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Impossible Owls
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
9 posts | 8 read | 10 to read
A globe-spanning, ambitious book of essays from one of the most enthralling storytellers in narrative nonfiction In his highly anticipated debut essay collection, Impossible Owls, Brian Phillips demonstrates why he’s one of the most iconoclastic journalists of the digital age, beloved for his ambitious, off-kilter, meticulously reported essays that read like novels. The eight essays assembled here—five from Phillips’s Grantland and MTV days, and three new pieces—go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world’s most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular oddities (though they do that, too). Researched for months and even years on end, they explore the interconnectedness of the globalized world, the consequences of history, the power of myth, and the ways people attempt to find meaning. He searches for tigers in India, and uncovers a multigenerational mystery involving an oil tycoon and his niece turned stepdaughter turned wife in the Oklahoma town where he grew up. Through each adventure, Phillips’s remarkable voice becomes a character itself—full of verve, rich with offhanded humor, and revealing unexpected vulnerability. Dogged, self-aware, and radiating a contagious enthusiasm for his subjects, Phillips is an exhilarating guide to the confusion and wonder of the world today. If John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead was the last great collection of New Journalism from the print era, Impossible Owls is the first of the digital age.
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Chiperskee
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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The kind of guy you want to have a beer with. Great story telling and full of interesting nuggets too.

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AlizaApp
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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Essays by one of my fave Grantland writers (RIP Grantland). The one on the Iditarod was strange and beautiful with writing so good that I kept having to put it down and walk away just to think about it.

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JLaurenceCohen
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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Brian Phillips is a terrific, eccentric, and insightful essayist.

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shutupsmalls
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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If you asked me for a list of everything I'm looking for in a work of nonfiction, I would...not be able to answer you, nor would I be at all interested in the question, but Impossible Owls ticked every single one of those boxes I can't be bothered to even think up. I really loved this one.

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shutupsmalls
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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An eloquent and vicious dunk

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AMVP
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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A fantastic essay collection. While certain selections stand out, there's not a dude in the bunch, and Phillips makes each of his subjects feel accessible and exciting.

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AMVP
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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#criterion #adaptation

Was pleasantly surprised to find one of Brian Phillips' essays to be, in part, about Mishima (the man, not the movie). Had the pleasure of seeing this film in Atlanta with a preamble by it's composer, Philip Glass.

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AMVP
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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#riotgrams #day13

My new #favoritebookcover might just be this one. The copy on the back pitches the collection as a successor of sorts to the publisher's earlier Pulp-Head, which can only bode well.

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andytbarnes
Impossible Owls: Essays | Brian Phillips
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I have been on a pretty big essay kick here lately. My verrrry part time job is near completely mindless which lends itself well to reading about more standout individuals and experiences. Phillips writes with real humor, humanity, verve, or insert whatever praise word you‘d like. My fav essays tackled things I thought I could care less about prior like sumo wrestling, seeing Wrath of the Titans alone in a theater loopy on pills, and the Iditarod.

andytbarnes Also reading this or any other work from ex-Grantlanders sure makes me miss that website. 7y
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