Search results for ""author linda wagner-martin""

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 1950 TO THE PRESENT Featuring works from notable authors as varied as Salinger and the Beats to Vonnegut, Capote, Morrison, Rich, Walker, Eggers, and DeLillo, A History of American Literature: 1950 to the Present offers a comprehensive analysis of the wide range of literary works produced in the United States over the last six decades and a fascinating survey of the dramatic changes during America’s transition from the innocence of the fifties to the harsh realities of the first decade of the new millennium. Author Linda Wagner-Martin - a highly acclaimed authority on all facets of modern American literature - covers major works of drama, poetry, fiction, non- fiction, memoirs, and popular genres such as science fiction and detective novels. Viewing works produced during this fertile literary period from a wide-ranging perspective, Wagner-Martin considers literature in relation to such issues as the politics of civil rights, feminism, sexual preferences, and race- and gender-based marketing. She also places a special emphasis on works produced during the twenty-first century, and writings influenced by recent historic events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the global financial crisis. With its careful balance of scholarly precision and accessibility, A History of American Literature: 1950 to the Present provides readers of all levels with rich and revealing insights into the diversity of literary forms and influences that characterize postmodern America. “A monumental distillation of an enormous range of material, Wagner-Martin’s rich book should be required reading for anyone grappling with making sense of the prolific, broad-spectrum, and diverse writing in the US since 1950.”Thadious M. Davis, University of Pennsylvania “Linda Wagner-Martin’s history impressively and judiciously surveys all fields of American writing over the past sixty years, taking full account of significant cultural and historical contexts and the major critical commentaries that have helped shape our understanding of developments in the second half of the last century and the dozen years following the millennium. Balanced, informative, and always highly readable there is much here for general readers, students, and specialists alike.”Christopher MacGowan, the College of William and Mary

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A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 1950 TO THE PRESENT Featuring works from notable authors as varied as Salinger and the Beats to Vonnegut, Capote, Morrison, Rich, Walker, Eggers, and DeLillo, A History of American Literature: 1950 to the Present offers a comprehensive analysis of the wide range of literary works produced in the United States over the last six decades and a fascinating survey of the dramatic changes during America’s transition from the innocence of the fifties to the harsh realities of the first decade of the new millennium. Author Linda Wagner-Martin - a highly acclaimed authority on all facets of modern American literature - covers major works of drama, poetry, fiction, non- fiction, memoirs, and popular genres such as science fiction and detective novels. Viewing works produced during this fertile literary period from a wide-ranging perspective, Wagner-Martin considers literature in relation to such issues as the politics of civil rights, feminism, sexual preferences, and race- and gender-based marketing. She also places a special emphasis on works produced during the twenty-first century, and writings influenced by recent historic events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the global financial crisis. With its careful balance of scholarly precision and accessibility, A History of American Literature: 1950 to the Present provides readers of all levels with rich and revealing insights into the diversity of literary forms and influences that characterize postmodern America. “A monumental distillation of an enormous range of material, Wagner-Martin’s rich book should be required reading for anyone grappling with making sense of the prolific, broad-spectrum, and diverse writing in the US since 1950.”Thadious M. Davis, University of Pennsylvania “Linda Wagner-Martin’s history impressively and judiciously surveys all fields of American writing over the past sixty years, taking full account of significant cultural and historical contexts and the major critical commentaries that have helped shape our understanding of developments in the second half of the last century and the dozen years following the millennium. Balanced, informative, and always highly readable there is much here for general readers, students, and specialists alike.”Christopher MacGowan, the College of William and Mary

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Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Life includes new research on the best-known of the posthumous publications: A Moveable Feast, 1964 (and the 2009 A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition); Islands in the Stream, 1970; and The Garden of Eden, 1986. Linda Wagner-Martin provides background and intertextual readings—particularly of the way Hemingway’s unpublished stories (“Phillip Haines was a writer”) and his fiction from Men Without Women and Winner Take Nothing interface with the memoir. The revised edition also highlights and provides background on Hemingway’s treatment of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, his life in Paris in the 1920s, and his connection to the poetry scene there—putting this in conversation with Mary Hemingway’s edits of A Moveable Feast. The new chapters also illuminate the reception of Islands in the Stream and a new way of understanding the role of gender and androgyny in The Garden of Eden. On a whole, the book draws from extensive archival research, particularly correspondence of all four of Hemingway’s wives.

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Placing herself in the avid reader’s chair, Linda Wagner-Martin writes about women’s biography from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Mead, and even to Cher and Elizabeth Taylor. Along the way, she looks at dozens of other life stories, probing at the differences between biographies of men and women, prevailing stereotypes about women’s lives and roles, questions about what is public and private, and the hazy margins between autobiography, biography, and other genres. In quick paced and wide-ranging discussions, she looks at issues of authorial stance (who controls the narrative? who chooses which story to tell?), voice (is this story told in the traditional objective tone? and if it is, what effect does that telling have on our reading?), and the politics of publishing (why aren’t more books about women’s lives published? and when they are, what happens to their advertising budgets?). She discusses the problems of writing biography of achieving women who were also wives (how does the biographer balance the two?), of daughters who attempt to write about their mothers, and of husbands trying to portray their wives.Telling Women’s Lives is the first overview of the writing and the history of biographies about women. It is a significant contribution to the reassessment of the work of the hundreds of women writers who have made a difference in our conception of what women’s stories--and women’s lives--have been, and are becoming. The book is a must read for anyone who loves reading biographies, particularly biographies of women.

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Walt Whitman: A Literary Life highlights two major influences on Whitman’s poetry and life: the American Civil War and his economic condition. Linda Wagner-Martin performs a close reading of many of Whitman’s poems, particularly his Civil War work (in Drum-Taps) and those poems written during the last twenty years of his life. Wagner-Martin’s study also emphasizes the near-poverty that Whitman experienced. Starting with his early career as a printer and journalist, the book moves to the publication of Leaves of Grass, and his cultivation of the persona of the “working-class” writer. In addition to establishing Whitman’s attention to the Civil War through journalism and memoirs, the book takes the approach of following Whitman’s life through his poems. Utilizing contemporary perspectives on class, Wagner-Martin provides a new reading of Whitman’s economic situation. This is an accessibly written synthesis of Whitman’s publication history bringing attention to under-studied aspects of his writing.

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A reading of the oeuvre of Toni Morrison—fiction, non-fiction, and other—drawing extensively from her many interviews as well as her primary texts, Toni Morrison: A Literary Life, second edition provides an overview of Morrison’s intellectual growth as an artist. Linda Wagner-Martin aligns Morrison's novels with the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, assessing her works as among the most innovative, and most significant, worldwide, of the past fifty plus years. The revised edition includes new discussion of God Help the Child, The Origin of Others, and The Source of Self-Regard. These additions present and intensify scholarship on Morrison’s major literary contributions, but also trace her significant role as a public intellectual, bringing to light the consistency of Morrison’s aesthetic and political visions.

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THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR MAYA ANGELOU DISCOVER THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF MAYA ANGELOU WITH A HIGHLY PERSONAL AND DETAILED ACCOUNT OF HER CHALLENGES AND TRIUMPHS The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou delivers an engaging and thorough retelling of the life and work of the celebrated and accomplished writer, director, and essayist. The book offers readers an engrossing retelling of Maya Angelou's entire life, from her time as a child in the segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas, to her death in 2014 in Winston-Salem. Written with an emphasis on accessibility, the author avoids critical theory and focuses on Maya Angelou's growth as a person and writer as well as the ways in which her life influenced her work. This new biography tells the story of a young black woman who overcomes poverty and endemic structural and personal obstacles to lead an accomplished life. Readers will also enjoy: A thorough retelling of the time Maya Angelou spent in Africa and how it shaped her views and work An exploration of the screenplays written by Maya Angelou Discussions of Maya Angelou's early life as a dancer, singer, and writer Accounts of Maya Angelou's writing and production of television shows A fulsome treatment of Maya Angelou's work, including her poems, autobiographies, films, music, and theatre Perfect for undergraduate students in Contemporary Literature courses as well as general readers who love Maya Angelou and her work, The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou will also earn a place in the libraries of biography and literature enthusiasts who seek to improve their understanding of the life and story of Maya Angelou with a highly personal and accessible new book.

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When Kino, a poor Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana and their son Coyotito will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

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When Kino, a poor Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana and their son Coyotito will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

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