Search results for ""Author Madison Smartt Bell""

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative reads like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.

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The Eye You See With - the first and only collection of Robert Stone’s nonfiction - was carefully selected by award-winning novelist and Stone biographer Madison Smartt Bell. Divided into three sections, the collection includes the best of Stone’s war reporting, his writing on social change, and his reflections on the art of fiction. This is an extraordinary volume that offers up a clear-eyed look at the twentieth century and secures Robert Stone’s place as one of the most original figures in all of American letters.

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"This new and valuable book delves into the 'interior' experience of voodoo, as opposed to the usual outsider focus on ritual and cosmology. In telling the story of her own initiation and painstaking education in voodoo, Beaubrun takes us into the mystical dimensions of this ancient religion."--The Guardian UK Like all the great religions Vodou has an external, public practice of rituals and ceremonies--and also an internal, mystical dimension. Before Nan Domi, works about Vodou have concentrated on the spectacular outward manifestations of Vodou observance--hypnotic drumming and chanting, frenetic dancing, fits of spirit possession. But practically all reports on Vodou are outsider accounts, which means that they are stopped at the threshold. Mimerose Beaubrun, educated as an anthropologist, set out to write another such work, but in the process she met the woman who would become her ultimate teacher and guide to the religion's internal mysteries: Tante Tansia, whose knowledge, wisdom and spiritual power govern the text of Nan Domi. Nan Domi is the only account of Vodou's private, mystical, interior practice that has been offered to the public so far. Its content stands in the same relation to ceremonial Vodou as Zen to conventional Buddhism, Sufism to conventional Islam, the practice of the desert saints to conventional Christianity. Mimerose Beaubrun has been a student of Vodou for half of her life, but she is also an adept, and in this uniquely valuable work, she divests herself of all scholarly apparatus to speak from Vodou's purest heart. This English edition includes a fascinating introduction by Madison Smartt Bell, placing the religion and Beaubrun's memoir in historical context. Praise for Nan Domi: "Mimerose Beaubrun's book Nan Domi: An Initiate's Journey into Haitian Vodou -- the first part of the title refers to a spiritual state -- is a welcome addition to the canon of vodou scholarship, a deeply felt inside account of a faith of often daunting complexity."--The Miami Herald "Nan Domi is a fascinating look inside the Haitian Vodou religion. Mimerose Beaubrun provides a valuable contribution taking us along into the world of Nan Domi, a dream state and stage in the initiate's journey to mastery ...In the process the reader is introduced into a world that is far more than a religious tradition. Haitian Vodou is also a way of speaking about Haiti, as Beaubrun explains, 'its language, culture, even its way of walking, of preparing food, of dressing, of making love, of communicating with unknown worlds.' The book casts its spell on the reader who persists in the journey under the tutelage of Beaubrun and her teachers. Madison Smartt Bell's excellent introduction places the religion and Beaubrun's memoir in historical context."--Julia Alvarez "Vodou is one of the most valuable--and misunderstood--of all New World cultural creations. Mimerose Beaubrun's remarkable work opens up for the first time the internal world of Vodou, and what emerges is a singular engagement with a system of belief that cannot fail to impress any reader with its sheer sophistication and complexity. Gradually, the author recounts the ways in which she came to know the timeless wisdom of Vodou. Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in Haiti, or in religion and society more broadly." --Martin Munro, author and editor of Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010

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Port-au-Prince, the 1960s: Baby Doc Duvalier and his militia are systematically eliminating opponents to the regime. Daniel Leroy, editor in chief of the opposition newspaper, has just been arrested. To find out what has become of him, his wife, Nirvah, visits Raoul Vincent, secretary of state at the Office of Public Safety. This fearsome head of the secret police is instantly smitten, and to ensure her husband’s survival and protect her family, Nirvah submits to the official’s desires. Becoming the mistress of a strongman in the regime is not without its benefits. Still, she has to endure her neighbors’ inquisitive looks and the silent questions of her own children.Kettly Mars’s Savage Seasons describes a pivotal and painful period in Haitian history by weaving together two stories: the personal story of Nirvah and her family and the universal story of Duvalier’s dictatorial regime and its abuses.

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Unavailable for more than fifty years, EIMI finally returns. While sometimes termed a "novel," it is better described as a novelistic travelogue, the diary of a trip to Russia in the 1930s during the rise of the Stalinist government. Despite some contempt for what he witnesses, Cummings's narrator has an effective, occasionally hilarious way of evoking feelings of accord and understanding. As Ezra Pound wrote, Cummings's Soviet Union is laid "out there pellucidly on the page in all its Slavic unfinishedness, in all of its Dostoievskian slobberyness....Does any man wish to know about Russia? 'EIMI'!" A stylistic tour de force, EIMI is a mélange of styles and tones, the prose containing many abbreviations, grammatical and syntactical shifts, typographical devices, compounds, and word coinages. This is Cummings's invigorating and unique voice at its finest, and EIMI is without question one of his most substantial accomplishments.

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