Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisAppearing for the first time in one volume, these trenchant letters tell the eloquent narrative of Orwell’s life in his own words.Trade Review"[A] judiciously chosen selection of some of the most interesting of [his] casual writings…. The result is a much more rounded image of Orwell and his circle…" -- New York Times Book Review"Starred review. Orwell’s keen insight and acerbic wit reverberate throughout these selected letters, culled from more than 10 volumes to offer a comprehensive view of his life and personality…An unusually gratifying read for Orwell enthusiasts and casual readers alike." -- Publishers Weekly"It is the portable Orwell, the condensed autobiography that Orwell never wrote…All [the letters] remain fresh, illuminating the complex paradox that was George Orwell." -- Daily Telegraph"Starred review. Orwell the man truly emerges in these revealing letters; this essential companion volume to the Diaries will be devoured by legions of Orwell fans." -- Library Journal"Beautifully edited…One of the glories of this volume is that it shows Orwell in the round, complete with all his human idiosyncracies and contradictions. [Peter Davison’s] attention to detail is nothing short of heroic…This is the authentic Orwell voice: wonderfully clear and fresh and forthright." -- Mail on Sunday"This new edition of Orwell’s letters is imperative for anyone who wishes to earn a larger understanding of the twentieth century’s most potent essayist." -- William Giraldi - The New Republic"Any Orwell admirer will be grateful for Davison’s industry in carving out manageable chunks from the millions of words Orwell wrote, and for all except the most fanatical, this will be plenty. There are pleasures and surprises on every page." -- Andrew Ferguson - The American Spectator"[Orwell’s] critique of the political and economic systems that create and justify poverty and his personal courage in the face of threats to freedom and injustice remain as relevant and inspirational for us today as they were in the years leading to and following World War II…. The George Orwell that Davison presents to us is an appealing one: indefatigable writer, generous friend, champion of the poor and oppressed, avid gardener and outdoorsman…. If Davison’s compilation of Orwell’s letters, which help fill out our understanding of this oft-caricatured writer, can draw readers more deeply into the life and catalogue of George Orwell, then he will have accomplished an important objective." -- James Lang - America: The National Catholic Weekly"In distilling the 1,700 letters written by Orwell, Davison set himself two goals: the letters should illustrate his life and hopes, and “each should be of interest in its own right.” This volume admirably fulfills this twofold mission; it is a tribute to Davison’s decades-long scholarship on Orwell’s life." -- Daniel P. King - World Literature Today

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Portico Prize for Nonfiction Nineteen days, 256 miles, and one renowned poet walking the backbone of England.Trade Review"Part pilgrimage and part stunt… He writes with self-effacing humor and mixes a few of his own poems with memoir, natural history, and literary reflections… Though Armitage complains at times that the Pennine Way is an ‘unglamorous slog among soggy, lonely moors' …his account is never a slog for the reader." -- New Yorker"Never showy or excitable, his prose has a steady, phlegmatic, gently propulsive rhythm perfectly suited to the matter at hand, his sentences in tune with his feet." -- The Wall Street Journal"The walk is serious, but Armitage knows how to have fun along the way . . . managing a surprise ending that feels, psychically, satisfying." -- Boston Globe"Entertaining…Walking Home riffs on the ancient correlation between itinerancy and story-telling, with embedded tales of varying tallness coming and going in an almost casual manner." -- The Guardian"What makes Armitage’s pilgrimage special is that he attempts to fuel it on poetry alone. . . . [T]his is an adventure story, compellingly and humorously told." -- Daily Beast"Walking Home fits into the classic unnecessary journey genre, with a cast of local characters and transcendent moments…And never will reading about a hot shower and some foot ointment be quite so enjoyable." -- The Independent"Starred review. [A]n ingenious idea for a journey and a brilliant idea for a book, which includes some of his poems. In this entertaining jaunt through rural Britain and unpredictable weather, part travel guide and part memoir, Armitage describes his adventures, from collie dogs growling at his heels and “mean-looking cows” to the unbridled generosity of strangers. A travel gem." -- Booklist"Lovely… Armitage’s account is so observant, so funny and so intensely likeable you leave it wishing he’d picked a longer route. The dialogue is note-perfect and the jokes alone are worth the journey. And at the end of it all, Armitage has achieved far more than his stated ambition. Walking Home tells us not just about the bones of Britain, but about the connections still to be forged between people and print, and the everlasting power of an open heart." -- The Telegraph"[Armitage] displays a sharp appreciation of place, both in its unique contours and its mystery…doling out small stories—about the people he walks with or the history of the landscape, the misery of midges or the terror of a deep fog high in the Uplands—that flash like sun on chrome." -- Kirkus

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Book SynopsisAt the height of the sixties, a group of Texas writers - the Mad Dogs: Bud Shrake, Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, and Peter Gent - stood apart from Texas's conservative establishment. Steven L. Davis makes extensive use of untapped literary archives to weave a fascinating portrait of writers who came of age during a period of rapid social change.Trade ReviewTheir personalities and the lives they lived were so fascinating that it was easy to get distracted. But the superb writing will be there long after these incredibly talented men are gone. . . . This book captures it all."" - Ann Richards""Davis captures the group and their times so well that one could almost believe he was standing somewhere in the shadows observing these men as they played out the events of their lives."" - Southwestern Historical Quarterly""Fascinating . . . a vivid account of their extraordinary lives as well as a no-holds-barred examination of their work."" - Houston Chronicle

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Book SynopsisAnalyses the elitist view of some of the most highly respected literary icons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This devastating attack on the intellectuals exposes the loathing which the mass of humanity ignited in many of the virtual founders of modern culture: Pound, Joyce, Forster, Woolf, Eliot and others. Professor Carey compares their detestation of common humanity to Nietzche, whose philosophy helped to create the atmosphere leading to the rise of Adolph Hitler.

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Book SynopsisHenry James, renowned as one of the world’s great novelists, was also one of the most illuminating, audacious, and masterly critics of modern times. This Library of America volume and its companion are a fitting testimony to his unprecedented achievement. They offer the only comprehensive collection of his critical writings ever assembled, more than one-third of which have never appeared in book form.This first volume focuses especially on his responses to American and English writers; the second volume contains his essays on European literature and the Prefaces to the New York Edition of his fiction.From 1864 until virtually the end of his life, James displayed an astonishing range and catholicity of critical interests, touching on nearly every facet of literature in America, England, and Europe. Here are his most important theoretical essays, including his witty and daring declarations of the novelist’s freedom in “The Art of Fiction,” “T

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Book SynopsisThis volume of the BDMP series charts the genesis of three iconic Beckett plays: Not I (1973), That Time (1976) and Footfalls (1976), all translated into French by their author. Including analyses of abandoned archival precursors the Kilcool' drafts (1963) and the Petit Odéon' Fragments (19671968) the book covers a crucial period in Beckett's playwriting career, during which his long-held ambition to stage a mouth babbling in the dark became a catalyst for some of his most innovative work. This volume provides a comprehensive guide to the history of the three plays, tracking their development from compositional manuscripts through to publication and performance. The book contends that these plays should be seen as stagings of the subjectobject breakdown explored in Beckett's early writing. Drawing on the notes he took on psychology and psychoanalysis in 19341935, it examines the many psychological and psychoanalytic concepts that are used in the aut

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Book SynopsisColette Nic Aodha is a writer, artist, teacher, and researcher in Ireland.

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Book SynopsisAn authoritative guide to American literature, this Companion examines the experimental forms, socio-cultural changes, literary movements, and major authors of the early 20th century. This Companion provides authoritative and wide-ranging guidance on early twentieth-century American fiction. Considers commonly studied authors such as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, alongside key texts of the period by Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anzia Yezierska Examines how the works of these diverse writers have been interpreted in their own day and how current readings have expanded our understanding of their cultural and literary significance Covers a broad range of topics, including the First and Second World Wars, literary language differences, author celebrity, the urban landscape, modernism, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, regionalism, and African-American fiction Gives students the contextual Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors vii Chronology xi Acknowledgments xviii Introduction 1 1 Turning the Century 17Michael A. Elliott and Jennifer A. Hughes 2 Women and Modernity 37Jennifer L. Fleissner 3 Queer Modernity and Lesbian Representation 57Kathryn R. Kent 4 Markets and “Gatekeepers” 77Loren Glass 5 Manhood, Modernity, and Crime Fiction 94David Schmid 6 American Sentences: Terms, Topics, and Techniques in Stylistic Analysis 113Paul Simpson and Donald E. Hardy 7 The Great Gatsby as Mobilization Fiction: Rethinking Modernist Prose 132Keith Gandal 8 Modernism’s History of the Dead 158Michael Szalay 9 The Radical 1930s 186Alan M. Wald 10 Racial Uplift and the Politics of African American Fiction 205Gene Andrew Jarrett 11 The Modernism of Southern Literature 228Florence Dore 12 Cosmopolis 253Mary Esteve 13 Other Modernisms 275John Carlos Rowe Index 295

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Book SynopsisThrough a wide-ranging series of essays and relevant readings, A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction presents an overview of American fiction published since the conclusion of the First World War. Features a wide-ranging series of essays by American, British, and European specialists in a variety of literary fields Written in an approachable and accessible style Covers both classic literary figures and contemporary novelists Provides extensive suggestions for further reading at the end of each essay Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 David Seed Part I Genres, Traditions, and Subject Areas 9 1 U.S. Modernism 11 Susan Hegeman 2 The City Novel 24 James R. Giles 3 The Western 36 Neil Campbell 4 Postmodern U.S. Fiction 48 Hans Bertens 5 Modern Gothic 60 Marilyn Michaud 6 The Short Story 72 Mark Whalan 7 Southern Fiction 84 Sharon Monteith 8 Jewish American Fiction 96 David Brauner 9 "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me": Modern African American Fiction 109 A. Robert Lee 10 U.S. Detective Fiction 122 Cynthia S. Hamilton 11 Hard-Boiled/Noir Fiction 135 Lee Horsley 12 Chicano Fiction 147 Helen Oakley 13 Black Humor Fiction 159 David Seed 14 Fiction on the Vietnam War 171 Philip Melling and Subarno Chattarji 15 The Rediscovery of the Native American 183 Joy Porter 16 Trash Fiction 195 Stacey Olster Part II Selected Writers 207 17 Edith Wharton 209 Pamela Knights 18 Willa Cather's Entropology: Permanence and Transmission 219 Guy J. Reynolds 19 Gertrude Stein and Seriality 229 Ulla Haselstein 20 Ernest Hemingway 240 Peter Messent 21 John Dos Passos 251 Andrew Hook and David Seed 22 Thomas Wolfe 261 Anne Ricketson Zahlan 23 F. Scott Fitzgerald 271 William Blazek 24 Zora Neale Hurston 282 Lovalerie King 25 Theodore Dreiser 292 Clare Virginia Eby 26 William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha 302 Charles A. Peek 27 H.D.'s Visionary Prose 313 Rachel Connor 28 John Steinbeck 322 Brian Railsback 29 Raymond Chandler 332 Sean McCann 30 Richard Wright 342 Tara T. Green 31 Ralph Ellison 352 Rachel Farebrother 32 James Baldwin 361 D. Quentin Miller 33 Vladimir Nabokov 369 Barbara Wyllie 34 Norman Mailer 377 Michael K. Glenday 35 William S. Burroughs 386 Davis Schneiderman 36 Saul Bellow 395 Michael Austin 37 Gore Vidal 403 Heather Neilson 38 Joseph Heller 411 David M. Craig 39 Kurt Vonnegut 420 Jerome Klinkowitz 40 Thomas Pynchon 428 Ian Copestake 41 Ishmael Reed: American Iconoclast 436 Darryl Dickson-Carr 42 Joyce Carol Oates 445 Gavin Cologne-Brookes 43 Philip Roth 454 Timothy Parrish 44 The Fiction of John Updike: Timely and Timeless 462 Brian Keener 45 Maxine Hong Kingston 471 Helena Grice 46 Toni Morrison 480 Jennifer Terry 47 Alice Walker 489 Maria Lauret 48 Don DeLillo 497 Mark Osteen 49 Gerald Vizenor: Postindian Gamester 505 A. Robert Lee 50 Bret Easton Ellis 514 James Annesley 51 Amy Tan: "American Circumstances and Chinese Character" 522 Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson 52 Paul Auster: Poet of Solitude 530 Mark Brown 53 Bharati Mukherjee 539 Judie Newman Index 547

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Book SynopsisNovel Characters offers a fascinating and in-depth history of the novelistic character from the birth of the novel in Don Quixote, through the great canonical works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the most influential international novels of the present day An original study which offers a unique approach to thinking about and discussing character Makes extensive reference to both traditional and more recent and specialized academic studies of the novel Provides a critical vocabulary for understanding how the novelistic conception of character has changed over time. Examines a broad range of novels, cultures, and periods Promotes discussion of how different cultures and times think about human identity, and how the concept of what a character is has changed over time Table of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgments. 1 Introduction: Novel Characters. Where Do the Novel's Characters Come From? Surprising Characters. Novel Types. I Wholes. 2 Originals. Quixote: Or the Originality of Imitators. Original Claims and Final Reckonings. The English Original. Conversations with an Original. And Now for Our Heroines. 3 Individuals. Persuasions. Women of Character. Aristocrats and Commoners. The Incomparables. II Fractions. 4 Selves/Identities. Me and Mine. Visualizing the Self. All in All. The Final Me. Identities. III Compounds. 5 Native Cosmopolitans. Native Cosmopolitans. Stereotypes and Mimic Men. The New Man and the Native Cosmopolitan. Index.

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Book SynopsisPart of the Blackwell Manifestos series, The State of the Novel offers a lively, yet rigorous investigation into the state and future of the contemporary British novel written by an expert in the field. Evaluates the state of the serious literary' novel and novel criticism Prominent treatment is paid to the internationalization' of the novel in English Offers a manifesto on contemporary fiction from an expert in this field; Dominic Head is best known for his Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction 1950-2000 Establishes the shared interests of contemporary theorists of the novel, cultural commentators, and novel consumers An ideal supplementary text for students and faculty interested in the novel and contemporary fiction Trade Review"All these chapters are readable, often stimulating, and full of reference to a range of sources and instances." (Textual Practice, 2009) "Head contemplates the contemporary novel and its readers, scholarly and general, offering a reminder of the form's potential. Serious fiction interrogates social and political issues and plays an important part in the ‘process of acculturation’ and in the formation of identity and understanding of the self.” (CHOICE, March 2009) "The first half of Head's book benefits from a tight focus on analysing the relationship between the contemporary cultural fields on England and the US, and the literary novel genre … .I particularly liked the readings Head offers of the peculiarly British sub-genre of the 'seaside novel' ". (Times Higher Education Supplement, January 2009)Table of ContentsIntroduction. 1. The Post-Consensus Renaissance? 2. The Novel and Cultural Life in Britain. 3. Assimilating Multiculturalism. 4. Terrorism in Transatlantic Perspective. 5. Global Futures: Novelists, Critics, Citizens. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisThis book will be of interest to scholars of Anglophone literary modernism and to musicologists interested in how music was given new literary and cultural meaning during that complex interdisciplinary period.Trade ReviewEpstein commands an impressively wide field of reference and his writing is always lively, richly textured and colourful - sometimes brilliantly so... Sublime Noise is a thought-provoking study, densely packed with intelligent connections and highly resonant. Times Literary Supplement ... he writes beautifully, has researched widely and deeply, and is clearly in command of his material. The most admirable thing about this exquisitely dilatory book is that each sentence has its own rhythm. James Joyce QuarterlyTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Orchestrating Modernity: Musical Culture and the Arts of Noise2. Beating Obedient, Thinking of the Key: Adorno, The Waste Land, and the Total Work of Art3. The Antheil Era: Ezra Pound's MusicalSensations4. Joyce's Phoneygraphs5. Performing Publicity: Authenticity, Influence, andthe Sitwellian Commedia6. Aristocracy of the Dissonant: The Sublime Noise of Forster and BrittenNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis captivating book-the first of its kind-will appeal to scholars of literature, music, theater, and modernity as well as to sophisticated opera lovers everywhere.Trade ReviewThe often-vexed societal reception of modernism and opera is foreboding testimony to the necessity for this book, which is the first collection of its kind... Essential. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Richard Begam and Matthew Wilson SmithIntroduction Part OneWorld War I and Before: Crises of Gender and Theatricality 1. Matthew Wilson Smith"Laughing at the Redeemer: Kundry and the Paradox of Parsifal" 2. Daniel Albright "Materlinck, Debussy and Modernism" 3. Klara Moricz "Echoes of the Self: Cosmic Loneliness in Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle" Part TwoInterwar Modernism: Movement and Countermovement 4. Bryan Gilliam"The Great War and Its Aftermath: Straussand Hofmannthal's 'Third-Way Modernism'" 5. Bernadette Meyler "Adorno's Shifting Wozzeck" 6. Derek Katz"Many Modernisms, Two Makropulos Cases:Capek, Janacek and the Shifting Avant-Gardes of Inter-war Prague" 7. Richard Begam"Schoenberg, Modernism and Degeneracy" 8. Cyrena Pondrom"Gertrude Stein, Minimalism and Modern Opera" Part ThreeOpera after World War II: Tensions of Institutional Modernism 9. Herbert S. Lindenberger, "Stravinsky, Auden and the Mid-Century Modernism of The Rake's Progress" 10. Irene Morra " Gloriana and the New Elizabethan Age" 11. Linda and Michael Hutcheon"One Saint in Eight Tableaux: The Untimely Modernism of Olivier Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise" 12. Joy H. Calico" Saariaho's L'amour de loin: Modernist Opera in the Twenty-First Century" Notes on ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisA compelling revision of the history of experimental writing from Pound and Stein to Language poetry, disclosing its uses and its limits. In this bold new study of twentieth-century American writing and poetics, Natalia Cecire argues that experimental writing should be understood as a historical phenomenon before it is understood as a set of formal phenomena. This seems counterintuitive because, at its most basic level, experimental writing can be thought of as writing which breaks from established forms. Touching on figures who are not typically considered experimental, such as Stephen Crane, Jacob Riis, Busby Berkeley, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Gottlob Frege, Experimental offers a fresh look at authors who are often treated as constituting a center or an origin point of an experimental literary tradition in the United States, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore. In responding to a crisis of legitimization in the production of knowledge, thTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Experimental2. Flash3. Objectivity4. Precision5. ContactCoda. Future TextsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisReading the Contemporary Irish Novel 19872007 is the authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last 25 years. Meticulously researched, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of Ireland's most eminent writers. This is the first text-focused critical survey of the Irish novel from 1987 to 2007, providing detailed readings of 11 seminal Irish novels A timely and much needed text in a largely uncharted critical field Provides detailed interpretations of individual novels by some of the country's most critically celebrated writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien and Colm Tóibín Investigates the ways in which Irish novels have sought to deal with and reflect a changing Ireland The fruit of many years reading, teaching and research on the subject by a leading and highly respected academic in Trade Review“In addition to developing intellectually bold arguments, Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is also enjoyable to read – an enviable achievement for any academic book. There is an ease to Harte’s style and a lightness of touch in the way he deals with an expansive range of socio-historical contexts that makes this book deserving of a broad readership beyond the walls of the university.” (Irish Studies Review, 18 March 2015). “It offers an excellent primer in each chapter that I can easily imagine being of great use not only to students of literature, but also to those of us engaged in the work of teaching and studying such works.” (New Madrid, 1 October 2015). “Students and scholars of Irish literature, history, and culture will find much to admire in this wide-ranging book; not only is it an insightful complement to Harte’s other monographs but also it is especially valuable to those teaching the Irish novel.” (College Literature, Summer 2018). “All in all, an accomplished and insightful critical success. Harte brings wide reading to his analyses and great light to the novels he discusses in depth. Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is must reading for Irish Studies scholars.” (New Hibernia Review, Spring 2016). “Harte’s readings demonstrate the kind of fluency and comprehensiveness that one has come to expect of his criticism.” (South Carolina Review, Spring 2016). “As a guide to some of the major issues and concerns of Ireland in the last thirty years and how writers have dealt with them, this is a substantial engagement with the field.” (Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, 19 March 2015). Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ix Introduction: Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987–2007 1 1 In the FamilyWay: Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy (1987–1991) 23 2 House Arrest: John McGahern’s Amongst Women (1990) 51 3 Malignant Shame: Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1992) 75 4 Uncertain Terms, Unstable Sands: Colm T´ oib´ýn’s The Heather Blazing (1992) 105 5 Unbearable Proximities:William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey (1994) 127 6 History’s Hostages: Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation (1994) 151 7 Shadows in the Air: Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark (1996) 173 8 The Politics of Pity: Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way (2005) 197 9 Mourning Remains Unresolved: Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007) 217 Bibliography 243 Index 259

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Book SynopsisThe romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre has been celebrated as one of the greatest of the 20th century. From the beginning, their relationship was a tumultuous one, in which the couple’s excesses were as widely known as their passion for each other. Despite their love, both Scott and Zelda engaged in flirtations that threatened to tear the couple apart. But none had a more profound impact on the two—and on Scott’s writing—as the liaison between Zelda and a French aviator, Edouard Jozan. Though other biographies have written of Jozan as one of Scott’s romantic rivals, accounts of the pilot’s effect on the couple have been superficial at best. In The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic, Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance between the southern belle and the French pilot from a fresh perspective. Drawing on conversations and correspondence with Jozan’s daughter, as well as materials from the Jozan family archives, Taylor sheds new light on this romantic triangle. More than just a casual fling, Zelda’s tryst with Edouard affected Scott as much as it did his wife—and ultimately influenced the author’s most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. Were it not for Zelda’s affair with the pilot, Scott’s novel might be less about betrayal and more about lost illusions. Exploring the private motives of these public figures, Taylor offers new explanations for their behavior. In addition to the love triangle that included Jozan, Taylor also delves into an earlier event in Zelda’s life—a sexual assault she suffered as a teenager—one that affected her future relationships. Both a literary study and a probing look at an iconic couple’s psychological makeup, The Gatsby Affair offers readers a bold interpretation of how one of America’s greatest novels was influenced.Trade ReviewTaylor’s work leaves readers with a colorful portrait of a stormy chapter in the Fitzgeralds’ life and its far-reaching consequences. * Publishers Weekly *Meticulously researched, the author’s attention to detail creates an immersion into the Jazz Age and highlights previously unknown events that offer explanations for both Fitzgerald and Zelda’s recklessness and approach to life. Much has been documented about their tumultuous relationship, but Taylor examines the couple’s dependence on each other through an unfiltered lens that reveals the life events that shaped their existence and, ultimately, their demise. The author’s skill at discovering new information on the uninhibited couple’s past encounters connects the previously missing pieces and establishes a multi-dimensional picture of these passionate individuals. * US Review of Books *The Gatsby Affair is highly atmospheric and does an incredible job explaining the time period, how Zelda and Scott met, and the context of the affair. * FangirlNation *Who is Edouard Jozan? The intriguing mystery man in the saga of Scott and Zelda has long eluded literary sleuths. In a stunning feat of research, Kendall Taylor brings the French aviator out of the shadows to reveal how he influenced the writing of a classic novel and left his mark on the marriage of an iconic couple. This is an important, richly detailed biography that will deepen our understanding of American literature. -- Marion Meade, author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?Kendall Taylor rips the lid off one of the world’s great literary mysteries—the love triangle between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and French aviator Edouard Jozan. Brimming with strong research and enchanted writing, Taylor’s engaging account of the love affair and its consequences is sure to stir fans eager to dig into this absorbing chapter in the lives of Scott and Zelda. -- Bob Batchelor, author of Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel and Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American NovelThis new telling of Zelda’s affair with French pilot Edouard Jozan is powerfully rendered, thanks to Kendall Taylor’s laudable research. By interweaving bits from Scott and Zelda’s novels, Taylor shows how the French pilot triggered ever deepening fractures in the Fitzgerald marriage, and brings a heart-wrenching light to their lives and their work. -- Sally Ryder Brady, author of A Box of Darkness: The Story of a MarriageWith admirable scholarship, Kendall Taylor takes the reader on a journey into the complex heart of the Jazz Era. Probing the volatile Fitzgerald marriage, she shows the destructive forces unleashed by infidelity, and portrays Zelda as a suppressed creator in her own right. An absorbing study of one of the most fascinating couples of the twentieth century. -- Mary McAuliffe, author of When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their FriendsWhile the line, 'Rich girls don’t marry poor boys,' isn’t actually in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby, that line is in at least one film version and is a perfect summation of Fitzgerald’s personal mythology as it appears in his most famous book. What Kendall Taylor does in her latest book The Gatsby Affair is masterful in her examination of the rich girl—Zelda Sayre—who did marry the poor boy—Fitzgerald—but whose love was as much about betrayal and pain as it was about joy and celebration. . . . [Taylor's] prose is passionate, dense, and masterful in its revelation of the immediate attraction between the two. . . . For fans of Fitzgerald’s work, or those just interested in exploring the difficult and tragic love lives of two of America’s literary giants, The Gatsby Affair is a must read. * Seattle Book Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface Chapter 1: Recklessness in the Making Chapter 2: Seeds of Discontent Chapter 3: The French Lieutenant Chapter 4: A Mistress Not a Wife Chapter 5: Truly a Sad Story Chapter 6: Retribution and Remorse Chapter 7: Locked Away Chapter 8: No Hope Salvaged Chapter 9: An Ailment No One Could Cure Chapter 10: All In Disarray Chapter 11: A Mind Washed Clean Chronology Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisTwenty Poems That Could Save America presents insightful essays on the craft of poetry and a bold conversation about the role of poetry in contemporary culture. Essays on the ''vertigo'' effects of new poetry give way to appraisals of Robert Bly, Sharon Olds and Dean Young. At the heart of this book is an honesty and curiosity about the ways poetry can influence America at both a private and public level. Tony Hoagland is already one of this country''s most provocative poets, and this book confirms his role as a restless and perceptive literary critic.

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Book SynopsisThe complete autobiography of a literary legend.Trade Review"The story of Baraka's metamorphosis is itself part of the story of contemporary literature's development." -- Publishers Weekly"Always a nuance ahead of everybody else, he is our more original writers. Nobody else comes close." --Ishmael Reed"He is regarded by those closest to Black art as the nation's leading Black writer, which of course suggests that no other, however talented, has proven--in this time and place--more valuable to Black people." -- Ebony

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Book SynopsisRobert Duncan (1919-1988), one of the major postwar American poets, was an adulated figure among his contemporaries, including Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Denise Levertov. Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked that Duncan "had the best ear this side of Dante." His stature is increasingly recognized as comparable to that of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Louis Zukofsky.   Like his poetry, Duncan''s conversation is generative and multi-directional, pushing out the boundaries of discourse. His recorded reflections are a means of discovery and exploration, and whether talking with a college student or a fellow poet, he was fully engaged and open to new thoughts as they emerged. The exchanges in this book are exciting and lively.   His vast and wide-ranging knowledge offers readers an increased understanding of the interrelations of the arts, history, psychology, and science; those who would like to learn about Duncan''s own life, his bravery in being an out gay man well before Stonewall, and his friendships with fellow writers, such as Charles Olson, Jack Spicer, and Kenneth Rexroth, will find this book richly rewarding.   The six volumes of Duncan''s collected writings are being issued by the University of California Press. The collected interviews are an indispensable companion to these books, providing an in-depth exposition of his poetics, which center on the belief that the poem is "a medium for the life of the spirit." In A Poet''s Mind, he describes the genesis of some of his works, including that of books, essays, and individual poems, and also discusses gay love and life, along with the many diverse influences on his work. Ducan''s fertile creative mind is also evident in these conversations: often coming back to Ezra Pound in these conversations, he gives one of the clearest expositions to be found anywhere on the scope and meaning of The Cantos. This volume also includes a number of photographs never before published.

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Book SynopsisA deeply considered and provocative new look at major American writers—including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden—Edward Mendelson’s Moral Agents is also a work of critical biography in the great tradition of Plutarch, Samuel Johnson, and Emerson. Any important writer, in Mendelson’s view, writes in response to an idea of the good life that is inseparable from the life the writer lives.  Fusing biography and criticism and based on extensive new research, Moral Agents presents challenging new portraits of eight writers—novelists, critics, and poets—who transformed American literature in the turbulent twentieth century. Eight sharply distinctive individuals—inspired, troubled, hugely ambitious—who reimagined what it means to be a writer. There’s Saul Bellow, a novelist determined to rule as a patriarch, who, having been neglected by his father, in turn neglected his son in favor of young writers who presented themselves as his literary heirs. Norman Mailer’s extraordinary ambition, suppressed insecurity, and renegade metaphysics muddled the novels through which he hoped to change the world, yet these same qualities endowed him with an uncanny sensitivity and deep sympathy to the pathologies of American life that make him an unequaled political reporter. William Maxwell wrote sad tales of small-town life and surrounded himself with a coterie of worshipful admirers. As a powerful editor at The New Yorker, he exercised an enormous and constraining influence on American fiction that is still felt today. Preeminent among the critics is Lionel Trilling, whose Liberal Imagination made him a celebrity sage of the anxiously tranquilized 1950s, even as his calculated image of Olympian reserve masked a deeply conflicted life and contributed to his ultimately despairing worldview. Dwight Macdonald, by contrast, was a haute-WASP anarchist and aesthete driven by an exuberant moral commitment, in a time of cautious mediocrity, to doing the right thing. Alfred Kazin, from a poor Jewish émigré background, remained an outsider at the center of literary New York, driven both to escape from and do justice to the deepest meanings of his Jewish heritage. Perhaps most intriguing are the two poets, W.H. Auden and Frank O’Hara. Early in his career, Auden was tempted to don the mantle of the poet as prophet, but after his move from England to America he lived and wrote in a spirit of modesty and charity born out of a deeply idiosyncratic understanding of Christianity. O’Hara, tireless partygoer and pioneering curator at MoMA, wrote much of his poetry for private occasions. Its lasting power has proven to be something different from its avant-garde reputation: personal warmth, individuality, rootedness in ancient traditions, and openness to the world.

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Book SynopsisJonathan Lethem, editor "The most outré science fiction writer of the 20th century has finally entered the canon," exclaimed Wired Magazine upon The Library of America's May 2007 publication of Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s, edited by Jonathan Lethem. Now comes a companion volume collecting five novels that offer a breathtaking overview of the range of this science-fiction master. Philip K. Dick (1928-82) was a writer of incandescent imagination who made and unmade world-systems with ferocious rapidity and unbridled speculative daring. "The floor joists of the universe," he once wrote, "are visible in my novels." Martian Time-Slip (1964) unfolds on a parched and thinly colonized Red Planet where schizophrenia is a contagion and the unscrupulous seek to profit from a troubled child's time-fracturing visions. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965) chronicles the deeply-interwoven stories of a multi-racial community of survivors, including the scientist who may have been responsible for World War III. Famous, among other reasons, for a therapy session involving a talking taxicab, Now Wait for Last Year (1966) explores the effects of JJ-180, a hallucinogen that alters not only perception, but reality. In Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), a television star seeks to unravel a mystery that has left him stripped of his identity. A Scanner Darkly (1977), the basis for the 2006 film, envisions a drug-addled world in which a narcotics officer's tenuous hold on sanity is strained by his new surveillance assignment: himself. Mixing metaphysics and madness, phantasmagoric visions of a post-nuclear world and invading extraterrestrial authoritarians, and all-too-real evocations of the drugged-out America of the 70s, Dick's work remains exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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