Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy Book

Winner of the National Book Award, Transcendental Studies is a triptych of unrelentingly fragmentary thought. The sense of assembly informs the collection deeply: the three sections span twenty years, and their juxtaposition here could be seen as an act of forced contiguity (though prolificacy has placed many works between the three here). Individually, the builtness of each book within this book is immediate. The first, "Shipwreck in Haven," salvages and reconstitutes a vesseled consciousness, beginning with flotsam and ending with something seafaring, if not more resembling a lucid ghost ship. The most "familiar-looking" book, "Falling in Love with a Description," confronts most directly familiar-looking concerns: passage of time, dissatisfaction with complacency and excess, poetics. In Leeway, Waldrop says that he "would like to discuss / many things." In order to do so, he commands: "Picture this emptiness." Much of Waldrop's task is clearing away old structures and features and terraforming to his specs. The third section, "Plummet of Vetruvius," inhabits an anachronistic space where concepts of engineering butt up against the desire to absolve dictates of space Often, Waldrop's multiplexity of form realizes this, (but in an odd way, encourages "construction") and "Vetruvius" is no exception to this variation. Waldrop concludes the collection with his most introspective stretch, "Stone Angels." The pall issued by both signification of monument and the senselessness of legacy hangs. In toto, this is a gratifying read, and, in line with the Listz compositions which share this book's namesake, a virtuosic challenge and assertive reconfiguration of the self.