is shaped like a mass of hexagonal cells that contains the uncontainable: inside jokes, hallucinations, grief, love, art, nothingness, and the swell of being. I love Pagel’s poet brain. ‘Here,’ writes Pagel, ‘there were flowers growing through tree stumps.’ She reminds us of what we cannot afford to miss or forget or never know.”
—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of
Wild Milk “Oh, what to make of this book! The words gush out like an open fire hydrant. Coincidences, strange occurrences, stories, historical events: Caryl Pagel, in her book,
Out Of Nowhere Into Nothing, links them all together into a seamless world of wonder. Her prose is dense, full of elliptical clauses and turns of phrase.”
—
The Teacher’s View