Peter Mendelsund, author of Exhibitionist and Weepers
When:
Tuesday, Jul 01, 2025 7:00p -
8:00p
Tuesday, Jul 01, 2025 7:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Porter Square Books
1815 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02140
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Art, Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/2025-07-01/peter-mendelsund-author-exhibitionist-and-weepers
Porter Square Books is excited to welcome Peter Mendelsund for his latest two books: Exhibitionist and Weepers.
This event will take place at our CAMBRIDGE store. We offer validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. See parking details below.
RSVP to let us know you're coming and to receive event updates!*
*Please note that you will not receive a confirmation email. However, we will send a reminder email one day before the event. Please check your spam folder if you do not see the pre-event email reminder. Better yet, add [email protected] to your safe sender list to avoid PSB event emails going to spam!
ABOUT EXHIBITIONIST
From acclaimed designer and novelist Peter Mendelsund, a deeply personal reflection on depression and the redemptive power of art, interspersed with 100 original paintings
In the early days of the pandemic, Peter Mendelsund and his family traveled up to a secluded New Hampshire farmhouse to weather the chaos. There began his journey through a crippling and seemingly intractable depression—which differed in degree but not in kind from episodes that have recurred periodically throughout his life—that brought him to the brink of suicide.
Relief came from an unlikely source: painting, something Peter had never contemplated doing before. And yet it became the thing that may very well have saved his life. Bleakly funny, profoundly moving, and—against all odds—truly inspiring, Exhibitionist is not just an account of a mind thinking through its own suffering in real-time, and of the author’s reckoning with his father's tortured legacy; it's also the story of the birth of an artist, and a portrait of an artist at work.
PRAISE FOR EXHIBITIONIST
"With Exhibitionist, Peter Mendelsund paints a vivid and unique portrait of isolation, sometimes with words, sometimes with acrylics, always with warmth." —Sloane Crosley, author of Grief Is for People
"We seldom know what is really going on with people behind the scenes, or the hidden burdens they carry. Mendelsund lifts the curtain in this beautiful, painfully touching chronicle of depression and painting his way through." —Richard McGuire, author of Here
"Exhibitionist is an immersive memoir of depression and art. It is utterly mesmerizing—a work that is at once devastating and hopeful, harrowing and beautiful, revealing and mysterious, yet always searing." —David Epstein, No. 1 bestselling author of Range
ABOUT WEEPERS
A messianic tale about a group of professional mourners—a darkly funny novel of grief, mystery and redemption from the author of The Delivery.
Ed is a weeper. A professional weeper.
He's a card-carrying member of an eccentric union hired to cry at funerals, wakes, services and burials. It’s an odd job, but his services are sorely needed these days, as the town, the region, the country as a whole has become more or less numb. No one is able to summon a shred of human emotion whatsoever. Not anymore. (What’d be the point? The world’s already gone to hell.)
So there’s always work for Ed and his colleagues. But all those cries can wear a man down, and the tears don’t flow quite like they used to, even for a consummate pro like Ed.
Then one morning, a stranger comes to town. A scrawny kid with no belongings, no parents, no name, no past. And at precisely the moment of his arrival, people begin to experience something new. Something strange. An onslaught of unbidden feelings, unfamiliar feelings, too many feelings
A surrealist story of mourning and messiahs, deserts and droughts, cowboys and junkies, miracles and mass hysteria, the lure of despair and the solace of friendship. Peter Mendelsund’s Weepers is a novel for this age: our age of anesthesia and anger.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Mendelsund is the author of seven books, including the novels Weepers, The Delivery, and Same Same and the nonfiction works What We See When We Read, Cover, and The Look of the Book. He is also a renowned cover designer and the creative director of The Atlantic.
PARKING
Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition offers validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. Roseland Street is accessible by Beacon Street and Mass Ave. When you arrive at the lot, use the screen on the kiosk to get a ticket.
When you're ready to leave, ask for a validation barcode at the cash register. (No purchase necessary.) Parking is free on weekends and weekday evenings from 6PM-7AM. From 7AM-6PM on weekdays the first 45 minutes are free.
Upon exiting the lot, scan your ticket and choose "validation." Then scan the barcode your received from us. If you have an additional charge, you will be prompted to pay after scanning your barcode.
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