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Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne Hardcover – September 6, 2022
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Winner of the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Winner of the 2022 Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize
Shortlisted for the 2023 Plutarch Award
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Book of 2022
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Times Literary Supplement, and Literary Hub
From the standout scholar Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite presents a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death.
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing.
He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, a member of Parliament―and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year-old girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children, and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.
In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell embarks on a fleet-footed act of evangelism, showing us the many sides of Donne’s extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words, and his tempestuous Elizabethan times―unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publication dateSeptember 6, 2022
- Dimensions5.75 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100374607400
- ISBN-13978-0374607401
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From the Publisher
Praise for Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Finally a biography of John Donne that captures his eccentricities, his contradictions, his fabulous twists and turns, his trickiness . . . Oxford fellow Katherine Rundell does all of this with an engaging spirit not often seen in academic books . . . A deeply sensitive and clear-eyed reading of Donne’s work and life.”
―Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, The Christian Century
“I had many thoughts while reading Super-Infinite, but the most persistent one was this: there ought to be more books like it . . . Rundell is an excellent storyteller, moving ably between anecdote and analysis and never losing track of her purpose, which is to follow Donne from cradle to grave and convince us to come along.”
―Anahid Nersessian, New York Review of Books
“Katherine Rundell brings us a fresh take on the poems, prose, and protean identities of a 17th-century master of the English language. Super-Infinite is both humble and flashy. Humble because John Donne’s life and work lie on a path well-trodden by scholars; flashy because Rundell is a playful, incandescent stylist who brings scintillating insight to her subject.”
―Bob Duffy, Washington Independent Review of Books
“Katherine Rundell titles her new biography of Donne Super-Infinite. It’s an ingenious way of making his difficulty sound exciting as well as formidable . . . [Rundell] writes with both the knowledge of an expert and the friendly passion of a proselytizer."
―Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker
“One of my favorite reads lately is Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, Katherine Rundell’s dizzyingly fun biography of a poet who lived headlong. Free of charge, it throws in a rollicking snapshot of Elizabethan England.”
―Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune
“Richly absorbing.”
―Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Rundell offers a rich analysis . . . which rises to the challenge of introducing Donne and his world to the next generation of readers”
―James Shapiro, The New York Times
“If you want to experience Donne anew, or if you have never experienced him before, pick up a copy of Super-Infinite. It’s the best book on Donne in years."
―Micah Mattix, Washington Examiner
“Fresh, delightful . . . [Rundell] nimbly captures Donne in all his guises as well as the historical period in which he lived . . . Written with verve and panache, this sparkling biography is enjoyable from start to finish.”
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A wonderful, joyous piece of work . . . with fierce, interrogative intelligence. It is fantastic to have this most elusive and mysterious of men brought out into the light, for all to see.”
―Maggie O’Farrell, author of Hamnet
“[An] important new biography of the greatest metaphysical poet who ever lived (and lived, and lived, and lived…).”
―Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub (most anticipated)
“Katherine Rundell makes Donne come alive as a remarkable and extraordinary and almost boundless human being. His life was one of despair and joy, the sacred and the profane, deep love and pain, and this book is filled with such infectious passion and fascinating detail that it shines like its subject. A triumph.”
―Matt Haig, author of the New York Times-bestselling The Midnight Library
“What a delightful book Super-Infinite is: companionable, astute, intimate in tone and clear-eyed in judgment, it brings Donne and his milieu to glorious life. I loved it.”
―Nick Laird, author of Feel Free
“Beautiful, radical, true. The way Rundell brings Donne and Donne’s poetics to life is a joy, shot through with deep readings, compassion, perspective, wit. Super-Infinite revitalizes what a literary biography can be: an urgent, visionary approach but also endlessly intellectually generous, open-hearted, and bold. It’s alive, and it made me feel more alive, as if clamouring to get closer to Donne, mid-sermon, jostled, trampled and completely okay with that.”
―Luke Kennard, author of Transition
“Crackling with gusto and sympathetic intelligence, Super-Infinite places John Donne fairly and squarely in his own times, while making those times feel contiguous with our own. We meet all his closely-entangled selves - wit, poet, lover, husband, soldier, priest – and all of them are cleverly drawn, creating a portrait in which closely-observed details are ingeniously set against a background of long perspectives.”
―Andrew Motion, author of Essex Clay, former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
“Katherine Rundell’s brave and detailed new biography of John Donne is just the book we need: the life, family, historical background, religious questions and - best of all - the poetry, are imaginatively researched and subtly treated. The result is worthy of its subject - every page sparkles.”
―Claire Tomalin, author of The Young H. G. Wells: Changing the World
“There can be no better companion than Rundell in a bracing pursuit of John Donne. Throughout this sure-footed and eloquent biography, she encourages us to listen attentively to his many voices, and to the voices of those around him.”
―Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of Thomas Cromwell: A Life
“Katherine Rundell has a wonderful touch, light yet profound, which perfectly suits her extraordinary subject. The book combines delight in Donne’s humanity and his intellect, even as it delves into his metaphysics. Unmissable.”
―Simon Jenkins, author of A Short History of London
“This book unravels that knotty, witty, passionate poet John Donne. Completely at home in the middle of this Sacred and Profane Love Machine, Katherine Rundell has produced what is in itself a paradoxical and beautifully crafted work of literature – something much greater than mere critical simple biography.”
―A. N. Wilson, author of The Mystery of Charles Dickens
“What a Super-Infinite delight is this, this is the rich, textured and excellent biography that I have always wanted to read about Donne - it brings the poet, his poetry, his many lives and his turbulent Elizabethan and Stuarts times vividly to life.”
―Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs: 1613-1918
“I was completely absorbed by Super-Infinite, grabbed from the first sentence. Rundell’s erudition helps us understand Donne the thinker, her storytelling genius brings Donne the man to life, in his ‘hat big enough for a cat to sail in’. Vivid, exuberant language pulls this unpredictable, sometimes unreadable man, into our grasp. Her sizzling prose blows away the cobwebs of academia and makes this a deeply satisfying, joyful read.”
―Lucy Jago, author of A Net for Small Fishes
“Super-Infinite is a stylish, scholarly and gripping account of Donne’s ecstatically divided self, ‘hurried by love’ and by man’s ‘inborn sting’: a work super-relevant to our own troubled times.”
―Rose Tremain, winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, author of the Booker-shortlisted Restoration
“Anyone who has been lucky enough to read Rundell’s books (time and again) to their children will be totally unsurprised by this [a] brilliant leap into literary history of a rather more adult flavour. Her skill as a novelist shows us John Donne the man, so real, so eccentric, fizzing with talent, weird as hell; while her attention to detail makes her a historian of the first rank. It is among my proudest boasts, that I was massive Rundell fan before she became a national treasure.”
―Dan Snow, author of On This Day in History
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 6, 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0374607400
- ISBN-13 : 978-0374607401
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #416,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #225 in Renaissance Literary Criticism (Books)
- #1,298 in Literary Criticism & Theory
- #1,899 in Author Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Katherine Rundell is a bestselling writer and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. Her books have sold millions of copies, been translated into 40 languages and have won, among others, the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, the Waterstones Book of the Year, the Costa Children's Book Award, the Andersen Prize in Italy and Le Prix Sorcières in France. She lives mostly in London and a little in Oxford, where she works on research into the Renaissance poet John Donne and occasionally goes climbing on rooftops late at night.
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He was imprisoned, rejected as a suitor, marginalized as writer, and left to flounder in poverty for most of his life. At first his trials and failures offer a glimpse of a soul that wanted to soar above the fray with verse and determination. Later they turn into the acceptance of roles that would shelter him from these realities.
His prose was cutting and his poetry embedded in wanton grief, lust, and rejection; often his goals of riches reveled in his wants and their waylaid status and realization. Inopportune obstacles, empty prospects and feckless deployment of his limited resources and a super charged spirit that had nowhere to go left him stagnant in his state of transient belief in of a super infinite self.
He had to navigate treacherous political times compounded by the demands of a household he was Iill equipped to provide for and the rigors of finding a voice in his writing that would inspire more adulation than contempt. It was the latter challenge that filled him with most misgiving and trepidation. His verse was both his path to success and to damnation.
It was a curious turn from skeptic to believer that secured him the comforts of modest wealth and position that he so labored after. However, these life changing improvements only seemed to lessened his allure and ability to see a positive force as a ballast for himself and his family.
In that journey he never turned out to be someone whose core belief led him to a place where he found true solace, for he seemed at the end of his life as dispirited and distracted by the times around him as he did in his youth.
Katherine Rundell offers a solid accounting of Donne, his life, his talents, and his challenges. Her narrative also offers a good understanding of the times in which he lived that defined so much of who he was and what he was able to accomplish.
It’s appropriate then that his life would be so enigmatic; an ordinary life would not need such attention to detail. Given the distance of some four centuries, Rundell does a superlative job of tracing the oddities of Donne’s life: born to a Roman Catholic family with its share of martyrs, he converted to Anglicanism, became a courtier, eloped, failed at diplomacy, begged money from his friends, only to finally rise to a position of wealth and stature as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
It’s his poetry that he is, of course, most remembered for and some readers may be disappointed that Rundell does little to illuminate it. But the book is all about a new generation discovering the fascinating and enigmatic Donne. After all, whole libraries can be filled with criticism of his verse.
Having a flair for the poignant phrase herself, Rundell’s Super-Infinite is an excellent way to get acquainted with his life and times. I highly recommended it, particularly to the young, who only know of such somber lines as, “for whom the bell tolls”. A super-infinite universe awaits.
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2023
Top reviews from other countries
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Anyway, I took a chance and bought and read it. In an hour or two. It is very short (as another review pointed out, the font is way overlarge, so the less than 300 pages of actual text don’t really add up to much). It is easy and quick to read – because it seems to be aimed at trendy illiterates who would never normally read a line of Donne (and probably won’t outside the few easily digested chunks quoted in this).
It is NOT by my definition a biography at all. It is a very oh-so-modern and trendy exercise in pseudo belles-lettres, akin to a quick skim through the internet to find a few quotes and then impress all your (virtual) friends by how “well read” you are. Essentially this book is more about the writer herself than John Donne.
The skimpy details of Donne’s actual life to be found herein are outbalanced by the utterly annoying prose style of the writer – apparently “famous” for writing lots of children’s books, which is hardly a credential for writing a biography of one of the most famous (and difficult) English poets.
The attempts from the writer to use striking and trendy language might find favour in the internet generation but to me they are simply jarring :
Donne “wore a hat big enough to sail a cat in”; “his beauty deserved walk-on music, rock-and-roll lute”; “illness is a clarifying marinade”; “His poetry sliced through the gender binary and left it gasping on the floor”; “In the twenty-first century, Donne’s imagination offers us a form of body armour”; "a love poem you would eat your own heart for"; “reporting from the front line of the grave”; “a beard that looks like he cut it with a rusty ice skate” etc. etc. etc. Gosh how cool and modern, eh?
And the author’s paraphrasing of one of Donne’s remarks in a letter as “let him f*ck off and die” is really and wantonly playing for the groundlings and is NOT something I would expect.
Then we have such gems as:
“He took his galvanising imagination and brought it to bear on everything he wrote” – presumably including his laundry lists?
“with his fine blue eyes and aquiline nose, Wotton was to prove a true ally.” Err….
“Careful sobriety is dangerous, but surrealism, ribaldry, insouciance – these have a defence mechanism built in” – really?
“Donne was born into a moment in which sex was comedy and scandal, sacrosanct and commonplace” – as opposed to any other time in human history (including today)?
Her platitudes, too, are irking:
“He wrote a poem not to explain [a thing] ,but to capture it.” As no other poet ever has done, I presume.
“His poetry will not hold still. It tussles and shifts, they way desire does.” And come to that, the way language does (odd that, isn’t it?).
“He is sharp, funny, mean, flippant and deadly serious” – like, I think, by turn, everyone I have ever met in my long life
“There is no such thing as safety, while you are alive.” Gee, thanks for letting me know that.
“his death came daily closer” – wow, a first for any mortal I’m sure.
There are a few redeeming moments - the very brief section on Essex for example, or the paragraph-long asides on e.g. fashions, medicine, make-up, the plague – but these are very small consolations: all in all it is an exercise in Katherine Rundell’s writing, rather than in any way a biography or biographical study of John Donne. As another reviewer wrote (and I am glad for once I am not in a minority of one with my opinions!) : “academically it adds nothing to our understanding of Donne and it promotes him in an overblown and distorted manner”. Which sums it all up nicely.