The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Cente..., David Searcy
The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Cente..., David Searcy
3 Rating(s)
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The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Center of the World

Author: David Searcy

Narrator: David Searcy

Unabridged: 6 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/20/2021


Synopsis

An ethereal meditation on longing, loss, and time, sweeping from the highways of Texas to the canals of Mars—by the acclaimed essayist and author of Shame and Wonder 

David Searcy’s writing is enchanting and peculiar, obsessed with plumbing the mysteries and wonders of our everyday world, the beauty and cruelty of time, and nothing less than what he calls “the whole idea of meaning.” In The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Center of the World, he leads the reader across the landscapes of his extraordinary mind, moving from the decaying architectural wonder that is the town of Arcosanti, Arizona, to driving the vast, open Texas highway in his much-abused college VW Beetle, to the mysterious, canal-riddled Martian landscape that famed astronomer Percival Lowell first set eyes on, via his telescope, in 1894. Searcy does not come at his ideas directly, but rather digresses and meditates and analyzes until some essential truth has been illuminated—and it is in that journey that the beauty is found.

About The Author

David Searcy is the author of Shame and Wonder, Ordinary Horror, and Last Things, and the recipient of a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Dallas and Corsicana, Texas.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Krista on May 10, 2021

She points. A tiny bee floats in that empty, ruined space. It’s absolutely still. It holds that space in place the way some hovering insects do as if obedient to, in reference to, some universal center. I can’t see it in my camera. “Higher, up, up, get it please.” She wants that bee. She’s almost......more

Goodreads review by Bill on November 08, 2024

I'm a dedicated admirer of David Searcy's two horror novels, ORDINARY HORROR and LAST THINGS. Searcy also writes nonfiction and this is a short meditation on space, loss, desert arcologies, and much more. While far from horror or fantasy, it includes topical hooks like John Dee’s scrying glass, Lowe......more

Goodreads review by Dan on July 10, 2021

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Random House Publishing Group-Random House for an advanced copy of this collection of essays. This is my first time reading a collection by David Searcy which is good because The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Center of the World might be my new favorite collecti......more

Goodreads review by Holden on February 10, 2024

Searcy brings a series of dense “meditations” to the reader while describing several instances of his telescopic experiences. I had no clue what this book was going to be about, other than a memoir in the perspective of someone who lived in the moment. It really isn’t “about” anything in particular,......more

Goodreads review by Peyton on February 12, 2024

I don’t wanna say this is a bad book I just think it wasn’t for me. Most of the time I was very lost and didn’t care to go back and try to understand what I had just read. I do wanna try to read this again tho......more


Quotes

Praise for David Searcy

“Searcy is drawn instinctively to moments, the way parcels of time expand and contract in memory, conjuring from ordinary experience a hidden sense of all that is extraordinary in the world, in being alive.”The New York Times Book Review 

“Everywhere, David Searcy finds the strange and marvelous in careful examination of the quotidian.”—NPR 

“Once you step inside David Searcy’s sentences, you will not want to leave: artful, Sebald-like, they are as far-reaching as the telescope he hauled out one autumn night in Texas when he showed me the moon. . . . If you have a soul, you will love this book and Searcy’s writing.”LitHub 

“Searcy probes moments that pulse with secret electricity. . . . I will keep thinking about the inquisitive intelligence of this book for the rest of my life.”—Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams