Salem Books
Fish Out of Water
A search for the meaning of life
Eric Metaxas
“Riveting...A Profoundly moving memoir”
“Reminiscent of St. Augustine’s ‘Confessions’.”
“One of our nation’s most brilliant and morally serious public intellectuals.”
“Metaxas is a major writer. Not to be missed.”
What happens when one of America’s most admired biographers writes his own biography? For five-times New York Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas (Bonhoeffer), the answer is Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life - a soaring, lyrical, and often mischievous account of his early years in which the astute Queens-born son of Greek and German immigrants struggles to make a sense of a world in which he never quite seems to fit.
While millions know Metaxas as a celebrated author, the witty host of Socrates in the City, and a nationally syndicated radio personality, here he reveals an astounding personal story few have known. The offspring of two families with disparate traditions, their affection carried him through myriad childhood adventures and a riotous education at Yale. But as a young writer, Metaxas drifts toward an abyss of meaninglessness—one from which he barely escapes. Along the way, Metaxas introduces us to an unforgettable troupe of Runyonesque characters who join this quintessentially first-generation American boy on his odyssey, underscoring how simultaneously funny, serious, happy, sad, and meaningful life can be.
“This memoir of one of our best writer’s coming of age is a beautiful thing: deeply intelligent, spiritually acute, and laugh-out-loud funny.”
〰️ OFFICIAL BOOK PlaylisT 〰️
Eric Metaxas infused Fish Out of Water with a cornucopia of references to music. From Ki Ypermaho Stratego, the song he sang with his father when he was six, and they sometimes still sing today in their car rides together, to the indelible ethnic-American popular hits of his Queens, New York and Danbury, Connecticut youth, to the classical music references that underscore Metaxas and his Mother’s return to East Germany, Fish Out of Water overflows with musical context. About Ki Ypermaho Stratego, Metaxas writes:
“It is a prayer from the Greeks to the Virgin Mary (the Theotokos), asking her to deliver them from the the Ottoman Turks, who were besieging Constantinople in 1453. - Eric Metaxas”
So it is only fitting that Metaxas is memorializing the publication of Fish Out of Water by releasing his own, accompanying, hand-curated Playlist. At once epic, wistful, and hilarious, it is nothing less than the soundtrack to the first half of a heroic and acclaimed, first-generation American odyssey.
Login to Spotify (free) and listen to the
Official Playlist for Fish Out of Water.
preview
“The acclaimed biographer turns to memoir. In a narrative reminiscent of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Metaxas delivers a warts-and-all exploration of his youth—including discussions of elements of his early life on which he looks back with regret—in order to explain how his faith altered his trajectory. Like Augustine, Metaxas recounts his mostly secular intellectual development, which created a foundation for his later spiritual conversion and nourishment. Whereas Augustine stole pears from a tree because his friends were doing it, Metaxas ostracized another boy in his class because of a desire to fit in. “I think I would do almost anything to go back there now to try to undo what I did,” he writes, “to befriend him or show him some love or kindness.” ”
“Writing is an art form in its own right, as Eric Metaxas so ably demonstrates in FISH OUT OF WATER, a memoir of his life detailing ordinary & extraordinary personal events w/charismatic finesse, deep insight & laugh-out-loud humor.”
〰️ AUTHOR Q&A 〰️
Q: What kind of impact did writing Fish Out of Water have on you personally?
A: Spending so much time thinking deeply about one’s distant memories, and bringing them to life, is an extraordinarily affecting experience. One can sometimes feel that time really is an illusion, and that via one’s mind one can somehow genuinely go back to these places from many years ago. It was all very illuminating too. I began to see things about certain people I had forgotten, and had come to feel again the love I have for some of them, like my Uncle Takis and my Uncle Joe and my godmother, Effie Drograris, and my grandmother, all of whom had profound impacts on my life and who I am today. By spending so much time remembering them there were times my heart nearly burst with love for them. And it made me see that although I never intended it consciously, the fact that my father is on the book’s cover makes sense, because he ends up somehow being the hero of the story. I realize that more than anything it has been his love for me that made me who I am.
““In this portrait of the Metaxas as a young man, deeply serious matters exist most comfortably with great wit and maximum humor. As enjoyable as it is to follow him from birth through the fog of his twenties and into the sunlight at their end, you will see that you have also painlessly embraced a wonderful complexity. Even the title represents multiple meanings woven throughout the book and, as in the solution to a mystery, unified and made clear at its end. A delight. I read it in the sunshine, which was entirely appropriate.””
“With his inimitable intelligence and wit, Eric Metaxas recounts his formative years as a first-generation immigrant, the crucial development of his ability to think for himself rather than following the herd, and the process of learning to follow his heart and mind wherever the truth leads…”
〰️ Book Excerpt 〰️
from chapter one
My father often said our apartment was depressing, that “just to see a piece of sky” you had to stick your head out the window into the alley and look straight up. Seventeen months after my birth my brother John came into the world, after which we happily moved to 91st Street and Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights. For twenty-eight hundred dollars my parents bought a small two-bedroom on the fifth floor of a six-story high-rise in a three-block development of identical red brick buildings, three per block for three blocks, with benches and trees and playgrounds between them.
My father took the El to work, returning precisely at five, when we ate dinner, after which he played with me and my brother in the living room. Sometimes he smoked a cigarette, but this would end soon. But as is typical of most children’s earliest years, my main memories are of my mother, whose love for me was a palpable undergirding presence.
She and I often looked together out of the window in the bedroom I shared with my brother. Once, as we did this she held my hand and said, “Eric, do you feel that?” And I could feel the blood pulsing in our clasped hands. And because I knew our blood came from our hearts, I accepted it when she said: “That’s the love you’re feeling, between us.” I inherited most of my romantic nature from my mother, and the need to hug and kiss—which I now do everyone for whom I feel affection. It was not the peasant Saxon German side, but the more patrician Greek side of my family that was more reserved.
My mother often sang German songs to me, one of which—a nineteenth- century carol—we sang whenever it snowed.
Kling, Glöckchen! Kling-eling-eling! Kling, Glöckchen, kling!
Laßt mich ein, ihr Kinder,
ist so kalt der Winter!
Öffnet mir die Türen,
laßt mich nicht erfrieren!
Kling, Glöckchen! Kling-elin-geling! Kling, Glöckchen, kling!
One afternoon as we daydreamed together at the window, it suddenly began snowing. Each of us—entirely unaware the other was going to sing anything—began singing this at exactly the same time. We were each looking straight ahead at the falling snow and separately began the song in such perfect unison we both knew neither of us had prompted the other. It was a mystical moment, the first I can remember, with the snow floating from the overcast sky, down between the brick-colored buildings and each of us singing and knowing we had begun this song together in a way that somehow confirmed our love for each other.
“A delight! Eric Metaxas has crafted for each discerning reader a personal gift: A richly detailed, lovingly remembered American story that faces squarely serious issues to which every one of us should attend. From the struggles of immigrant families to bullying in school, from the trauma that victims of war and totalitarianism carry to the hunger for meaning that postmodern students face in college, Eric uses his own experience to illumine enduring, important questions. He does so with humor [and] moral insight….”
Press release -
click image to download
Opinion
Townhall: Why Are Americans Naive About Evil
Reviews & mentions
Appearances
Newsmax, 2/2
Charlie Kirk, 2/3
Rubin Report, 2/5
Diamond and Silk, 2/8
Dr. Gina, 2/14
Success Made To Last, 2/12