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And Then I Am Gone
And Then I Am Gone: A Walk with Thoreau tells the story of a New York City man who becomes an Alabama man. Despite his radical migration to simpler living and a late-life marriage to a saint of sorts, his persistent pet anxieties and unanswerable questions follow him. Mathias Freese wants his retreat from the societal "it" to be a brave safari for the self rather than cowardly avoidance, so who better to guide him but Henry David Thoreau, the self-aware philosopher who retreated to Walden Pond "to live deliberately" and cease "the hurry and waste of life"? In this memoir, Freese wishes to share how and why he came to Harvest, Alabama (both literally and figuratively), to impart his existential impressions and concerns, and to leave his mark before he is gone.
In the Throes
In the Throes explores the awakening of intelligence and the coming into awareness of an evolutionary mishap on a forbidding apocalyptic planet. The story follows eponymic Gruff, the first linguistic/metaphysical awakener of his species, as he navigates identity, mentation, and ontology in relation to the Gruff's natural prey: humankind. Combining the writings of Freud and the spiritual truths of Krishnamurti, author Mathias B. Freese depicts the Gruff as an evolutionary dark creature—disfigured, maimed, instinct-driven, and grotesque—until he attains self-awareness and transforms into a self of artistic expression and wisdom. As the title suggests, the reader identifies with self-struggle as it surges toward awakening and is moved by the apotheosis that closes the book. The nuanced theme: each one of us is an artist if only we take our selves in hand and construct a life of artistic expression. The closing chapters sing to us of Isak Dinesen's observation that an artist is never poor. A metaphor of the evolutionary self, In the Throes is a time-processed journey into awareness—our destiny as a species.
The i Tetralogy
The i Tetralogy--i, I Am Gunther, Gunther's Lament, Gunther Redux--is the gut-wrenching epic depiction of the dehumanization of man through an incisive observation of three pivotal characters. Each of them, victim, perpetrator, and murderer's son, is inextricably linked by the varying dimensions of their moral nature. Assaying the monumental impact of the Holocaust, this species-shattering event, the tetralogy elucidates a truth about humanity: the Holocaust has forever defined the species as indelibly damaged, capable on a molecular level of killing and consuming its own. The reader experiences this unvarnished--perhaps axiomatic--truth about humanity, which no revisionist can deny. The reader also ponders the risk in forgetting, in sanitizing, in "sweetening" the Holocaust.
Again. Again and Again.
Having once been a psychotherapist who's never hesitated to turn the therapeutical gun barrel toward himself, Mathias B. Freese ramps up his radical reflexivity in this latest work, from confessional first-person narration to third-person "stories" starring "characters" named Matt. (This genre could be called meta-Matt.) "I write to know perhaps something about who I am," Freese writes. "I write to arrive at some awareness, however dim, about self or other, for when I have that fleeting moment of awareness, I feel at one -- true." Truly, Again. Again and Again. is a song of himself. Rocker Billy Idol proves to be an unlikely but apt echoer here: "When there's nothing to lose and there's noth...
Nina's Memento Mori
Near the end of Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert makes an honest admission: "[A]nd it struck me...that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind." That line sums up the isolate game of memorializing a deceased loved one, which is the basic tension in Nina's Memento Mori, an elegy to Mathias Freese's lost wife. The profound responsibility of answering the question "Who was Nina?" is left to the lone memoirist: I can say or write anything I want about her...There is much writerly power in that. I am the executor of her probate in all things now. She is mine now in ways she could not be when alive. I am the steward of her memory. Freese ends up analyzing himself, putting the "me" in "memento" and the "i" in "mori," thanks to ever-giving Nina posthumously providing a therapeutic mirror or "Rosebud," which Freese appropriates from Citizen Kane. But Freese mourns more over the burden of existence than over its loss. Appropriately, for Kane is not about the symbolic sled as much as it's about the cumulative snow that buries it.
Tesserae
"Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers stands above much of the crowd in its commitment to ask, 'What is it to remember?' Mathias B. Freese, tenderly plaiting a web that spreads from Woodstock, Las Vegas, Long Island, and North Carolina, locates friends and family, lovers long since gone, desire and passion sometimes quenched sometimes unrequited, and the harrowing agony that comes from that most soul-crushing word of all, regret. But Tesserae is not a work of sadness and grief. Rather, it is an effort from a trained psychotherapist adept at understanding the feelings that we all have. The quiescence found has a staying effect upon the mind; this memoir lingers in the reader's memory for some time." -- Steven Berndt, Professor of American Literature, College of Southern Nevada
Down to a Sunless Sea
Down to a Sunless Sea plunges the reader into uncomfortable situations and into the minds of troubled characters. Each selection is a different reading experience-poetic, journalistic, nostalgic, wryly humorous, and even macabre. An award-winning essayist and historical novelist, Mathias B. Freese brings the weight of his twenty-five years as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist into play as he demonstrates a vivid understanding of-and compassion toward-the deviant and damaged.
I Truly Lament
"Freese says that 'memory must metabolize the Holocaust] endlessly, ' and his book certainly turns hell into harsh nourishment: keeps us alert, sharpens our nerves and outrage, forbids complacent sleep so the historical horror can't be glossed over as mere nightmare. The Holocaust wasn't a dream or even a madness. It was a lucid, non-anomalous act that is ever-present in rational Man. In the face of this fact Freese never pulls punches. Rather, his deft, brutal, and insightful words punch and punch until dreams' respite are no longer an option and insanity isn't an excuse." --David Herrle, Author of "Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy" ..". Freese's haunting lament might best be explained ...
Nina's Memento Mori
Near the end of Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert makes an honest admission: "[A]nd it struck me…that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind." That line sums up the isolate game of memorializing a deceased loved one, which is the basic tension in Nina's Memento Mori, an elegy to Mathias Freese's lost wife. The profound responsibility of answering the question "Who was Nina?" is left to the lone memoirist: I can say or write anything I want about her…There is much writerly power in that. I am the executor of her probate in all things now. She is mine now in ways she could not be when alive. I am the steward of her memory. Freese ends up analyzing himself, putting the "me" in "memento" and the "i" in "mori," thanks to ever-giving Nina posthumously providing a therapeutic mirror or "Rosebud," which Freese appropriates from Citizen Kane. But Freese mourns more over the burden of existence than over its loss. Appropriately, for Kane is not about the symbolic sled as much as it's about the cumulative snow that buries it.
