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Showing 1 - 20 of 242 items
By Nelly Arcan. 2011
" Dès son premier roman, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Nelly Arcan na cessé de brasser dans un lyrisme flamboyant quelques thèmes…
obsessionnels, inséparables de sa vie : la dictature de limage, limpossibilité dun rapport innocent à soi-même, le culte vertigineux de la jeunesse, et son envers : la pulsion de mort, qui anime souterrainement les sociétés modernes. Passé le temps du scandale et celui de lémotion, voici donc les derniers échos dune œuvre aussi éblouissante que brève. Burqa de chair : titre terrible, qui agit avec la force dun boomerang en regard de certains débats actuels. On trouvera assemblés ici trois inédits : La robe , Lenfant dans le miroir et La honte . Les deux premiers sont écrits à la première personne, dans ce phrasé tourbillonnant, suffocant, qui était sa marque singulière, celle dun écrivain en danger . Dans le troisième texte, elle décortique avec une inépuisable férocité son expérience humiliante sur un plateau de télévision. " -- 4e de couvBy Lynne Sharon Schwartz. 2024
From an &“American literary treasure&” comes this humorous collection of essays on writing, friendship, family, and aging in an increasingly…
complex world(Publishers Weekly). In this diverting anthology, National Book Award finalist Lynne Sharon Schwartz explores the connections and complications of a life rich with travel, fascinating people, and writing. Her body of work includes acclaimed novels, poetry, essays, memoirs, and English translations of Italian books. With biting wit, My Life at the Wheel dissects the trials of Schwartz&’s recovery from major surgery; reveals her quest for hope and healing in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; comically muses on her fear of driving and her discovery of an &“unknown&” book by Henry James; and weaves colorful stories of hours spent arguing, drinking, and smoking with friends in a neighborhood bar in her native New York City. Her personal narratives range from riotous reflections on finding her calling to be an author, to the challenges of writing while raising children, and from a daughter struggling to understand her parents through adolescent eyes to an aging woman grappling with her own mortality. Relentlessly candid and often painfully funny, Schwartz fearlessly probes life&’s most difficult truths, as she willingly confronts the complexities of growing older in a rapidly changing world.Praise for the writing of Lynne Sharon Schwartz &“[Schwartz&’s]insights are at once sympathetic and drenched with irony.&” —The New York Times &“Reading Schwartz is like a pleasurable visit with a thoughtful and articulate friend.&” —Kirkus Reviews &“I can think of no other contemporary writer who writes so well.&” —Los Angeles Review of BooksBy Cheryl Strayed, Robert Atwan. 2013
Curated by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild, this volume shares intimate perspectives from some of today&’s…
most acclaimed writers. As Cheryl Strayed explains in her introduction, &“the invisible, unwritten last line of every essay should be and nothing was ever the same again.&” The reader, in other words, should feel the ground shift, if even only a bit. In this edition of the acclaimed anthology series, Strayed has gathered twenty-six essays that each capture an inexorable, tectonic shift in life. Personal and deeply perceptive, this collection examines a broad range of life experiences—from a man&’s relationship with Mormonism to a woman&’s search for a serial killer; from listening to the music of Joni Mitchell to surviving five months at sea; from triaging injured soldiers to giving birth to a daughter; and much more.The Best American Essays 2013 includes entries by Alice Munro, Zadie Smith, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Dagoberto Gilb, Vicki Weiqi Yang, J.D. Daniels, Michelle Mirsky, and others.By Amos Oz. 1995
&“Powerful&” essays from a founder of the Peace Now movement and advocate for a two-state solution (Library Journal). The haunting…
poetry of [Oz's] prose and the stunning logic of his testimony make a potent mixture." —Washington Post Book World Amos Oz was one of the first voices of conscience to advocate for a two-state solution. As a founding member of the Peace Now movement, Oz has spent over thirty-five years speaking out on this issue, and these powerful essays and speeches span an important and formative period for understanding today's tension and crises. Whether he is discoursing on the role of writers in society or recalling his grandmother's death in the context of the language's veracity; examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a tragicomedy or questioning the Zionist dream, Oz remains trenchant and unflinching in this moving portrait of a divided land. "[Oz is] the modern prophet of Israel." —Sunday Telegraph (UK)By David Sedaris. 2022
David Sedaris, the &“champion storyteller,&” (Los Angeles Times) returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling…
Calypso Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he&’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine. As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger&’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone&’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter. In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.By Jason Wilson. 2017
&“The Best American Travel Writing has been the gold standard for short-form travel writing from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet…
since its inception.&” —New York Times Book Review Everyone travels for different reasons, but whatever those reasons are, one thing is certain—they come back with stories. Each year, the best of those stories are collected in The Best American Travel Writing, curated by one of the top writers in the field, and each year they &“open a window onto the strange, seedy and beautiful world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers" (Kirkus Reviews). This far-ranging collection of top notch travel writing is, quite simply, the genre&’s gold standard.By Cheryl Strayed, Jason Wilson. 2018
Everyone travels for different reasons, but whatever those reasons are, one thing is certain: they come back with stories. Each…
year, the best of those stories are collected in The Best American Travel Writing, curated by one of the top writers in the field, and each year they &“open a window onto the strange, seedy, and beautiful world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers&” (Kirkus). This far-ranging collection of top notch travel writing is, quite simply, the genre&’s gold standard.By D. Watkins. 2022
A New York Times bestselling and award-winning author presents a complex story about his coming-of-age journey as a Black boy, from the…
societal roots of trauma to finding joy. "If I had two wishes, it would be that D. Watkins spend an entire book writing through the terrifying wonder of Black boyness in America, and for every human to read and share this book. I am shaken. Black Boy Smile changed my relationship to writing and me."―Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal At nine years old, D. Watkins has three concerns in life: picking his dad&’s Lotto numbers, keeping his Nikes free of creases, and being a man. Directly in his periphery is east Baltimore, a poverty-stricken city battling the height of the crack epidemic just hours from the nation&’s capital. Watkins, like many boys around him, is thrust out of childhood and into a world where manhood means surviving by slinging crack on street corners and finding oneself on the right side of pistols. For thirty years, Watkins is forced to safeguard every moment of joy he experiences or risk losing himself entirely. Now, for the first time, Watkins harnesses these moments to tell the story of how he matured into the D. Watkins we know today—beloved author, college professor, editor-at-large of Salon.com, and devoted husband and father.Black Boy Smile lays bare Watkins&’s relationship with his father and his brotherhood with the boys around him. He shares candid recollections of early assaults on his body and mind and reveals how he coped using stoic silence disguised as manhood. His harrowing pursuit of redemption, written in his signature street style, pinpoints how generational hardship, left raw and unnurtured, breeds toxic masculinity. Watkins discovers a love for books, is admitted to two graduate programs, meets with his future wife, an attorney—and finds true freedom in fatherhood. Equally moving and liberating, Black Boy Smile is D. Watkins&’s love letter to Black boys in concrete cities, a daring testimony that brings to life the contradictions, fears, and hopes of boys hurdling headfirst into adulthood. Black Boy Smile is a story proving that when we acknowledge the fallacies of our past, we can uncover the path toward self-discovery. Black Boy Smile is the story of a Black boy who healed.By Glenn Stout. 2019
"Outstanding . . . This great mix of essays shines a spotlight on all aspects of the human condition .…
. . The quality of the writing and diversity of the subjects will delight readers and inspire and enlighten the next generation of writers." --Publishers Weekly "First-rate . . . As ever, a must for the sports collection." --Booklist —By Bonnie Friedman. 1993
Writing Past Dark charts the emotional side of the writer's life. It is a writing companion to reach for when…
you feel lost and want to regain access to the memories, images, and the ideas inside you that are the fuel of strong writing. Combining personal narrative and other writers' experiences, Friedman explores a whole array of emotions and dilemmas writers face—envy, distraction, guilt, and writer's block—and shares the clues that can set you free. Supportive, intimate, and reflective, Writing Past Dark is a comfort and resource for all writers.By Stephanie LaCava. 2012
A haunting and moving collection of original narratives that reveals an expatriate's coming-of-age in Paris and the magic she finds…
in ordinary objectsAn awkward, curious girl growing up in a foreign country, Stephanie LaCava finds solace and security in strange yet beautiful objects.When her father's mysterious job transports her and her family to the quaint Parisian suburb of Le Vésinet, everything changes for the young American. Stephanie sets out to explore her new surroundings and to make friends at her unconventional international school, but her curiosity soon gives way to feelings of anxiety and a deep depression.In her darkest moments, Stephanie learns to filter the world through her peculiar lens, discovering the uncommon, uncelebrated beauty in what she finds. Encouraged by her father through trips to museums and scavenger hunts at antique shows, she traces an interconnected web of narratives of long-ago outsiders, and of objects historical and natural, that ultimately help her survive.A series of illustrated essays that unfolds in cinematic fashion, An Extraordinary Theory of Objects offers a universal lesson—to harness the power of creativity to cope with loneliness, sadness, and disappointment to find wonder in the uncertainty of the future.By Jorie Graham. 2020
“Every new book by Jorie Graham is worth reading. . . . Frustrating, frustrated, afraid, panicked, pleading, Graham has once…
again written the poems of our moment.” — NPR.org"This engaging, evocative collection from Graham explores the experience of struggle in a rapidly-changing world plagued by existential threats. The poems consider the present and interpret it through a critical eye, carefully mindful of each subject's impact on daily lives. More than anything, the collection invites readers to tap into a deeper state of consciousness." — Chicago Tribune, "Best Books of Fall 2020""Challenging as [these poems] are, many of them seem like prayers. For all poetry fans.' — Library Journal"[Graham's] most thrilling poems hurtle through long, unpredictable lines that devour and spit out ancient echoes and internet detritus as they go...She in her poems remakes a world you can inhabit, one in which you can sense what it is you're letting go of, now, before it's gone." — Harper's Magazine“Graham’s 15th collection of poetry has the heightened urgency of a young writer’s debut . . . Runaway taps into a free-floating end-of-the-worldness (is there a German word for that?) that so many of us feel even if we can’t express it. . . . Her latter-day poems arrive . . . like effusions, Whitmanic gusts of words, as if she’s channeling a sort of emergency scripture. Runaway feels as though it has been written for right now...but also for a target audience that might emerge 100 years on.” — New York Times Book Review "Jorie Graham’s poetry uniquely portrays the struggle to do the right thing, and above all to find meaning in the world’s “rich concentrate”. Her characteristically questioning work previously engaged with physics, history and personal morality, now turns its attention to accelerating planetary crisis. Runaway was completed before the pandemic, but its capacious understanding makes it as able to speak to this as to climate breakdown and global suffering. Graham juxtaposes individual experience with an almost incomprehensible scale of disaster with an urgency and an attention so exceptional it comes out as tenderness.” — The Guardian"Graham (Fast) begins her fifth decade of publishing with a bravura performance that probes the present for what the future will bring...Through her signature urgent questioning, Graham makes plain the psychic and physical cost to humans of wrecking the Earth." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)By Evan I. Schwartz. 2009
&“Finding Oz is underpinned by solid research…Schwartz does a fine job of unearthing the origins of Oz, and of portraying…
Baum as very much a man of his times -- the era of the vanishing frontier and the uneasy transition from Victorianism into modernity….As Schwartz informs us, Baum&’s strange and essential gift was to see the outlines of myth within the machinery of the modern world.&”--The Washington Post&“An entertaining page turner…Mr. Schwartz&’s spadework has produced some interesting theories…It's hard not to warm to Mr. Schwartz and easy indeed to join his quirky search for whatever it was that went into Frank Baum that could make "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" come out of him.&”--The Wall Street Journal&“Great fun….surprise findings….Schwartz uses his book as a lens to view the people and events at the turn of the 19th century, showing how Baum captured the wonder of the age he lived in.&”--The New York Post&“An appropriately speculative, wide-eyed biography…Schwartz has meticulously researched the spiritual and cultural influences on Baum.&”--The Los Angeles Times&“Fascinating…In Finding Oz, Evan Schwartz undertakes to explain Oz through the life of its creator L. Frank Baum.&” --The Seattle TimesIn Finding Oz, Evan Schwartz reaches back into the social life of late-19th century America to write a failure-to-fame tale as rich as anything out of Horatio Alger…Readers who like a good tale of American pluck will enjoy this book….Schwartz&’s book reminds us that Baum was an inventor—not a maker of machines or an engineer of instruments, but a creator of a landscape and a lore.&” --The San Francisco Chronicle (Seth Lerer, May 3, 2009)"Finding Oz is a guided tour to the invention—or is it the discovery?—of that quintessentially American dreamscape, the Land of Oz, written with heart, brains, nerve—and a touch of magic."—Gregory Maguire, author of Wickedand A Lion Among Men "Wow, imagine learning about American history through the prism of America&’s greatest fairytale. If you love amazing but true stories, you&’ve got to read Finding Oz."--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals"The Wizard of Oz has been a formative influence in my own life&’s journey, so Finding Oz comes as an absolute revelation to me. Read this book!" --Chris Gardner, author of The Pursuit of Happyness —“The writing is superb: smart, sassy and honest–oh, are they honest...in this must–read for every woman.” — Booklist“What a book,…
for men and women both. There is no bitterness here, only the eloquence of honesty.” — Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle“THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE is… smart, funny, wise, honest, and very probably…the story of your life.” — Cynthia Kaplan, author of Why I'm Like This“I devoured these essays, and took great guilty pleasure in trespassing into these private lives.” — Elinor Lipman, author of The Dearly Departed and The Inn at Lake Devine“…This essay anthology will offer comfort to real women living real lives” — Library Journal“A rollicking, free-flowing, double-barreled think piece.” — Hartford Courant“Starkly revealing …Here is unvarnished truth and more than a smidgen of anger about marriage, motherhood, solitude, and sex.” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer“The writing is superb: smart, sassy and honest-oh, are they honest-in this must-read for every woman.” — Booklist“The great thing about The Bitch in the House is knowing how many of us there are out there.” — O magazineBy Glenn Stout. 2015
For twenty-five years, The Best American Sports Writing has built a solid reputation by showcasing the greatest sports journalism of the past…
year, culled from hundreds of national, regional, and specialty print and digital publications. Wright Thompson, many times included in this volume over the years, takes his turn at the helm by curating this exceptional collection. The only shared trait among these diverse pieces is the extraordinarily high caliber of writing, but collectively they tap into the pure passion that can only come from sports. And for all aspiring sports writers, says Thompson, &“these selections are both road map and compass.&” The Best American Sports Writing 2015 includesDon Van Natta Jr., Chris Ballard, Katie Baker, Christopher Beam, Wells Tower, Seth Wickersham, Ariel Levyand others WRIGHT THOMPSON, guest editor, started his sports writing career as a student at the University of Missouri, where he covered sports for the Columbia Missourian. He interned at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and worked as the LSU beat writer. He then moved to the Kansas City Star, where he covered a wide variety of sports. In 2006 he joined ESPN.com and ESPN: The Magazine as a senior writer. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi. GLENN STOUT, series editor for The Best American Sports Writing since its inception, is the author of Young Woman and the Sea and Fenway 1912. He serves as the long-form editor for SB Nation and lives in Alburgh, Vermont.By Ross Gay. 2022
From Ross Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, comes an intimate and electrifying collection…
of essays about the joy that comes from connection. &“BRILLIANT.&” —Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life&’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. In &“We Kin,&” Gay thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come in) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in &“Share Your Bucket,&” he explores skateboarding&’s reclamation of public spaces; he considers the costs of masculinity in &“Grief Suite&”; and in &“Through My Tears I Saw,&” he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive. &“A gift that&’s meant to be shared . . . [This book] inspires us to look beyond the miseries of our era to envision a more welcoming future.&”―The Washington PostBy Artem Chapeye. 2024
A stunning debut collection of fiction and creative nonfiction— irreverent and unglorified; loving and tender; uncomfortable and inconvenient—by a Ukrainian…
writer currently fighting for his country in Kyiv. Includes the celebrated title story "The Ukraine," which was published in the New Yorker in 2022.The Ukraine is a collection of 26 pieces that deliberately blur the line between nonfiction and fiction, conjuring the essence of a beloved country through its tastes, smells, and sounds, its small towns and big cities, its people and their compassion and indifference, simplicities and complications.In the title story, Chapeye facetiously plays with the English misuse of the article &“the&” in reference to Ukraine, capturing a country as perceived from the outside, by foreigners. That pseudo-kitsch, often historically shallow, and not-quite-real Ukraine resonates because of its highly engaging and brutally candid snapshots of ordinary lives and typical places.In &“One Soul per Home&” an elderly woman laments that the men are dying and the young are leaving for the cities, changing the face of her small town;In &“The Unscrupulous Spirit of the Provinces,&” a couple of unspecified gender get stoned and go to church; and in &“False Premises,&” a man romanticizes his younger years working for a Soviet fishing fleet only to reconstruct his nostalgia in the face of Putin&’s Russia.The Ukraine conveys to readers a place that Chapeye and his countrymen are currently fighting for with their lives. The book features a preface by the author, which he composed on his phone from the front lines.By Marie O'Rourke. 2024
All her life, Marie O'Rourke has been a Good Girl, a perfectionist, using words to apply golden seams to an…
imperfect life in an attempt to make something beautiful out of things that are flawed or broken. A volatile father, the death of a sister far too young, a faltering marriage, the ghosts of lovers past: these are just some of the fragments that Marie puts together again in these essays that explore her closest relationships as a daughter, sister, mother, wife and lover. With exquisite prose, Marie reflects on the beauty of brokenness and the ways in which time can transform our understanding of truth, forgiveness, and healing. These essays are a poignant reminder that some things cannot be fixed but can still hold immense beauty and meaning. Whether you've experienced similar struggles, or are seeking a deeper understanding of the human experience, Marie's collection will leave you moved and inspired.How many of us feel our family life is not picture perfect? This book will resonate with those who are interested in exploring the human condition through universal themes of love and loss, forgiveness and redemption.By Chad Davidson. 2024
Could the shlock-rock ’70s band Kiss in any way affect the outcome of a death-dealing twenty-first-century virus? Is Bob Ross—that…
permed, inimitable painter of Edenic nostalgia on PBS—actually an emissary from the land of personal loss? Might the work of Edward Hopper reflect facets of a global plague? What is the grammar, finally, of grief, of isolation? The essays in Chad Davidson’s Bring Out Your Dead: Elegies from the Plague Year mainly concern the loss of the author’s father directly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ways in which the pandemic itself provided a strangely ideal backdrop to grieving. Refracted through the kaleidoscopic, yet strangely stagnant, isolation period in the first year of COVID, his father’s death—another plague visited on the author—found its way into all his waking hours, coloring whatever he tried to write, particularly when he tried not to let it. Friends both lost and nearly so, the burning of Notre Dame in Paris, even the seemingly inconsequential discovery of a rash of chew toys in the yard: these events assumed an unmistakable gravity, considered in the midst of a pandemic and the ruins of personal grief. Bring Out Your Dead adds Davidson’s father to the growing list of loved ones lost in—and, in this case, right before—the pandemic. It’s a personal memorial, given over to a father’s memory and the grief endured while living through dueling plagues (one viral, the other psychological). In the end, the book becomes more about the ways we eulogize, how we remember those who are gone, why their memories persist, and what summons them back into our thoughts, our language, and our lives.By John Wall Barger. 2024
“A poem is an act of faith because the poet believes in it,” contends John Wall Barger in The Elephant…
of Silence, a collection of essays exploring forms of knowing (and not knowing) that awaken a poetic mind. By considering poetry, film, and the intersections among aesthetic moments and our lives, Barger illuminates the foundations of poetic craft but also probes how to be alive, creative, and open in the world. Each piece investigates unanswerable questions and indefinable words: Lorca’s duende, Nabokov’s poshlost, Bashō’s underglimmer, Huizinga’s ludic, Tarkovsky’s Zona. Influenced by poets such as Glück and Ruefle, and filmmakers such as Kubrick and Lynch, Barger writes—first always sharing his own personal life stories—on the nature of perception, experience, and the human mind. With lyric eloquence and disarming candor, The Elephant of Silence tackles how to live an imaginative life, how to gravitate toward the silence from which art comes, and how the mystical is also the everyday.