Double Indemnities

In Double Indemnities David Lazar engages in epistolary conversation with three writers--Piper Daniels, Joanna Eleftheriou, and Heather Frise--in an effort to see how different kinds of dialogue can bring us closer to ourselves and our missions. At times fiercely confessional, at other times poetic and suggestive, Lazar and his collaborators attempt to draw closer to the sore spots of self, the nature of expression in nonfiction forms, and the jolts, pains, and ecstasies that move us to express our fears, desires, and regrets. Ecstasy, yes, because to experience the self intensely demands that one also transcend the self, one way or another. Lazar and Daniels, Eleftheriou, and Frise fracture some forms and go deep inside the tradition of others: epistle, essay, prose poem. To get as close as they can to what haunts them, all four writers wander to the edges of form and look at their preoccupations and their pasts.