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Showing 1 - 20 of 2031 items

Coventry: essays /

By Rachel Cusk. 2019

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Essays
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The author's first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and art both offers new insights on the themes at…

the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions. 2019.

Before I was a critic I was a human being / (Essais series #no. 7)

By Amy Fung. 2019

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Essays, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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Fung takes a closer examination at Canada's mythologies of multiculturalism, settler colonialism, and identity through the lens of a national…

art critic. Following the tangents of a foreign-born perspective and the complexities and complicities in participating in ongoing acts of colonial violence, the book as a whole takes the form of a very long land acknowledgement. Taken individually, each piece roots itself in the learning and unlearning process of a first generation settler immigrant as she unfurls each region's sense of place and identity. 2019.

Ordinary Wonder Tales

By Emily Urquhart. 2022

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Journals and memoirs, Essays, Anthologies, Criticism, Social issues
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A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine—and reveals the magic in the everyday. “I’ve…

always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.

Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada

By Michelle Good. 2023

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A bold, provocative collection of essays exploring the historical and contemporary Indigenous experience in Canada. With authority and insight, Truth…

Telling examines a wide range of Indigenous issues framed by Michelle Good’s personal experience and knowledge. From racism, broken treaties, and cultural pillaging, to the value of Indigenous lives and the importance of Indigenous literature, this collection reveals facts about Indigenous life in Canada that are both devastating and enlightening. Truth Telling also demonstrates the myths underlying Canadian history and the human cost of colonialism, showing how it continues to underpin modern social institutions in Canada. Passionate and uncompromising, Michelle Good affirms that meaningful and substantive reconciliation hinges on recognition of Indigenous self-determination, the return of lands, and a just redistribution of the wealth that has been taken from those lands without regard for Indigenous peoples. Truth Telling is essential reading for those looking to acknowledge the past and understand the way forward.

The age of insecurity: Coming together as things fall apart (The CBC Massey Lectures)

By Astra Taylor. 2023

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History, Politics and government, Customs and cultures, Essays, Social issues
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These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn't working for anyone, even…

those who appear to have it all. What is going on? In this urgent cultural diagnosis, author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises—rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism—originate from a social order built on insecurity. From home ownership and education to the wellness industry and policing, many of the institutions and systems that promise to make us more secure actually undermine us. Mixing social critique, memoir, history, political analysis, and philosophy, this genre-bending book rethinks both insecurity and security from the ground up. By facing our existential insecurity and embracing our vulnerability, Taylor argues, we can begin to develop more caring, inclusive, and sustainable forms of security to help us better weather the challenges ahead. The Age of Insecurity will transform how you understand yourself and society—while illuminating a path toward meaningful change

Countries That Don’t Exist: Selected Nonfiction (Russian Library)

By Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. 2022

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Essays, Anthologies
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Almost unknown during his lifetime, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is now hailed as a master of Russian prose. His short stories and…

novels, unpublishable under Stalinism but rediscovered long after his death, have drawn comparisons to the works of Jorge Luis Borges for their distinctive blend of metafictional play and philosophical thought experiment. Like Borges, Krzhizhanovsky also wrote dazzlingly unconventional essayistic pieces as a slippery extension of his fictional project.Countries That Don’t Exist showcases a selection of Krzhizhanovsky’s exceptional nonfiction, which spans a dizzying range of genres and voices. Playful fantasies dwelling in the borderlands between essay and fable, metaphysical conversations and probing literary criticism, philosophical essays and wartime memoirs—in all these modes Krzhizhanovsky’s writing bristles with idiosyncratic erudition and a starkly original vision of literary creation. Krzhizhanovsky comes across as a strange voice from another past, at once utterly novel yet unmistakably belonging to the high modernist 1920s and 1930s. Taken together, these works present to the English-speaking world a fresh aspect of a newly canonized author.Countries That Don’t Exist also features critical commentary that places these texts in the context of Krzhizhanovsky’s other writings and illuminates their relationship to the philosophical and aesthetic ferment of Russian and European modernism.

Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts

By James N. Gilmore and Sidney Gottlieb. 2018

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Actors biography, Essays, Arts and entertainment
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“A wonderful and distinct addition to the Welles canon . . . these pieces explore key elements of Welles’s career, personality, and political…

beliefs.” —Library JournalThrough his radio and film works, such as The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, Orson Welles became a household name in the United States. Yet Welles’s multifaceted career went beyond these classic titles and included lesser-known but nonetheless important contributions to television, theater, newspaper columns, and political activism. Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts examines neglected areas of Welles’s work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films. By positioning Welles’s work during a critical period of his activity (the mid-1930s through the 1950s) in its larger cultural, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts, the contributors to this volume examine how he participated in and helped to shape modern media. This exploration of Welles in his totalityilluminates and expands our perception of his contributions that continue to resonate today.“Anyone who thinks they know Welles will have their eyes opened [by this book].” —Paul Heyer, author of The Medium and the Magician“This is a fascinating collection, several of the contributions making the reader wish for more.” —Film International“A team of scholars has examined the many facets of Orson Welles’ amazing life—theatrical innovator, radio star, celebrated filmmaker, newspaper columnist and progressive activist.” —Wellesnet

The Book of Nonexistent Words

By Stefano Massini. 2018

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Historical fictionGeneral non-fiction, Essays
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The internationally acclaimed author harnesses his brilliant imagination and masterful storytelling ability to create a catalog of new words inspired…

by stories of real people in this wondrous book reminiscent of Italo Calvino's mesmerizing Invisible Cities.How many times have words not been enough?How many complex feelings don’t have a corresponding noun that properly describes them?How many times has language left us like an archer without arrows in the labyrinth of our emotions?Award-winning author Stefano Massini, a master of expression,, made a discovery that shot new life into his writing practice. To his surprise he found that the ancient rules of language were not quite as restrictive as he had long envisioned them to be. With so many emotions and states of mind missing modern descriptors and definitions, Massini stumbled across a simple but artistry-altering idea. Instead of compromising honest expression through perfunctory verbiage, he decided language was, if anything, a flowing palette of colors he could use to paint all things. Words are meant to be invented. To reconfirm his belief in the magic of words, Massini returned to the wondrous mechanism that has fed dictionaries from time immemorial. If he could not find the precise word he wanted, he created one. In this delightful compendium, he introduces his personal vocabulary; every chapter mentions a new word that comes from a story about a real person, from Louis XIV to an American gangster.The Book of Nonexistent Words is a beautifully illustrated collection of linguistic origin stories wrought from the mind of an internationally renowned storytelling icon. Massini effectively liberates our human capacity for using language creatively and shows how we can embrace storytelling to fine tune our way of being in the world. Massini encourages us to be imaginative; if the language in the dictionary cannot adequately match the reality of the here and now, we must create new words that ring true.Translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon 

How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Writers

By Wislawa Szymborska. 2021

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Essays, Anthologies, Criticism
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At once kind and hilarious, this compilation of the Nobel Prize-winning poet’s advice to writers is illustrated with her own…

marvelous collages In this witty “how-to” guide, Wislawa Szymborska has nothing but sympathy for the labors of would-be writers generally: “I myself started out with rotten poetry and stories,” she confesses in this collection of pieces culled from the advice she gave—anonymously—for many years in the well-known Polish journal Literary Life.       She returns time and again to the mundane business of writing poetry properly, that is to say, painstakingly and sparingly. “I sigh to be a poet,” Miss A. P. from Bialogard exclaims. “I groan to be an editor,” Szymborska responds.       Szymborska stubbornly insists on poetry’s “prosaic side”: “Let’s take the wings off and try writing on foot, shall we?” This delightful compilation, translated by the peerless Clare Cavanagh, will delight readers and writers alike.        Perhaps you could learn to love in prose.

Timelines of American Literature

By Cody Marrs and Christopher Hager. 2019

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A collection of engaging essays that seeks to uniquely reperiodize American literature.It is all but inevitable for literary history to…

be divided into periods. "Early American," "antebellum," "modern," "post-1945"—such designations organize our knowledge of the past and shape the ways we discuss that past today. These periods tend to align with the watershed moments in American history, even as the field has shifted its perspective away from the nation-state. It is high time we rethink these defining periods of American literary history, as the drawing of literary timelines is a necessary—even illuminating—practice.In these short, spirited, and imaginative essays, 23 leading Americanists gamely fashion new, unorthodox literary periods—from 600 B.C.E. to the present, from the Age of Van Buren to the Age of Microeconomics. They bring to light literary and cultural histories that have been obscured by traditional timelines and raise provocative questions. What is our definition of "modernism" if we imagine it stretching from 1865 to 1965 instead of 1890 to 1945? How does the captivity narrative change when we consider it as a contemporary, not just a "colonial," genre? What does the course of American literature look like set against the backdrop of federal denials of Native sovereignty or housing policies that exacerbated segregation? Filled with challenges to scholars, inspirations for teachers (anchored by an appendix of syllabi), and entry points for students, Timelines of American Literature gathers some of the most exciting new work in the field to showcase the revelatory potential of fresh thinking about how we organize the literary past.

Now Comes Good Sailing: Writers Reflect on Henry David Thoreau

By Andrew Blauner. 2021

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Literature biography, Anthologies, Essays, Criticism
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From twenty-seven of today’s leading writers, an anthology of original pieces on the author of WaldenFeatures essays by Jennifer Finney…

Boylan • Kristen Case • George Howe Colt • Gerald Early • Paul Elie • Will Eno • Adam Gopnik • Lauren Groff • Celeste Headlee • Pico Iyer • Alan Lightman • James Marcus • Megan Marshall • Michelle Nijhuis • Zoë Pollak • Jordan Salama • Tatiana Schlossberg • A. O. Scott • Mona Simpson • Stacey Vanek Smith • Wen Stephenson • Robert Sullivan • Amor Towles • Sherry Turkle • Geoff Wisner • Rafia Zakaria • and a cartoon by Sandra BoyntonThe world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, twenty-seven of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them—and why he matters more than ever in an age of climate, racial, and technological reckoning.Here, Lauren Groff retreats from the COVID-19 pandemic to a rural house and writing hut, where, unable to write, she rereads Walden; Pico Iyer describes how Thoreau provided him with an unlikely guidebook to Japan; Gerald Early examines Walden and the Black quest for nature; Rafia Zakaria reflects on solitude, from Thoreau’s Concord to her native Pakistan; Mona Simpson follows in Thoreau’s footsteps at Maine’s Mount Katahdin; Jennifer Finney Boylan reads Thoreau in relation to her experience of coming out as a trans woman; Adam Gopnik traces Thoreau’s influence on the New Yorker editor E. B. White and his book Charlotte’s Web; and there’s much more.The result is a lively and compelling collection that richly demonstrates the countless ways Thoreau continues to move, challenge, and provoke readers today.

The Notes: or On Non-premature Reconciliation (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

By Ludwig Hohl. 2021

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Essays, Philosophy
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A collection of illuminating observations on life and art, from an acclaimed Swiss modernist Revered by Bertolt Brecht and Max…

Frisch as one of Switzerland&’s most commanding writers, Ludwig Hohl spent most of his waking hours with a pen in hand, collecting quotes from others and recording ruminations of his own. Composed between 1934 and 1936 during his residence in the Netherlands in a state of &“extreme spiritual desolation,&” The Notes is Hohl&’s magnum opus: an assemblage of his epiphany-like observations, disparate in subject yet threaded together by a relentless exploration of the nature and origins of creativity.   Inspired by Spinoza, Goethe, and many others, The Notes contends with the purpose of work, the vitality of art, and the inevitability of death—a valiant, uncompromising exercise in hope against the devastating backdrop of twentieth-century Europe. This abridged edition, expertly translated by Tess Lewis and with an illuminating foreword by Joshua Cohen, introduces the reader to this remarkable work and its writer.

Bee Reaved (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

By Dodie Bellamy. 2021

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Journals and memoirs, Essays, Anthologies
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A new collection of essays from Dodie Bellamy on disenfranchisement, vulgarity, American working-class life, aesthetic values, and profound embarrassment.So. Much.…

Information. When does one expand? Cut back? Stop researching? When is enough enough? Like Colette's aging courtesan Lea in the Chéri books, I straddle two centuries that are drifting further and further apart.--Dodie Bellamy, "Hoarding as Ecriture"This new collection of essays, selected by Dodie Bellamy after the death of Kevin Killian, her companion and husband of thirty-three years, circles around loss and abandonment large and small. Bellamy's highly focused selection comprises pieces written over three decades, in which the themes consistent within her work emerge with new force and clarity: disenfranchisement, vulgarity, American working-class life, aesthetic values, profound embarrassment. Bellamy writes with shocking, and often hilarious, candor about the experience of turning her literary archive over to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale and about being targeted by an enraged online anti-capitalist stalker. Just as she did in her previous essay collection, When The Sick Rule The World, Bellamy examines aspects of contemporary life with deep intelligence, intimacy, ambivalence, and calm.

The New Negro Aesthetic: Selected Writings

By Alain Locke. 2022

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Anthologies, Essays, General non-fiction
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Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer edits a collection of Alain Locke's influential essays on the importance of the Black artist and the…

Black imaginationA Penguin ClassicFor months, the philosopher Alain Locke wrestled with the idea of the Negro as America's most vexing problem. He asked how shall Negroes think of themselves as he considered the new crop of poets, novelists, and short story writers who, in 1924, wrote about their experiences as Black people in America. He did not want to frame Harlem and Black writing as yet another protest against racism, nor did he want to focus on the sociological perspective on the "Negro problem" and Harlem as a site of crime, poverty, and dysfunction. He wanted to find new language and a new way for Black people to think of themselves. The essays and articles collected in this volume, by Locke's Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer, are the result of that new attitude and the struggle to instill the New Negro aesthetics, as Stewart calls it here, into the mind of the twentieth century. To be a New Negro poet, novelist, actor, musician, dancer, or filmmaker was to commit oneself to an arc of self-discovery of what and who the Negro was—would be—without fear that one would disappoint the white or Black bystander. In committing to that path, Locke asserted, one would uncover a "being-in-the-world" that was rich and bountiful in its creative possibilities, if Black people could turn off the noise of racism and see themselves for who they really are: a world of creative people who have transformed, powerfully and perpetually, the culture of wherever history or social forces landed them.

You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

By Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Genevieve West. 2022

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Anthologies, Essays, Criticism
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Introduction by New York Times bestselling author Henry Louis Gates Jr. Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive…

collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni MorrisonYou Don’t Know Us Negroes is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could. Collectively, these essays showcase the roles enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people’s inner lives and culture rather than destroying it. She argues that in the process of surviving, Black people re-interpreted every aspect of American culture—"modif[ying] the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly religion.” White supremacy prevents the world from seeing or completely recognizing Black people in their full humanity and Hurston made it her job to lift the veil and reveal the heart and soul of the race. These pages reflect Hurston as the controversial figure she was—someone who stated that feminism is a mirage and that the integration of schools did not necessarily improve the education of Black students. Also covered is the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing her lover, a white doctor.Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and mind.

North Carolina: Land of Water, Land of Sky

By Bland Simpson. 2021

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Essays, Nature
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Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina's sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in…

many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state's Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portrait of the Old North State with care and humor. Three of the state's finest photographers come along to guide the journey: Simpson's wife and creative partner, Ann Cary Simpson, professional photographer Scott Taylor, and writer and naturalist Tom Earnhardt. Their photos, combined with Simpson's rich narrative, will inspire readers to consider not only what North Carolina has been and what it is but also what we hope it will be. This book belongs on the shelf of longtime residents, newcomers, and visitors alike.

On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne (Studies in Legal History)

By Samuel E. Thorne. 1981

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Essays
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Investigating a wide range of problems in the development of English law, this collection of original essays honors the contributions…

of Samuel D. Thorne to the study of English legal history from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. The essays combine close study of legal texts and doctrines in their own setting with broader analysis of the interaction of legal and social change. Although each essay has its own historiographical context, a substantial unity is achieved.Originally published in 1981.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

My Country Is Literature: Adventures in the Reading Life

By Chandrahas Choudhury. 2021

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Essays, Anthologies, Criticism
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'A book is only one text, but it is many books. It is a different book for each of its…

readers. My Anna Karenina is not your Anna Karenina; your A House for Mr Biswas is not the one on my shelf. When we think of a favourite book, we recall not only the shape of the story, the characters who touched our hearts, the rhythm and texture of the sentences. We recall our own circumstances when we read it: where we bought it (and for how much), what kind of joy or solace it provided, how scenes from the story began to intermingle with scenes from our life, how it roused us to anger or indignation or allowed us to make our peace with some great private discord. This is the second life of the book: its life in our life.'  In his early twenties, the novelist Chandrahas Choudhury found himself in the position of most young people who want to write: impractical, hard-up, ill at ease in the world. Like most people who love to read, his most radiant hours were inside the pages of a book. Seeking to combine his love of writing with his love of reading, he became an adept of a trade that is mainly transacted lying down—that is, he became a book reviewer.Pleasure, independence, aesthetic rapture, even a modest livelihood: all these were the rewards of being a worker bee of literature, ingesting the output of the publishers of the world in great quantities and trying to explain in the pages of newspapers and magazines exactly what makes a book leave a mark on the soul.  Even as Choudhury's own novels began to be published, he continued to write about other writers' books: his contemporaries at home and abroad, the great Indian writers of the past, the relationship of the reading life —in particular, the novel—to selfhood and democracy, all the ways in which literature sings the truths of the human heart.My Country Is Literature brings together the best of his literary criticism: a long train of perceptive essays on writers as diverse as VS Naipaul and Orhan Pamuk, Gandhi and Nehru, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Jhumpa Lahiri. The book also contains an introductory essay describing Choudhury's book-saturated years as a young writer in Mumbai, the joys and sorrows and stratagems of the book reviewer's trade, and the ways in which literature is made as much by readers as by writers.Delightfully punctuated with 15 portraits of writers by the artist Golak Khandual, My Country Is Literature is essential reading for everyone who believes that books are the most beautiful things in life.

Essays Two: On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles

By Lydia Davis. 2017

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Essays, Criticism
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A collection of essays on translation, foreign languages, Proust, and one French city, from the master short-fiction writer and acclaimed…

translator Lydia Davis In Essays One, Lydia Davis, who has been called “a magician of self-consciousness” by Jonathan Franzen and “the best prose stylist in America” by Rick Moody, gathered a generous selection of her essays about best writing practices, representations of Jesus, early tourist photographs, and much more. Essays Two collects Davis’s writings and talks on her second profession: the art of translation. The award-winning translator from the French reflects on her experience translating Proust (“A work of creation in its own right.” —Claire Messud, Newsday), Madame Bovary (“[Flaubert’s] masterwork has been given the English translation it deserves.” —Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review), and Michel Leiris (“Magnificent.” —Tim Watson, Public Books). She also makes an extended visit to the French city of Arles, and writes about the varied adventures of learning Norwegian, Dutch, and Spanish through reading and translation. Davis, a 2003 MacArthur Fellow and the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize for her fiction, here focuses her unique intelligence and idiosyncratic ways of understanding on the endlessly complex relations between languages. Together with Essays One, this provocative and delightful volume cements her status as one of our most original and beguiling writers.

Shelf Life: Journalism 2000-2021

By Gideon Haigh. 2021

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Writing, Essays, Criticism, Sports and games
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Few journalists exemplify the creed &‘without fear or favour&’ like Gideon Haigh. Shelf Life selects from twenty-one years of writing…

on myriad subjects by one of our clearest thinkers, sharpest stylists and most curious journalists. Architecture and airline food. Depression and doodling. Goya and Grossman. Weegee and Wire. When not wiring about cricket, Gideon Haigh has enjoyed taking journalism on unexpected journeys, where curiosity calls, into the past and future as well as the present.   Edited by Russell Jackson, Shelf Life samples his work from the last two decades: essays, reportage, reviews, crisp analyses, deep dives into history, of no camp, and independent of the news cycle, from his shelves to yours.

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FAQ

Which devices can I use to read books and magazines from CELA?

Answer: CELA books and magazines work with many popular accessible reading devices and apps. Find out more on ourCompatible devices and formats page.

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About us

The Centre for Equitable Library Access, CELA, is an accessible library service, providing books and other materials to Canadians with print disabilities.

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CELA welcomes all feedback and suggestions:

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Email us at help@celalibrary.ca or call us at 1-855-655-2273 for support.

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