Selections (from To Arcadia)

Logan Zelk, a senior studying Philosophy at Yale University, is a prolific writer for an undergraduate, having written two books and submitted several poems for publication. This text is comprised of edited selections from his second book, To Arcadia, first published in May 2018 with funding from Yale’s University CPA Grant, though he has been given the freedom to add or redact material from the first edition as he pleases. To Arcadia is, in brief, a decadent medley of aphorisms, short stories, and poems, spanning a wide range of themes and subject matter, though inter-connected by the idea of death through the corruption of memory — what one could call “the death we live.” Logan printed 100 copies of To Arcadia and distributed them among family, friends, and, so he tells me, “charming strangers.” 80 magazine-size pages each, it is unlikely that the majority of the total 8,000 printed pages have been read. Moreover, the lack of page numbers makes the work difficult to reference. Selections is intended to be a more easily completed and referenceable text, containing, what is in my humble opinion, the worthiest excerpts from To Arcadia. Ideally, Selections would be distributed among the original recipients of To Arcadia, although the audience could very well extend to many more charming strangers. 

I hope that, in producing Selections, I may honor the note inscribed in his copy of To Arcadia: “Here’s the proof of friendship — feel free to bemusedly scoff.”

(I do not include the entire transcription in this exhibit.)