Autobiography: writers Books

Book SynopsisPoet, travel writer, teacher, film-extra in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, quiz-show panellist -Kildare Dobbs has played many parts, been many places, met many people. His life’s journey, marked by frequent detours and diversions, from Asia to old Europe, Africa and the New World, is that of the quintessential post-colonial Western man at large. In Running the Rapids Dobbs becomes voyageur. He takes us from a lamp-lit, big house childhood in 1930s Kilkenny, to college days at Cambridge in thrall to Carl Jung and Wilhelm Reich, to commando training and naval service protecting Allied convoys from U-boat attack during World War II. Then began his time from 1948 to 1952 as district officer in Tanganyika, where he learnt Swahili beneath the ‘immense, unearthly bulk’ of Kilimanjaro and was falsely imprisoned for ivory theft. He then moved to Canada to work at Macmillan publishers, co-founding The Tamarack Review and becoming managing editor of Saturday Night magazine from 1965 to 1967. During the seventies he was both columnist and books editor of the Toronto Star. He recounts his friendships with writers Brian Moore, Richard Wright and Mordecai Richler, and with Ronald Searle, Marshall McLuhan and Wilfred Thesiger, among others. And nothing if not uxorious, this modern-day troubadour enters the lists of time and again throughout the narrative, finding his peace the third time around. Dobbs’s self-portrait vividly evokes the world of a restless man of letters, Rousseauesque in its foibles and candour, Johnsonianly pungent in its observations, Shandean in its sense of the absurd. ‘In memory and imagination’, he writes, ‘there is no time: all is simultaneous.’ This poignant and delightful chronicle sets out to reinforce that perception.

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Book SynopsisThis is a moving story of a family’s beginnings, growth and, in the context both of time and Trinidadian society, its inevitable dispersal. Savi Naipaul Akal’s memoir pays tribute to remarkable parents, so different but equal in importance to their large family. Her father’s life is one of heroic self-invention, from virtual orphan in a dirt-poor rural Indian family, one generation away from indentured migration, who through self-education became Seepersad Naipaul, a remarkable journalist and pioneering documenter of Indian Trinidadian life. Her mother, Dropatie, displayed remarkable diplomatic skills in sustaining a relationship with the large and inward-looking Capildeo clan of which she was the seventh daughter, whilst loyally supporting her husband’s insistence on independence and engagement with Trinidadian life. It was Dropatie, after Seepersad’s tragically early death, who held the family together, so that all seven children achieved university education. It is an account of family loyalty, sacrifice, and sometimes tensions; pride in the writing achievements of her brothers Vidiadhar and Shiva, and sorrow over estrangements and Shiva’s premature death. Through this focus, the memoir also gives a sharply observed picture of cultural change in Trinidad from colony to independent nation, of being Indian in a Creole society, of the role of education, and her parents’ encouragement of herself and her sisters to make independent lives for themselves. The memoir gives an acute analysis of the pressures that led many of the family to emigrate, but also of the good lives made by Savi and her husband that led them to “put down their bucket” and stay.Above all, this memoir offers the pleasure of writing which is elegant and lucid, with a distinctively personal voice. The book is further enhanced by the generous quantity of family photographs that say so much about both people and the times they lived through.

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Book SynopsisOn every page of this delicious book you will meet characters and situations that tell you this could only be New York. The parents who are determined to get their children literally to fly at the school production of Peter Pan - the Cambodian cashier at the local deli who is more Jewish than Gopnik's grandfather - his gloriously peculiar analyst who argues that a name can be damaging to the human psyche, saying Adam's name is very ugly - the birder who takes Adam to see the huge flock of feral parrots that have taken over Flatbush. No one knows how they got there or how they survive the brutal winters, but they do. And flourish on it. 'These birds are so bold. They are real New Yorkers. They have so much attitude'. Through the Children's Gate is written with Gopnik's signature mix of mind and heart, elegantly and exultantly alert to the minute miracles that bring a place to life.Trade ReviewEngaging, witty, thoughtful, clever, casual, ebullient, erudite and thoroughly modern - Spectator * Spectator *The distinctive brilliance of Gopnik's essays lies in his ability to pick up a subject one would never have believed possible to think deeply about then cover it in thoughts … he is truly able to see the whole world in a grain of sand - Alain de Botton, New York Times * Alain de Botton *

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Book SynopsisIn July 1943, the young Welsh poet and soldier Alun Lewis, already recognised as one of the outstanding writers of his generation, arrived on sick leave at the house near Madras of Freda Aykroyd, a devotee of literature and the wife of a British scientist. Lewis and Aykroyd fell in love instantly, recognising in each other similar temperaments and artistic interests. Their affair, which lasted until Lewis' mysterious death on the Arakan Front in March 1944, inspired some of the finest of his wartime poems as well as an extraordinary cache of letters published here for the first time. The letters throw fresh light on Lewis' passionate and troubled nature and the background to his literary output at a time when he was at the height of his creative powers. In her preface, Freda Aykroyd charts the haunting story of their relationship and its tragic outcome.Trade Review'Enthralling' - The Guardian 'A wonderful collection of letters...[they] offer an extraordinary inisght into the final year of [Alun Lewis's] life.' - The Saturday Guardian

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Book SynopsisA reflection on children in war and second-generation trauma.

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Book SynopsisIn 1955, Maxine Kumin submitted a poem to the Saturday Evening Post. Lines on a Half-Painted House made it into the magazine - but not before Kumin was asked to produce, via her husband's employer, verification that the poem was her original work.Trade Review"A Story Larger than My Own is an essential book, for women writers, for all writers, for readers, for people with mothers, for people who remember their mothers." (Cris Mazza, author of Something Wrong with Her)"

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Book SynopsisA child is a man in small letter, wrote Bishop John Earle in the seventeenth century. His father hath writ him as his own little story. In this title, the writer acknowledges the author of his story while simultaneously reminding us that we all confront the blank page of life on our own, as authors of our lives.Trade Review"I couldn't put this book down. 'Memoir' doesn't begin to do it justice. Prospero's Son is a beautifully observed and often haunting reflection about how we get here and what we leave behind." -James Shapiro, author of A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare"

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Book SynopsisRooted in the age-old problem of the fraught relationship between fathers and sons, this title is about the power of books and theater, the excitement of stories in a young man's life, and the transformative magic of words and performance.Trade Review"A testament to Lerer's passion for his work, this wise, literary, and allusion-dense book will strike a sympathetic chord with all involved in teaching or reading literature." (Library Journal) "The brevity of Lerer's short memoir... only increases the narrative's power to unsettle and ultimately move us.... The result is arresting." (San Francisco Chronicle) "An affecting memoir.... Thoughtful and deeply felt... an intellectually and emotionally satisfying reading experience." (Booklist)"

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Book SynopsisMore than a gathering of essays, That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration is part memoir, part literary criticism, and an artful fusion of the two. It is an intimate portrait of a life in poetry that only Alan Shapiro could have written. In this book, Shapiro brings his characteristic warmth, humor, and many years as both poet and teacher to bear on questions surrounding two preoccupations: the role of conventions of literary and social norms in how we fashion our identities on and off the page and how suffering both requires and resists self-expression. He sketches affectionate portraits of his early teachers, revisits the deaths of his brother and sister, and examines poems that have helped him navigate troubled times. Integrating storytelling and literary analysis so seamlessly that art and life become extensions of each other, Shapiro embodies in his lively prose the very qualities he celebrates in the poems he loves. Brimming with wit and insight, this is a book for poe

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Book SynopsisThe original version of Dreiser's classic novel, in print for the first timeTrade Review"This edition provides an opportunity to follow in close compass Dreiser's process of revision. It captures his point of view at a transitional moment in his career, and it sheds light on his subsequent work."--Times Literary Supplement"This edition provides an opportunity to follow in close compass Dreiser's process of revision. It captures his point of view at a transitional moment in his career, and it sheds light on his subsequent work."--Times Literary Supplement "This is a superb edition: skillfully edited, fully annotated, usefully contextualized. We have been given a new and almost entirely unknown version of The Genius--the text as originally conceived by Dreiser. It now demands our attention and close study."--James L. W. West III, general editor of the Cambridge Fitzgerald Edition"The Genius is one of the most overlooked and underrated of Dreiser's novels, yet it is arguably the key book for students of the writer, offering abundant materials for an understanding of the tensions between art and business and between romance and realism. It is also one of the finest portraits of marriage--and of the passions of marital frustration--in all of literature, as well as an exploration of the supposed sexual privileges of genius. Clare Eby's presentation of this earlier and previously unpublished Genius is a triumph of textual and interpretive scholarship, offering in its accompanying essays and apparatus a meticulous consideration of the similarities and differences between the two texts as well as copious explanatory notes. A great addition to Dreiser scholarship, this original version reminds us again of the fascinating evolution of Dreiser's powerful imagination."--Miles Orvell, author of The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940"A first-rate piece of textual scholarship that provides a vital and valuable new perspective on an important novel."--Leonard Cassuto, Fordham University

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Book SynopsisWritten with exquisite sensitivity and wit, this memoir by one of Mexico’s foremost men of letters describes coming of age during the violence of the Mexican Revolution and “living dangerously” as an openly homosexual man in a brutally machista society.Trade Review"And if 'translators translate context,' as Edith Grossman asserts, then what we encounter when we read Pillar of Salt is a supreme translation not only of language but also of culture, politics, sexuality, and boyhood." * Bookslut *"Reading [Pillar of Salt] was like shining a black light into a motel room, laying bare the secret traces of every lurid, defiant act that had preceded me there." * The Believer *Table of Contents Introduction The Sidelong World: Where Confession and Proclamation Are Compounded, by Carlos Monsiváis Pillar of Salt by Salvador Novo “This flower of fourteen petals”: Salvador Novo and the Sonnet, by Marguerite Feitlowitz Sonnets Notes Index of Names

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Book SynopsisA literary testament showing how Mary Lee Settle's great novels followed the map of her remarkable life.

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Book SynopsisAn autobiography of Mark Twain that describes a chronology of his life, brief family biographies, and an excerpt from the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 - a controversial but characteristically humorous attack on Christian doctrine.Trade Review"Smith and her companion editors have accomplished a herculean task... A more accurately arranged collection than any earlier edition." American Literary Realism "Sometimes the autobiography seems Twain's letter to posterity. At other times, reading it feels like eavesdropping on a conversation he is having with himself... This first installment of Twain's autobiography brings us closer to all of him than we have ever come before." New York Review Of Books "This is a book to treasure for all friends of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." Acadiana Lifestyle Magazine "Now, common sense, at last. We have, emblazoned big as life on the paperback cover underneath Twain's photo ... the words 'Reader's Edition.' The very idea of it is a winner... It is less academically punctilious but indeed more reader-friendly." Buffalo News "Dip into the first enormous volume of Twain's autobiography that he had decreed should not appear until 100 years after his death. And Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing, but less sure-footed, and at times both puzzled and puzzling in ways that still resonate with us, though not the ways we might expect." New York Times "This is a book for dipping, not plunging. Read, as Twain might put it, until interest pales, and then jump. It feels like a form of time travel." New York Times/The Opinion Pages "Twain generously provides the 21st century aficionado a marvelous read. His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe... [He] has given us 'an astonishment' in his autobiography with his final, beautifully unorganized genius and intemperate thoughts. Pull up a chair and revel." Los Angeles Times Book Review "Mission accomplished, Mr. Clemens." -- Roger Boylan Boston Review "The bestseller chart is awash with memoirs -- but none offer the extreme reading of the Autobiography of Mark Twain." -- Debra Craine The Times "His "whole frank mind,' sharp and funny, is seared onto every page. A" Entertainment Weekly "Brimming with Twain's humor, ideas and opinions, this is a book for anyone interested in the writer's work and life." Curledup.com "With the uncensored Twain finally here, we're the furthest thing from indifferent." Time Magazine "Promises a no-holds barred perspective on Twain's life, and will be rich with rambunctious, uncompromising opinions." Herald Scotland "Twain's writing here is electric, alternately moving and hilarious. He couldn't write a ho-hum sentence." Library Journal "Twain would approve!" Bookideas.com "A major achevement." Choice "Twain's autobiography, finally available after a century, is a garrulous outpouring-and every word beguiles." Wall Street Journal "Twian's 'Final Plan' has been released in a truly spectacular first volume of his posthumous 'Autobiography'." -- Vitali Vitaliev Engineering & Technology "Pure Twain at his typically discursive, rambling, and droll... The bard of Hannibal still has much to say." American Heritage New New York Times Book ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN An Early Attempt My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] The Latest Attempt The Final (and Right) Plan Preface. As from the Grave The Florentine Dictations Autobiographical Dictations, January–March 1906 Appendix: Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations Samuel L. Clemens: A Brief Chronology Family Biographies References Excerpt from Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 Photographs

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Book SynopsisCritic, poet, editor, chronicler of the Lost Generation, elder statesman of the Republic of Letters, Malcolm Cowley (1898â1989) was an eloquent witness to American literary and political life. His letters, mostly unpublished, provide a self-portrait of Cowley and his time and make possible a full appreciation of his long, varied career.Trade ReviewMalcolm Cowley was one of the most important (and easily the most omnipresent) literary figures of the past century… Cowley’s was a long, eventful and controversial life, amply documented in his letters… Bak has done on the whole an astounding job of effectively boiling down Cowley’s voluminous correspondence… To delve into Cowley’s letters is to get a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at how the literary life, with its glittering prizes, really operates… This volume is a permanent addition to American literary history the likes of which we may never see again. If the telephone made letter-writing a luxury, email and texting have rendered it as obsolete as the manual typewriter, and we as readers are undoubtedly the poorer for it. That is all the more reason to cherish this invaluable collection. -- Tom Moran * Chicago Tribune *Cowley was perhaps the greatest literary cross‐pollinator of the 20th century. It’s impossible to imagine the American canon without him… Cowley’s best letters—they are alternately frisky, warm, pushy and ruminative—are collected now in The Long Voyage… Many are to his childhood friend from Pittsburgh, the philosopher of language Kenneth Burke, and to his lifelong confidant Allen Tate. This volume also records his end of correspondences with Faulkner, Kerouac, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dawn Powell, Lionel Trilling, Louise Bogan, Edmund Wilson and multiple others… Consistently busy on a multitude of fronts, Cowley wrote letters that are grainy with gossip and ringing observations, almost from the beginning. -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *Cowley’s letters carry the style he had in all of his writing, featuring a very American, cynical, go-getter voice and an uncanny facility with a sharp closing line… The Long Voyage is also a reminder of a time, not long ago, when literature had a more central place in the cultural conversation… Bak has done a masterful job with this collection… Cowley has never quite been forgotten, but the work he did was often as hidden as it was influential. This collection will remind readers of 20th-century American literature of the key role Cowley played in its development, and might perhaps spur them to read some of Cowley’s own works. -- Greg Barnhisel * Los Angeles Review of Books *[This is a] vast collection of letters, sensitively compiled and annotated by [Cowley’s] biographer, Hans Bak… At his best he wrote from an empathy that few contemporaries shared. -- Marc Robinson * Times Literary Supplement *Cowley earned, many times over, his status as the grand old man of American letters. Did anyone do more to establish the current canon of the major writers of the twentieth century? Did anyone do more than Cowley, as the indefatigable consulting editor for Viking, to identify new talent among the following generations?… Did anyone work harder behind the scenes of influential organizations (the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Yaddo, countless book prizes, and so on) to support writers in need and reward deserving achievement?… He ultimately belonged, like Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner, to what his friend Hart Crane called ‘the visionary company,’ and not as a fellow traveler but as a full member. -- Christopher Benfey * New Republic *[A] vast and rich omnium-gatherum of epistolary activity… Cowley [was] one of the most important and influential men of letters (or freelance literary intellectuals, if you prefer) of the twentieth century… [He had] an immensely influential critical and editorial career that spanned seven decades… [Cowley] is nowhere near as famous or well regarded as he deserves to be… Bak’s commentary and notes are helpful, to the point, jargon-free, and superbly well-informed, and the letters themselves have been selected and judiciously edited to form an almost biographical narrative. Because the book focuses on letters that illuminate Cowley’s involvement with both literature and politics, the private man barely makes an appearance, but that absence is more than made up for by his son Robert Cowley’s foreword, a moving act of filial piety and a shrewd assessment of the shape and significance of his father’s career. And why should anyone produce an 850-page volume of Malcolm Cowley’s letters, and why should you care that someone did? Because, simply put, the American literature of the twentieth century would look considerably poorer and less interesting without his activities as a critic, editor, and memoirist, and our broader understanding of American literary history much less clear… If you don’t reckon with Malcolm Cowley’s works and days, you can’t really understand how American literature ascended to its rightful place among the great literatures of the world, or how it was made. -- Gerald Howard * Bookforum *Now, at last, we can see the history of twentieth-century literature, which he helped to shape, through Cowley’s own eyes. -- Adam Kirsch * City Journal *Bak’s a fair-minded and microscopically well-informed guide to the material… Cowley’s correspondence also makes it possible to get a sense of him as a fairly stylish performer in his day, a sense that’s harder to get from the stuff he wrote for publication. -- Christopher Tayler * Harper’s *Boswell of the ‘lost generation,’ literary editor of The New Republic, and champion of authors from Fitzgerald and Faulkner—whose career he resuscitated—to Kerouac and Kesey, Malcolm Cowley lived a long life and wrote a ton of letters debating, critiquing and defending the state of American literature. (Kenneth Burke, Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken and Edmund Wilson were among his closest interlocutors.) The majority of the letters in this collection have never before been published… His collected letters amount to a heady portrait of American literary and intellectual life in the twentieth century. -- Rachel Arons * New Yorker blog *[Cowley] set to work almost singlehandedly reviving the stature of William Faulkner, whose name had faded and whose 17 novels and short story collections were out of print. The exact cause and effect can never be proved, but Cowley’s 1946 book The Portable Faulkner is seen as one factor leading to Faulkner’s 1949 Nobel Prize for literature… The Long Voyage gives us a much broader and clearer picture of Cowley as someone who, to use his own phrase, ‘worked at the writer’s trade’—and did so honorably. -- George Fetherling * Pittsburgh Post-Gazette *Hans Bak’s selection of Cowley’s letters will interest anyone with specialized knowledge of American literature during its 20th-century apogee… The Long Voyage [is] a fine memorial of those high days when book reviewers were not afraid of showing their intelligence and discrimination, and wrote pieces that changed the way the educated segment of nations thought. -- Richard Davenport-Hines * The Spectator *The Long Voyage is a must-own for any devotee of American literature. -- David Duhr * Texas Observer *Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989) may be one of the most important (and unheralded) literary figures of the twentieth century. His critical track record for fostering genius and capturing the sensibility of the Lost Generation now receives a spotlight, thanks to savvy editor Hans Bak. * Barnes & Noble Review *As a poet, editor, literary historian and memoirist, Cowley (1898–1989) had his finger on the pulse of American literature for most of the 20th century… In this collection, editor Bak gathers approximately 500 letters culled from Cowley’s papers in Chicago’s Newberry Library, most previously unpublished. Correspondents include Kenneth Burke (a childhood friend), Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken, Edmund Wilson, Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Tillie Olsen, and almost anyone who was anybody in American literature… In addition to his literary activities, the letters shed light on Cowley’s politics, including his ties to communist front organizations in the 1930s, his reaction to the Moscow Trials, and his fight to preserve his reputation during the McCarthy era… This title will appeal to students of modern American literature, particularly those familiar with Cowley’s oeuvre. -- William Gargan * Library Journal *A committed, contentious life at the center of American letters comes alive in this scintillating collection. The book follows Cowley (1898–1989) from his 1920s salad days as a poet and critic in New York and Paris, immersed in fierce literary squabbles over the emerging modernist aesthetic; through his 1930s reign as the New Republic’s literary editor, when he discovered Marxism and drew (not unfounded) accusations of pushing a Stalinist line that dogged him during and after World War II; to his postwar efforts to champion old masters and newcomers, from Fitzgerald and Faulkner to Kerouac and Kesey. Cowley’s letters fizz with gossip, bawdy jokes, lurid anecdotes, witty reflections… Ably contextualized by editor Bak’s extensive biographical insertions, these missives convey the intense passions aroused by the aesthetic and political upheavals of the 20th century through the pen of one of the era’s leading literary intellectuals. * Publishers Weekly *This is a grand reunion. They are all here—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hart Crane, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, and all the rest—presided over by the indefatigable and conscientious intelligence of Malcolm Cowley, the great friend and critic and chronicler of American writers and their work. These wonderful letters amount to the diary of American literature in the twentieth century. -- Lance MorrowMalcolm Cowley—who was there, at the inner ring—is an eloquent voice in helping us to know how twentieth-century American literature got made. This selection from a lifetime of letters only confirms how indispensable he was and is. -- Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961

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Book SynopsisA Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse trains an autobiographical lens on a moment of transition in U.S. journalism. Calling herself “an accidental activist,” she raises urgent questions about the role of journalists as citizens and participants in the world around them.Trade ReviewA delightful, engaging book. I like its personal tone and its feisty, argumentative character. -- Michael Schudson, author of The Rise of the Right to KnowGreenhouse shows what significant strides journalism has made in what she calls ‘the post-truth age,’ when news stories and headlines now employ language once reserved for opinion pieces or for private conversations among journalists…This brief book of argument and anecdote presents a minefield of challenges that journalism itself is far from unified over how to face. And the ground keeps shifting as the mainstream press does its best to remain a watchdog while resisting the label of adversary. * Kirkus Reviews *Greenhouse entwines a personal career history with a larger examination of the challenges her profession faces in an increasingly fractious political landscape. -- Kate Tuttle * Boston Globe *The veteran New York Times journalist offers a refreshing and fearless challenge to some of journalism’s most revered—and ossified— principles, drawing from her first-hand experience…The final essay of Greenhouse’s book is indeed more memoir than argument, and it’s a fascinating and delightful read. Especially interesting are her reflections on how the Internet has changed the newsroom…Just a Journalist is a short, precise, top-notch read: illuminating about life as a journalist over the past four decades, but more importantly provocative and intellectually stimulating on some of the core issues facing journalism today. For anyone who cares about the media and its relationship to democracy, her book is a must-read. -- Hans Rollman * PopMatters *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography""A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""Excellent. . . . A braided account of Melville and Mumford, aimed at exploring the strange resonance between their times and ours."---Daniel Immerwahr, Slate"[A] unique investigation of parallel lives. . . . Sachs’s chapters interweave periods of the two men’s lives, creating a dappled effect of shared shadows and light. Certain biographical overlaps are particularly striking."---Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal"A rich double portrait of Herman Melville and Lewis Mumford. . . . [Sachs’s] voice is exact, good-humored and passionate—all the qualities we need in our own dark times."---James Marcus, Times Literary Supplement ​​​​​​​"Sachs has written a sort of palimpsest of biography itself, showing how, generation by generation, we begin to see through the traffic between past and present that leads to the rediscovery of figures like Melville and Mumford, who wanted for themselves and their progeny (which includes us) a recognition that going backward can also be a way of going forward."---Carl Rollyson, New York Sun"Sachs manages a set of impressive balancing acts: matching scholarly diligence with fluent, stylish prose; admiration for his subjects with an alertness to their flaws. Up from the Depths packs multiple books into one: an introduction to Mumford’s thought, an innovative study of Melville, and a history of the modern age through the eyes of two uniquely perceptive writers."---Madoc Cairns, The Observer"Rare and remarkable."---Jennie Hann, National Book Critics Circle"An inspired study of [Melville and Mumford], juxtaposing their lives and works in alternating chapters. . . . What draws Sachs to [these writers] is the dialectic in each between continuity and disruption, confidence and despair."---Steven G. Kellman, American Scholar"Illuminating."---Allison Gilbert, BUST"An incisive homage to the continuing relevance of two towering writers. . . . A well-informed, thoughtful dual biography." * Kirkus Reviews, starred review *"Fascinating. . . . In shining a light on Mumford’s efforts during the ‘Melville Revival’ of the mid-1900s, Sachs makes a strong case for the rediscovery of Mumford’s own writing. . . . A well-executed literary history." * Publishers Weekly *"This fascinating book explores the connection between two American writers, novelist Herman Melville (1819–91) and Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), the novelist’s biographer. In brief, lively, and engaging chapters, Sachs . . . alternates back and forth between the two men, detailing many correspondences in their lives and work despite the years that separated them. . . . Sachs provides sensitive analysis of text and context, offers a wealth of resources in his bibliography, and models how historians and critics can pose questions that continue to matter." * Choice *"[Sachs] weaves the two writers’ contrapuntal historical dialog into a single narrative, a reading experience enhanced by Sachs’ fluent, often-lyrical writing skills."---Kevin Lynch, Culture Currents"Sachs’s ‘willingness to flash back and forth in time’ leaves readers with a subtle, poignant, understanding of the relationship between the past, present, and future. Sachs also offers his readers a tether for those who feel unmoored and alone as a result of modernity. By telling ‘the story of [these] two modern wanderers’ Sachs shows us the possibility of connection despite the years and the changing circumstances that separate [Melville and Mumford]."---Natalie Fuehrer Taylor, Law & Liberty"Sachs deftly draws our attention mutually to these two great writers, and the resonances between their work, one in literature and the other in urban planning and a hope for civilized progress."---Donald Brackett, Critics at Large

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Book SynopsisAdopting a boldly innovative approach to women’s autobiographical writing, Françoise Lionnet here examines the rhetoric of self-portraiture in works by authors who are bilingual or multilingual or of mixed races or cultures. Autobiographical Voices offers incisive readings of texts by Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Marie Cardinal, Maryse...Trade ReviewAutobiographical Voices is an innovative, highly suggestive study of autobiographical writing that cuts across traditional boundaries of canon and culture, gender, genre, and academic discipline. Lionnet’s purpose is to break down accepted polarities, opening up the field of literary studies to a cultural diversity that she herself has incorporated in both her subject matter and methodology. Although a scholarly work, this book also expresses a forthright message about freedom of expression, especially that of groups silenced by political and cultural oppression. -- Mary Rice-Defosse * Modern Language Studies *

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Book SynopsisOut of the massive research for an authoritative 1,500-page biography emerges this wunderkammer of 99 delightfully odd facts about KafkaTrade Review"A Kafka bag full of surprises." -- Der Tagesspiegel"A playful new book from Reiner Stach, one that pulls together 99 facts and observations from the Czech author’s life, all with the purpose of clearing the brush of falsehoods about the man that linger in the public imagination." -- Jonathon Sturgeon - Flavorwire"If, like me, you are wary of delving into a three-volume account of the life of an ascetic and self-tormenting insurance lawyer, Stach has by some inexplicable thunderbolt of inspiration supplemented his enormous undertaking with a separate volume of biographical detritus, which he suggestively calls ‘counter-images’, titled Is that Kafka? 99 Finds." -- Morten Høi Jensen - LA Review of Books"Lucidly translated from the German by Kurt Beals, ingeniously designed, illustrated with photographs of Kafka and the people he knew, of places he visited and art he admired, and with facsimiles of newspaper articles, manuscripts, notes, and letters, Is That Kafka? is a handsome volume." -- Francine Prose - New York Review of Books"It is fitting that such a tricksy little maze of a book would bloom from the life of Kafka, whose work operates better in smaller spaces." -- Propeller"A mishmash of ephemera, curiosities and confessionals, the finds range from the banal to the deeply personal, yet collectively paint as engaging and illustrative a portrait of the artist as any I’ve read." -- Pasha Malla - The Globe and Mail"A beautiful display of unexpected wonders and curiosities, each one glittering with light from a source that will never be understood." -- Jeffrey Zuckerman - The New Republic"Reiner Stach has curated a collection of artifacts from the author’s life in his latest book, “Is that Kafka? 99 Finds.” The book, translated from the German by Kurt Beals, is a crowd-pleasing encore to Stach’s monumental three-volume biography of the writer. Along with minimal commentary, he submits ninety-nine numbered exhibition items—documents, photographs, objects, scribbles, and doodles—for our consideration. The result is a box of fancy Austro-Hungarian chocolates..." -- Avi Steinberg - The New Yorker"Each turn Stach makes adds nuance to his skillfully collaged portrait of Kafka." -- The Quarterly Conversation"“Is that Kafka?” indirectly contributes to an on going scholarly project, in Europe and America, to revisit many of the assumptions about the writer and his work, in effect, to move beyond the myths and clichés." -- Michael Dirda - The Washington Post"This collection, original and entertaining, is a masterful, exciting mix of diligent research and sophisticated literary gossip." -- Neues Deutschland

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Book SynopsisIn 1894, an eighteen-year-old Jack London quit his job shoveling coal, hopped a freight train, and left California on the first leg of a ten thousand-mile odyssey. This book features several stories that London told about his hoboing days. It presents a collection of nine essays, with accompanying illustrations.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Selected Bibliography A Note on the Text List of Illustrations Chapter 1: Confession Chapter 2: Holding Her Down Chapter 3: Pictures Chapter 4: "Pinched" Chapter 5: The Pen Chapter 6: Hoboes That Pass in the Night Chapter 7: Road-Kids and Gay-Cats Chapter 8: Two Thousand Stiffs Chapter 9: Bulls Explanatory Notes About the Editor

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Book SynopsisA memoir of Mary Ann Caws which recounts a life of passionate engagement. It sketches her early years in North Carolina, where she makes her debut and begins to struggle with accepted social values of the time and region. It also describes her education at Bryn Mawr, in Paris, and at Yale - where she weds a professor of philosophy.Trade ReviewCaws traces a continuum of relish and regret encompassing emotional states such as joy, fear, angst, and anger, but at the same time acknowledges the power of imagination in shaping her personal and professional life. [She] traces the process whereby she acquired her personal and academic voice despite an emotionally absent father, a husband who considered his career more important than hers, and a stiflingly sexist southern society. - ANQ

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Book SynopsisA reflection on man's relationship to nature and work, American history and the movement into the West, the desire to impose order and the contrary impulse for unmediated experience, the idealistic legacy of the sixties, the influence of the Mormon Church, and the antagonistic relationship of American capitalism to sound ecological management.Trade ReviewThe book opens up a world of fact and science and mathematics in a way that finds the spiritual and the metaphysical, the political and the philosophical, lurking in the midst of numbers and measurements and calculations.... Hales engages us both emotionally and intellectually. This is creative nonfiction at its best, this artful union of fact and experience and memory.... Line by line, the writing is wonderful, and individual sections are as fine as any from writers such as Edward Abbey or Annie Dillard. - Lee Martin, author of From Our House: A Memoir

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Book SynopsisA memoir of the author’s extraordinary life, as seen through the lens of his writing. Everything that went into making him a writer and eventually found an outlet in his work - his education, family, wives, children, friends, enemies, politics, and place - is told from the point of view of his daily practice of writing.

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Book SynopsisTruly the voice of the Jersey Shore.Bruce Springsteen

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Book SynopsisA retelling of American modernism through the lines of solidarity and division within and among ethnic and religious identities found in poetry. What happens if we approach the reading and writing of poetry not as an individual act, but as a public one? Answering this question challenges common assumptions about modern poetry and requires that we explore the important questions that define genre: Where is this poem situated, and how did it get there?Joshua Logan Wall's Situating Poetry studies five poets of the New York literary scene rarely considered together: James Weldon Johnson, Charles Reznikoff, Lola Ridge, Louis Zukofsky, and Robert Hayden. Charting their works and careers from 19101940, Wall illustrates how these politically marginalized writers from drastically different religious backgrounds wrestled with their status as American outsiders. These poets produced a secularized version of America in which poetry, rather than God, governed individual obligations to one anotherTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Covenantal SpacesChapter 1. A Congregation of Readers: James Weldon Johnson's God's TrombonesChapter 2. Renewing the Covenant: Charles Reznikoff's RecitativePart II: Circulating ModernismChapter 3. Immigrant Publics: Lola Ridge On and Off the PageChapter 4. Louis Zukofsky and the Poetics of ExodusPart III: Limit CasesChapter 5. A Covenantal Limit Case: Robert Hayden Beyond the LyricCoda: The House We Build TogetherNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn 1969, poet and revolutionary Margaret Randall was forced underground when the Mexican government cracked down on all those who took part in the 1968 student movement. Needing to leave the country, she sent her four young children alone to Cuba while she scrambled to find safe passage out of Mexico. In I Never Left Home, Randall recounts her harrowing escape and the other extraordinary stories from her life and career. From living among New York's abstract expressionists in the mid-1950s as a young woman to working in the Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture to instill revolutionary values in the media during the Sandinista movement, the story of Randall's life reads like a Hollywood production. Along the way, she edited a bilingual literary journal in Mexico City, befriended Cuban revolutionaries, raised a family, came out as a lesbian, taught college, and wrote over 150 books. Throughout it all, Randall never wavered from her devotion to social justice. When she returned to the United States in 1984 after living in Latin America for twenty-three years, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered her to be deported for her subversive writing. Over the next five years, and with the support of writers, entertainers, and ordinary people across the country, Randall fought to regain her citizenship, which she won in court in 1989. As much as I Never Left Home is Randall's story, it is also the story of the communities of artists, writers, and radicals she belonged to. Randall brings to life scores of creative and courageous people on the front lines of creating a more just world. She also weaves political and social analyses and poetry into the narrative of her life. Moving, captivating, and astonishing, I Never Left Home is a remarkable story of a remarkable woman.Trade Review“Every Margaret Randall book or poem is a jewel to be savored, but this text may be the best yet. Beautifully written, it is Randall's first comprehensive memoir. With her moves through the 1950s' expressionist art world in New York through the 1960s Mexican literary scene, the Cuban Revolution looms large and beckons Randall to participate, which eventually brings the scrutiny of Uncle Sam attempting to strip her of her citizenship. Throughout, Randall's early and deep feminism is a guiding light.” -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of * An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States *“Margaret Randall hails from a heroic era when poets aspired to change life. Nominally a memoir, I Never Left Home is really a full-blown autobiography, chronicling her life as a poet, a woman, a feminist, a mother, a lesbian, an incest survivor, and a participant in a quarter century of Latin American social and political revolution. Her experiences as coeditor of one of the 1960s most important international literary magazines are gripping, but it's her account of the Reagan administration's attempt to deport her from the land of her birth as an undesirable alien that makes I Never Left Home so necessary in the present moment. Few U.S. poets have dared to dream as big, fight as hard, or accomplish as much.” -- Garrett Caples, coeditor of * The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia *“Margaret Randall's life is the story of our twentieth century, with all of its lucid wonder, its dark passages and contradictions. Illuminating and enthralling.” -- Achy Obejas, author of * The Tower of the Antilles *"A revolutionary woman and remarkable writer places her long journey within the context of her conflicted past and our own divided present. . . . A striking remembrance by an intellectual whose radical, fierce nature is unflappable." * Kirkus Reviews *"Through storytelling, reflection and justifications for her life choices, hers is an exhilarating and bumpy ride through some interesting times and places and the cultures and politics she encountered, in which she attempts to capture her original impressions as well as expanding on her current views. . . . For anyone with a radical feminist perspective of society, there will be much to agree with in this memoir. For others, it is a complex reappraisal of fascinating times and places that shaped one woman’s thinking." -- Sue Turner * The Morning Star *"In these times, we need to cultivate visions of the future that break in radical, unexpected ways from the present moment. Margaret Randall’s example offers many possible entry points for dialogue on what is required of younger people today to make the level of deep, transformative change to which Margaret and her contemporaries aspired. . . ." -- Karín Aguilar-San Juan * The Mac Weekly *"Her writings are tree branches that bloom with every word. Regardless of seasons, time and circumstances Randall’s words are today’s leaves that oxygenate breathless discoveries with every moment. In the hands of whomever beholds Margaret Randall’s lived testimony, the will of strength, courage and inspiration she brings forward is felt. In a sense, Randall’s memoir transmits similar sentiments to that of Che Guevara’s personal travel dairy with keen observations and a concern for the well-being of all humanity." -- Jimmy Centeno * Sounds and Colours *"A passionate account of the perspectives of the radical generation of the 1960s as experienced by the extraordinary Margaret Randall." -- Dan Georgakas * Against the Current *"Randall’s ability to connect people and her prolific output as a writer have been her chief gifts, both in the sense of the in-grained qualities that define her character and insofar as these represent her primary contributions to the world. Randall gracefully joins these two gifts in I Never Left Home, a rich text that significantly adds to our understanding of life during some of the most important cultural moments and political events of the twentieth century." -- Zane Koss * Make *"Margaret Randall has led an extraordinary life. Fortunately, she continues to chronicle it for us. . . . Her prose corpus alone provides me with a continuing source of thought-provoking, compassionate writing that provides a significant counterpoint to that produced by so many of her contemporaries, especially male writers." -- William O. Pate II * San Antonio Review *"An extraordinary tale of several lifetimes packed into one." -- Nancy Nyland * Resources For Gender and Women's Studies *Table of Contents1. How This Book Came to Be 1 2. Where It All Started: Before My Birth and the Early Years, 1936–1947 5 3. The Landscape of Desire: High School and Beyond, 1947–1958 41 4. The Picture Plane: New York, 1958–1961 72 5. Where Stones Weep: Mexico, 1961–1969 114 6. Interlude: Escape 168 7. First Free Territory: Cuba, 1969–1980 181 8. Volcano: Nicaragua, 1980–1984 217 9. Home: 1984 and Beyond 247 Published Books 297 Notes 305 Index 315

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Book SynopsisIn this literary memoir and autoethnography, poet and anthropologist Nathaniel Tarn reflects on a life lived in an array of times, cultures, and environments, from the Battle of Britain and postwar Paris to conducting fieldwork in Guatemala and the halls of academe and beyond.Trade Review“Nathaniel Tarn doesn’t fit our whole world within his imagined autobiographical Atlantis, but he comes intoxicatingly close by way of a rigorous and expansive investigation of his lifelong quest to achieve a science of spirituality. ‘Completion,’ Tarn declares, ‘is not a word that should ever come near this book.’ Likewise, no reader interested in the myriad histories and personae of the self will wish for it either.” -- Albert Mobilio“What a great pleasure it is to read such a thoughtful, original, and necessary book, one that touches on so many aspects of culture, the life of the mind, the sources and resources of the creative imagination, all indelibly arrayed against a long life full of exotic travels and memorable human encounters. There is so much to savor in this fabulously inviting work of courageous generosity.” -- Jed Rasula"A work of brilliant originality, simultaneously a memoir, an ethnography, a sweeping masterpiece of travel literature, and above all, a poetic testimony of unflinching intelligence and grand passion." -- Norman Finkelstein * Restless Messengers *"It’s singularly interesting experience to ingest this book, to be amid it, even to be overwhelmed by it. Atlantis, is a readable avalanche, a discontinuous (but still chronological) memoir, a Big Bricolage of notations, essayistic forays, diary squibs of living life, field notes and polemics, giving the reader charming and telling vignettes . . . these being anecdotes of rare drollery, along with polemics of incisive, and sometimes got-a-bee-in-bonnet challenges...." -- Rachel Blau DuPlessis * Restless Messengers *"Tarn brings to life a seven-decade career lived traveling and writing throughout the world. Impressive in his ability to conjure up meetings with publishers and conversations with friends that took place more than 50 years ago, Tarn builds on his experiences to create an ethnographic study of himself that reads like a biography that is an autobiography. Enthusiasts of anthropology, poetry, academic life, and self-writing will enjoy Tarn’s approach and the insider’s perspective he brings to a life spent translating, publishing, editing, teaching, and traveling. . . . Recommended. Graduate students through faculty." -- S. Batcos * Choice *"At its heart, it is an exploration of poetry: what it is and how it comes about within the mind of the creator. There are insights into the visionary poetry of Wordsworth and Blake, the need for the poet not merely to give pleasure but crucially to become part of the very spin of the world in motion. It is also about the many different sides of Tarn. . . . Although, at times, the writing is introspective, his style is always engaging and often conversational with a good dose of humour." -- Neil Leadbeater * North of Oxford *Table of ContentsForeword xi Preface xvii Throw One 1 Throw Two 7 Throw Three 16 Throw Four 22 Throw Five 31 Throw Six 39 Throw Seven 46 Throw Eight 57 Throw Nine 69 Throw Ten 80 Throw Eleven 93 Throw Twelve 103 Throw Thirteen 118 Throw Fourteen 127 Throw Fifteen 141 Throw Sixteen 149 Throw Seventeen 161 Throw Eighteen 170 Throw Nineteen 177 Throw Twenty 188 Throw Twenty-One 197 Throw Twenty-Two 205 Throw Twenty-Three 214 Throw Twenty-Four 225 Throw Twenty-Five 233 Throw Twenty-Six 242 Throw Twenty-Seven 255 Throw Twenty-Eight 265 Throw Twenty-Nine 273 Throw Thirty 278 Throw Thirty-One 284 Throw Thirty-Two 291 Throw Thirty-Three 296

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Book SynopsisIn this literary memoir and autoethnography, poet and anthropologist Nathaniel Tarn reflects on a life lived in an array of times, cultures, and environments, from the Battle of Britain and postwar Paris to conducting fieldwork in Guatemala and the halls of academe and beyond.Trade Review“Nathaniel Tarn doesn’t fit our whole world within his imagined autobiographical Atlantis, but he comes intoxicatingly close by way of a rigorous and expansive investigation of his lifelong quest to achieve a science of spirituality. ‘Completion,’ Tarn declares, ‘is not a word that should ever come near this book.’ Likewise, no reader interested in the myriad histories and personae of the self will wish for it either.” -- Albert Mobilio“What a great pleasure it is to read such a thoughtful, original, and necessary book, one that touches on so many aspects of culture, the life of the mind, the sources and resources of the creative imagination, all indelibly arrayed against a long life full of exotic travels and memorable human encounters. There is so much to savor in this fabulously inviting work of courageous generosity.” -- Jed Rasula"A work of brilliant originality, simultaneously a memoir, an ethnography, a sweeping masterpiece of travel literature, and above all, a poetic testimony of unflinching intelligence and grand passion." -- Norman Finkelstein * Restless Messengers *"It’s singularly interesting experience to ingest this book, to be amid it, even to be overwhelmed by it. Atlantis, is a readable avalanche, a discontinuous (but still chronological) memoir, a Big Bricolage of notations, essayistic forays, diary squibs of living life, field notes and polemics, giving the reader charming and telling vignettes . . . these being anecdotes of rare drollery, along with polemics of incisive, and sometimes got-a-bee-in-bonnet challenges...." -- Rachel Blau DuPlessis * Restless Messengers *"Tarn brings to life a seven-decade career lived traveling and writing throughout the world. Impressive in his ability to conjure up meetings with publishers and conversations with friends that took place more than 50 years ago, Tarn builds on his experiences to create an ethnographic study of himself that reads like a biography that is an autobiography. Enthusiasts of anthropology, poetry, academic life, and self-writing will enjoy Tarn’s approach and the insider’s perspective he brings to a life spent translating, publishing, editing, teaching, and traveling. . . . Recommended. Graduate students through faculty." -- S. Batcos * Choice *"At its heart, it is an exploration of poetry: what it is and how it comes about within the mind of the creator. There are insights into the visionary poetry of Wordsworth and Blake, the need for the poet not merely to give pleasure but crucially to become part of the very spin of the world in motion. It is also about the many different sides of Tarn. . . . Although, at times, the writing is introspective, his style is always engaging and often conversational with a good dose of humour." -- Neil Leadbeater * North of Oxford *Table of ContentsForeword xi Preface xvii Throw One 1 Throw Two 7 Throw Three 16 Throw Four 22 Throw Five 31 Throw Six 39 Throw Seven 46 Throw Eight 57 Throw Nine 69 Throw Ten 80 Throw Eleven 93 Throw Twelve 103 Throw Thirteen 118 Throw Fourteen 127 Throw Fifteen 141 Throw Sixteen 149 Throw Seventeen 161 Throw Eighteen 170 Throw Nineteen 177 Throw Twenty 188 Throw Twenty-One 197 Throw Twenty-Two 205 Throw Twenty-Three 214 Throw Twenty-Four 225 Throw Twenty-Five 233 Throw Twenty-Six 242 Throw Twenty-Seven 255 Throw Twenty-Eight 265 Throw Twenty-Nine 273 Throw Thirty 278 Throw Thirty-One 284 Throw Thirty-Two 291 Throw Thirty-Three 296

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Book SynopsisHere's the thing with kissing: it matters intensely or not at all.Mid-kiss, do you ever wonder who you are, who you're kissing, where it's leading? It can feel luscious, libidinal, friendly, but are we trying to make out something through our kissing? For Kathryn Bond Stockton, making out is a prism through which to look at the cultural and political forces of our world: race, economics, childhood, books, and movies. Making Out is Stockton's memoir about a non-binary childhood before that idea existed in her world. We think about kissing as we accompany Stockton to the bedroom, to the closet, to the playground, to the movies, and to solitary moments with a book, the ultimate source of pleasure. Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidlyan online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Booksspecializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an excitiTrade ReviewKathryn Bond Stockton's Making Out is a wonderfully intense experience from start to finish...[It] is a complex examination of the process we go through while trying to understand ourselves within the context of others: faces, kisses, literature, film, and sexual expression with or without the enigma of lips meshing with other lips. -- Popmatters

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Book SynopsisHere's the thing with kissing: it matters intensely or not at all.Mid-kiss, do you ever wonder who you are, who you're kissing, where it's leading? It can feel luscious, libidinal, friendly, but are we trying to make out something through our kissing? For Kathryn Bond Stockton, making out is a prism through which to look at the cultural and political forces of our world: race, economics, childhood, books, and movies. Making Out is Stockton's memoir about a non-binary childhood before that idea existed in her world. We think about kissing as we accompany Stockton to the bedroom, to the closet, to the playground, to the movies, and to solitary moments with a book, the ultimate source of pleasure.Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidlyan online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Booksspecializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinkinTrade Review"Kathryn Bond Stockton's Making Out is a wonderfully intense experience from start to finish...[It] is a complex examination of the process we go through while trying to understand ourselves within the context of others: faces, kisses, literature, film, and sexual expression with or without the enigma of lips meshing with other lips." -- Popmatters

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisJoan Didion (b. 1934) is an American icon. Her essays, particularly those in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, have resonated in American culture to a degree unmatched over the past half century. Two generations of writers have taken her as the measure of what it means to write personal essays. No one writes about California, the sixties, media narratives, cultural mythology, or migraines without taking Didion into account. She has also written five novels; several screenplays with her husband, John Gregory Dunne; and three late-in-life memoirs, including The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, which have brought her a new wave of renown.Conversations with Joan Didion features seventeen interviews with the author, spanning decades, continents, and genres. Didion reflects on her childhood in Sacramento; her time at Berkeley (both as a student and later as a visiting professor), in New York, and in Hollywood; her marriage to Dunne; and of course her writing

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Book SynopsisIn One Hundred Autobiographies, poet and scholar David Lehman applies the full measure of his intellectual powers to cope with a frightening diagnosis and painful treatment for cancer. No matter how debilitating the medical procedures, Lehman wrote every day during chemotherapy and in the aftermath of radical surgery. With characteristic riffs of wit and imagination, he transmutes the details of his inner life into a prose narrative rich in incident and mental travel. The reader journeys with him from the first dreadful symptoms to the sunny days of recovery.This fake memoir, as he refers ironically to it, features one-hundred short vignettes that tell a life story. One Hundred Autobiographies is packed with insights and epiphanies that may prove as indispensable to aspiring writers as Rilke''s Letters to a Young Poet.Set against the backdrop of Manhattan, Lehman summons John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Edward Said, and Lionel Trilling among his mentors. DostoTrade ReviewPoet and critic Lehman...brilliantly captures the despair, uncertainty, and anger he felt in these 100 short reflections on life, death, and writing. Lehman's exquisite essays illustrate the ways that beauty can flow out of pain. -- Starred Review * Publisher's Weekly *Lehman's memoir pulses with life and memory. * The New York Jewish Week *While in throes of fighting cancer, David Lehman wrote every day he could, as a way of imaginatively affirming his existence and escaping the terrible ordeals of pain, dread, and emotional chaos. First of all figuring out a formal strategy, as expert poets do, Lehman then crafts a brilliant, inventive portrait of a mind, in language in which everything counts. The book's moral seriousness and theological and ancestral powers provide extreme aesthetic pleasure—Lehman's forms of language are forms of life, always life. One Hundred Autobiographies teaches and instructs its fortunate readers, like all great literature, which it is. * Literary Hub *Table of ContentsPreface 1. Execution Poem Expert 2. Spots of Time 3. Café Loup 4. No Big Deal 5. Cancer Alley 6. The Crisis 7. The Aftermath 8. The Procedure 9. The Protocol 10. The Good Kind 11. The Diarist 12. None But the Strong 13. Tropic of Cancer 14. Hospitals and Airports 15. Back to the Waiting Room 16. "Hurry up, please, it's time" 17. Why 1963? 18. Good Friday 19. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate! 20. The Weekend Before 21. "Bladder cancer: Isn't that what Sinatra died of?" 22. In a Technical Sense 23. Five O'Clock Rush 24. A Heart Event 25. Good Show 26. Metaport 27. If You Were an English Poet 28. The Regimen 29. A Few Beacons in the Quicksand 30. What's the Story? 31. Time Is on My Side 32. Rush Job 33. Final Call 34. And Then You Crash 35. Chemo 36. Roid Rage 37. Under the Garden 38. The End 39. Falling in Love Again 40. Nothingness 41. Syllabus 42. Commencement Speech 43. The Exquisite Corpse 44. The Editorial "We" 45. Oblivion 46. Dostoyevsky 47. The Spiritual Connection 48. "Myself, When Stoned" 49. Bloomsday 50. Tom Collins 51. The Admissions Officer 52. Columbia 53. Classic Koch 54. The Poem Team 55. Shakespeare's Birthday 56. Recovery Room 57. The Rebbe 58. Life Beings at Forty 59133. Search for Meaning 60. The Old Religion 61. The Problem of Evil 62. Dean Martin's Hat 63. 740 Francs 64. Shalom Aleichem Rides to the Rescue 65. The Arrival of the Messiah 66. Sabbath Services 67. A Complicated Guy 68. The Patient Next to You 69. Cambridge 70. Armistice Day, 1970 71. The Sublime Pain of Being 72. The Glass Skeleton 73. Why Does the Bridge Not Progress? 74. Q & A 75. Ludlowville, 1981 76. Bio Note (Alt.) 77. Wedding Ceremony 78. Moscow, 2007 79. Group Therapy 80. Fort Tryon Park 81. Fine Invention 82. Identity Theft 83. A Routine Visit 84. Doctor Jew 85. "Except for the cancer..." 86. The Heart Knows 87. A Black Dress 88. Heisenberg as Hero 89. Cheers! 90. Walter Lehmann 91. Rowing in Eden 92. I Remember Mama 93. No Regrets 94. If I Could 95. The Scar 96. The Secret 97. Like a Hurricane 98. In the Eyes of the Beholder 99. Champagne Cocktails 100. In the Swim

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Book SynopsisThe compassionate and redemptive story of a prominent Black woman in the Twin Cities literary community Carolyn Holbrook’s life is peopled with ghosts—of the girl she was, the selves she shed and those who have caught up to her, the wounded and kind and malevolent spirits she’s encountered, and also the beloved souls she’s lost and those she never knew who beg to have their stories told. “Now don’t you go stirring things up,” one ghostly aunt counsels. Another smiles encouragingly: “Don’t hold back, child. Someone out there needs to hear what you have to say.” Once a pregnant sixteen-year-old incarcerated in the Minnesota juvenile justice system, now a celebrated writer, arts activist, and teacher who helps others unlock their creative power, Holbrook has heeded the call to tell the story of her life, and to find among its chapters—the horrific and the holy, the wild and the charmed—the lessons and necessary truths of those who have come before. In a memoir woven of moments of reckoning, she summons stories born of silence, stories held inside, untold stories stifled by pain or prejudice or ignorance. A child’s trauma recalls her own. An abusive marriage returns to haunt her family. She builds a career while raising five children as a single mother; she struggles with depression and grapples with crises immediate and historical, all while countenancing the subtle racism lurking under “Minnesota nice.” Here Holbrook poignantly traces the path from her troubled childhood to her leadership positions in the Twin Cities literary community, showing how creative writing can be a powerful tool for challenging racism and the healing ways of the storyteller’s art. Trade Review"Carolyn Holbrook’s remarkable book testifies to the power of the arts to heal her own life traumas, both historical and more recent. We see and hear her learn to speak up, and to claim space, in a world designed to keep silent or remove people like her."—Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies"Carolyn Holbrook is steadfast in her work to break free of constrictions that harm one’s spirit, knowing them to be racially, economically, and culturally imposed. Honest and perceptive stories of her experiences illuminate how her basic acts to create, over and over again, make for a life whose purpose and meaning resonate with her readers."—Cindy Gehrig, retired president, Jerome Foundation"Carolyn Holbrook's evocative essays show how experience shapes—across generations and within a single lifespan—both writing and the writer. There are important stories here, stories of single parenting, stories of struggle and connection, stories of colorism and of age. There are stories of Black south Minneapolis and the land where Prince emerged, stories of generations that hurt and heal together, and stories of how stories are shaped by all of these things. This is a book about writing, and it is a book about a writer's life that is chaptered by its connection to other lives. Read it."—Susan Raffo, writer, cultural worker, and community organizer"Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify is a powerful portrait of a life fueled by hope and faith in art and the artfulness of self, others, and community. Carolyn Holbrook’s social observations and personal remembrances cut across lines of race, class, and generational divides, deep into the heart of who we all are to one another at our most fundamental level of creative being. You will shiver, laugh, cry, cheer, stomp, want to sing, and, perhaps most indelibly of all, by the grace of this bold book and its author’s beautiful invocation, you too will feel inspired and empowered to write what lives deepest within you back into its vibrant fullness."—Ed Bok Lee, author of Mitochondrial Night"Carolyn Holbrook’s stories are a necessary telling of the history of our city and the roots of its literary community, creating new entrances where there previously were the usual monsters of exclusion and marginalization. These stories blend sincere accounts of her own personal survival, clutching tightly to family and history at every blow, with the contributions of all of these experiences to make a single fascinating lifetime. She teaches us how art and the human survive what was meant to suppress them and that our greatest creations as artists may be found in the ways we care for each other. I am astounded by her generosity of spirit in this book and in her work with those of us fortunate enough to cross her path."—Zeke Caligiuri, author of This Is Where I Am"The organization of the essays is also quite brilliant. It feels like a conversation—albeit one with the most eloquent person I’ve ever talked to."—The Bookish Feminist"This ultimately uplifting collection is candid, vibrant and powerful."—Ms. Magazine"The memoir of Twin Cities writer Carolyn Holbrook is one of fortitude and resilience. . . . During a time when this country seems to be in the midst of a historic reckoning, Holbrook’s story should be read as more than a memoir. She sets out to personalize and underscore the resilience that goes into surviving and thriving without resources."—Star Tribune"Carolyn Holbrook has accomplished wonderful and amazing things—not the least of which is raising five children on her own and earning a doctorate. She encountered obstacles, prejudice, and sexism, and overcame them all, and her story is empowering, uplifting, and inspiring."—Tomorrow Is Another Day"Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify is powerful, touching, and igniting in its messages, its structure, and its reflections."—The Bookish FeministTable of ContentsContentsPrologue: Liza1. My Roots2. Coming Clean3. Tania’s Birthday4. The “Award”5. Finally Independent6. Reflections on Teaching7. Expectations and Assumptions8. How Long Does it Take?9. I Want to Know My Name10. The Bank Robbery11. Neighborhood Watch12. My Daughter, Myself13. Sex and the Single Grandma14. Say What?15. Earth Angels16. Stones and SticksAcknowledgmentsPublication History

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Book SynopsisA gripping, funny, joyful account of how the books you read shape your own life in surprising and profound ways.Bookworms know what scholars of literature are trained to forget: that when they devour a work of literary fiction, whatever else they may be doing, they are reading about themselves. Read Shakespeare, and you become Cleopatra, Hamlet, or Bottom. Or at the very least, you experience the plays as if you are in a small room alone with them, and they are speaking to your life, your sensibility.Drawing on fifty years as a Shakespearean, Leonard Barkan has produced a captivating book that asks us to reconsider what it means to read. Barkan violates the rule of distance he was taught and has always taught his students. He asks: Where does this brilliantly contrived fiction actually touch me? Where is Shakespeare in effect telling the story of my life?King Lear, for Barkan, raises unanswerable questions about what exactly a father does after

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Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1931, this memoir is an unflinching look at the life experience of a woman struggling with identity and isolation. In harrowing yet lyrical prose, Pauline Leader assails her poverty and Jewish heritage and longs to fit in with her "American" peers. Born in 1908, she describes her home life as the daughter of Polish immigrants who run a butcher's market and boarding houses in a small New England town. Frequent beatings and sinister remarks issued by her parents puncture her childhood. At the age of 12, following a long illness, Leader becomes deaf yet another stigma to bear. As a young adult she journeys to New York City where she struggles to find work in factories and sweatshops and seeks social acceptance among the artists and prostitutes of Greenwich Village. For a time she is held in a reformatory for "wayward" girls. Her strong will and fierce independence are often thwarted by severe self-doubt, but through it all, she finds solace through her writing. A new scholarly introduction provides a modern framework for understanding Leader and her times. She persevered and became a published poet and novelist, often drawing on the experiences offered up here. Compelling and evocative, And No Birds Sing deftly reveals a complex, intelligent spirit toiling in a brutal world. From the book: I insisted to myself that I could still hear. I heard in my mind the sounds of streams as I passed them. I knew the sound the river made, that river that I had known always, the river by the marble house. In my mind the river washed with a low intimate sound. I had no need to hear as the people heard. True intimacy needs no ears. I knew the sound of birds; I heard them as they hopped about. I knew the sound of words also. It was words that I most intensely heard. I had not always the river and the birds they appeared far away at times. I did not always want river and birds, but I always wanted words, and I always had them. I would have been terribly lonely without them. With them always in my mind, I could not be truly lonely. I played with them; I set them to music; I achieved endless variations with them. They were never weary, as other things could sometimes be weary.

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