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Showing 1 - 20 of 113 items
By Spencer Johnson. 2003
A "practical parable" for rediscovering what is truly important in life. Relates a young man's journey to adulthood and search…
for a magical "present"--the power to focus on right now, learn from the past, and plan for the future. BestsellerBy Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov. 1989
Autobiographical sketches chronicle the author's upper-class childhood in Russia, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that forced his family into exile in…
Europe, and his 1940 move to the United States. First published in 1951 under the title Conclusive Evidence and revised in 1966. 1947Stories, essays, and poems selected from literary magazines, journals, and small presses. In Brock Clarke's "Our Pointy Boots," Iraq war…
veterans return to the United States and honor their dead buddy. Includes works by Richard Powers and Joyce Carol Oates. Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. 2010Fifteen stories set in California during the 1850s Gold Rush. Archetypal characters--gold-fevered pioneers, gamblers, preachers, drunkards, cattle-robbers, and iron-willed women--experience…
twists of fortune and the realities of frontier life. Reuben H. Margolin introduces the collection, which spans the career of this author, poet, and literary critic. 1997By Jack Kerouac Edited by Todd Tietchen. 2014
In late 1944, under rather mysterious circumstances, aspiring writer Jack Kerouac lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life. …
Set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin--a character based on the author's recently departed friend Sebastian Sampas--tackles the pressing issues of the day. At home in the working-class town the summer before his sophomore year at Boston College, Peter finds himself conflicted. Like many Americans, Peter is unsure, suspended between the economic crisis of the previous decade and the impending US entry into World War II. In The Haunted Life, Peter struggles to define what he believes to be intellectually true and worthy of his life and talents. Skillfully edited by Todd F. Tietchen, assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell,The Haunted Life is rounded out by sketches, notes, and reflections Kerouac kept during the novella's composition as well as a revealing selection of correspondence with his father, Leo.By Chantal Bilodeau, Patrice Martin. 2013
Multiple plot lines interweave with twentieth-century literary allusions as hapless bureaucrat P. attempts to secure delivery of a valuable cultural…
relic. Patrice Martin's ticklish tip of the hat to the writing of Franz Kafka also evokes the literary techniques of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Paul Auster.Polymath Patrice Martin is a writer, musician, and politician who is a former clerk in Canada's House of Commons, and currently is a Gatineau city councilor. He confesses his working life in government bureaucracy helped shape this, his first novel.Chantal Bilodeau is a New York-based playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Quebec.By Rein Raud, Adam Cullen. 2008
The Brother is a spaghetti western told in poetic prose, simultaneously paying tribute to both Clint Eastwood and Alessandro Baricco.…
It opens with a mysterious stranger arriving in a small town controlled by a group of men-men who recently cheated the stranger's supposed sister out of her inheritance. Following his arrival, fortunes change dramatically, enraging this group of powerful men.By F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1925
"Reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Trimalchio, an early and complete version of The Great Gatsby, is like listening to a familiar…
musical composition played in a different key and with an alternate bridge passage... There is a tradition in Fitzgerald studies that The Great Gatsby became a masterpiece in revision. This judgment is correct. Fitzgerald improved the novel in galleys; The Great Gatsby is a better novel than Trimalchilo. But Trimalchilo is a remarkable achievement, and different enough from Gatsby to merit consideration on its own. Trimalchilois a direct and straightforward narration of the story of Jay Gatsby, NIck Carraway, Jordan Baker, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and Myrtle and George Wilson. The handling of plot details is sure-handed; the writing is graceful and confident. Trimalchilowill provide readers with new understanding of F. Scott Fitzgerald's working methods, fresh insight into his characters, and renewed appreciation of his genius." From the introduction.By Helen Dewitt. 2016
Called "remarkable" (The Wall Street Journal) and "an ambitious, colossal debut novel" (Publishers Weekly), Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai is…
back in print at last Helen DeWitt's 2000 debut, The Last Samurai, was "destined to become a cult classic" (Miramax). The enterprising publisher sold the rights in twenty countries, so "Why not just, 'destined to become a classic?'" (Garth Risk Hallberg) And why must cultists tell the uninitiated it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise? Sibylla, an American-at-Oxford turned loose on London, finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand. High-minded principles of child-rearing work disastrously well. J. S. Mill (taught Greek at three) and Yo Yo Ma (Bach at two) claimed the methods would work with any child; when these succeed with the boy Ludo, he causes havoc at school and is home again in a month. (Is he a prodigy, a genius? Readers looking over Ludo's shoulder find themselves easily reading Greek and more.) Lacking male role models for a fatherless boy, Sibylla turns to endless replays of Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai. But Ludo is obsessed with the one thing he wants and doesn't know: his father's name. At eleven, inspired by his own take on the classic film, he sets out on a secret quest for the father he never knew. He'll be punched, sliced, and threatened with retribution. He may not live to see twelve. Or he may find a real samurai and save a mother who thinks boredom a fate worse than death.By Marcel Proust, William C. Carter. 2015
Edited and annotated by leading Proust scholar William Carter, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is the second…
volume of one of the twentieth century's great literary triumphs.  It was this volume that won the Prix Goncourt in 1919, affirming Proust as a major literary figure and dramatically increasing his fame. Here the narrator whose childhood was reflected in Swann's Way moves further through childhood and into adolescence, as the author brilliantly examines themes of love and youth, in settings in Paris and by the sea in Normandy. The reader again encounters Swann, now married to his former mistress and largely fallen from high society, and meets for the first time several of Proust's most memorable characters: the handsome, dashing Robert de Saint-Loup, who will become the narrator's best friend; the enigmatic Albertine, leader of the "little band" of adolescent girls; the profoundly artistic Elstir, believed to be Proust's composite of Whistler, Monet, and other leading painters; and, making his unforgettable entrance near the end of the volume, the intense, indelible Baron de Charlus.  Permeated by the "bloom of youth" and its resonances in memories of love and friendship, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower takes readers into the heart of Proust's comic and poetic genius. As with Swann's Way, Carter uses C. K. Scott Moncrieff's beloved translation as the basis for this annotated and fully revised edition. Carter corrects long-standing errors in Scott Moncrieff's otherwise superlative translation, bringing it closer than ever to the spirit and style of Proust's original text--and reaching English readers in a way that the Pléiade annotations cannot. Insightful and accessible, Carter's edition of Marcel Proust's masterwork will be the go-to text for generations of readers seeking to understand Proust's remarkable bygone world.By Velma Wallis. 1993
Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River…
Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community, and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness, and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).By Janice A. Radway. 1967
Deftly melding ethnography, cultural history, literary criticism, and autobiographical reflection, A Feeling for Books is at once an engaging study…
of the Book-of-the-Month Club's influential role as a cultural institution and a profoundly personal meditation about the experience of reading. Janice Radway traces the history of the famous mail-order book club from its controversial founding in 1926 through its evolution into an enterprise uniquely successful in blending commerce and culture. Framing her historical narrative with writing of a more personal sort, Radway reflects on the contemporary role of the Book-of-the-Month Club in American cultural history and in her own life. Her detailed account of the standards and practices employed by the club's in-house editors is also an absorbing story of her interactions with those editors. Examining her experiences as a fourteen-year-old reader of the club's selections and, later, as a professor of literature, she offers a series of rigorously analytical yet deeply personal readings of such beloved novels as Marjorie Morningstar and To Kill a Mockingbird. Rich and rewarding, this book will captivate and delight anyone who is interested in the history of books and in the personal and transformative experience of reading.By Kathy Page. 2014
"Simply an epiphany."-Kirkus, starred reviewSimon Austen has the names people have called him tattooed all over his body. Waste of…
Space. Bastard. A Threat to Women. Murderer. Facing a lifetime behind bars and subjected to new therapies for sexual reprogramming, Simon finds himself plunged into a terrifying process of self-reconstruction. But how much, in the end, can a man really change? Darkly compelling and deeply moving, Alphabet is a psychological exploration of one man's uncertain and often-harrowing journey towards rehabilitation."Intense, revealing, challenging and above all riveting ... I kept saying to myself, how could she know this?"-Erwin James, convicted murderer, author of A Life Inside: A Prisoner's Notebook"Sometimes novelists go too far-and sometimes they manage to demonstrate that too far is the place they needed to go."-Time Out UKPraise for Kathy Page"Her unforgettable prose is moody, shape-shifting, provocative and always as compelling as a strong light at the end of a road you hesitate to walk down...but will."- Amy Bloom, author of Where the God of Love Hangs Out"Marvellously well-crafted ... I can't remember the last time I was so compelled, impressed and unsettled by the emotional world of a novel."- Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the VelvetBy Alexander Pushkin, Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler. 1957
Famous for his enormously influential poetry and plays, Alexander Pushkin is also beloved for his short stories. This collection showcases…
his tremendous range, which enabled him to portray the Russian people through romance, drama, and satire. The sparkling humor of the five "Tales of Belkin" contrasts with a dark fable of gambling and obsessive greed in "The Queen of Spades" and the masterful historical novella, "The Captain's Daughter," a story of love and betrayal set during a rebellion in the time of Catherine the Great.By Howard Scott, Madeleine Gagnon, Phyllis Aronoff. 2012
Is an artist born, or rather, created by experience? From the moment in childhood when he is forced to take…
drastic action to defend his adoptive mother from a violent assault - the only maternal figure that he has ever known - it is evident that the life of Joseph Sully-Jacques is to be no ordinary life, and one marked by sorrow and adversity.Unable to cope with or even recognize the residual effects of his trauma in adolescence, Joseph retreats into an increasingly abstract world, one in which he must confront what he calls his "visions." And when he hears of the death of his natural mother, this brings to the surface memories he had hoped were buried deep within him, and precipitates the form of various crises to come, particularly as he discovers and makes use of the artistic abilities revealed to his family during his psychiatric evaluation.After many more hardships, the young man does find meaning to the absurdities of life, ironically in the asylum, where he meets a virtuoso pianist whose condition prevents her from continuing to exercise her talents. They heal together through their mutual love, which will soon subsist upon nothing but memory and absence. During mournful years of raising his son alone, in his extensive adversaria, Joseph sets out to reconcile the contradictory themes in his life, including abandonment, madness, love, and death.In spare, lucid prose, and in a style reminiscent of André Gide, Madeleine Gagnon invites the reader to experience the creation and development of an artist "in his own words" - Joseph's gelid journal entries that are to become emphatic poetic laments - in a novel that chronicles the extreme destitution of Quebec in the years before World War Two and in abstract developing forms of artistic expression after years of uncertainty and loss.By Michael Henry Heim, Bohumil Hrabal, Adam Thirlwell. 1964
Rake, drunkard, aesthete, gossip, raconteur extraordinaire: the narrator of Bohumil Hrabal's rambling, rambunctious masterpiece Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in…
Age is all these and more. Speaking to a group of sunbathing women who remind him of lovers past, this elderly roué tells the story of his life--or at least unburdens himself of a lifetime's worth of stories. Thus we learn of amatory conquests (and humiliations), of scandals both private and public, of military adventures and domestic feuds, of what things were like "in the days of the monarchy" and how they've changed since. As the book tumbles restlessly forward, and the comic tone takes on darker shadings, we realize we are listening to a man talking as much out of desperation as from exuberance. Hrabal, one of the great Czech writers of the twentieth century, as well as an inveterate haunter of Prague's pubs and football stadiums, developed a unique method which he termed "palavering," whereby characters gab and soliloquize with abandon. Part drunken boast, part soul-rending confession, part metaphysical poem on the nature of love and time, this astonishing novel (which unfolds in a single monumental sentence) shows why he has earned the admiration of such writers as Milan Kundera, John Banville, and Louise Erdrich.By Arthur Miller, Gerald Weales. 1977
The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman's deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of…
a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity--and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room."By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." --Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times"So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." --TimeBy Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Chris Andrews. 2014
“Right from the start I picked her for a thief, although that day she didn’t take anything. . . .…
I knew she’d be back,” the narrator/bookseller of Severina recalls in this novel’s opening pages. Imagine a dark-haired book thief as alluring as she is dangerous. Imagine the mesmerized bookseller secretly tracking the volumes she steals, hoping for insight into her character, her motives, her love life. In Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s hands, this tale of obsessive love is told with almost breathless precision and economy. The bookstore owner is soon entangled in Severina’s mystery: seductive and peripatetic, of uncertain nationality, she steals books to actually read them and to share with her purported grandfather, Señor Blanco. In this unsettling exploration of the alienating and simultaneously liberating power of love, the bookseller’s monotonous existence is rocked by the enigmatic Severina. As in a dream, the disoriented man finds that the thin border between rational and irrational is no longer reliable. Severina confirms Rey Rosa’s privileged place in contemporary world literature.By Sharon Hart-Green. 2017
Loss, trauma, memory, and, above all, the ties of family and being Jewish are the elements that weave together this…
panoramic story. Come Back for Me travels through time and place only to bring us, ultimately, to the connections between generations. Artur Mandelkorn is a young Hungarian Holocaust survivor whose desperate quest to find his sister takes him to post-war Israel. Intersecting Artur's tale is that of Suzy Kohn, a Toronto teenager whose seemingly tranquil life is shattered when her uncle's sudden death tears her family apart. Their stories eventually come together in Israel following the Six-Day War, where love and understanding become the threads that bind the two narratives together. Like Sarah's Key, Come Back for Me deals evocatively with the scars left by tragedy and the possibilities for healing.By George Sand. 2017
Set in the French countryside of George Sand’s childhood and narrated in the unique voice of a Berrichon peasant, La…
Petite Fadette is a beloved 1848 novel about identical twin brothers and Fadette, the mysterious waif with whom they both fall in love. The brothers, Landry and Sylvinet, belong to a highly respected farm family. When young Landry meets Fadette, whose very name suggests that she is a witch, he is captivated by the girl despite her lowly status and disreputable family. Sylvinet soon follows suit. Fadette’s relationship with the twins defies the patriarchal norms of French society as well as the expectations of the village, resulting in a tale of love, courage, and clever strategy winning out over superstition and prejudice.Often regarded as a simple country tale, Sand’s novel is layered with meaning, including subtle nods to the burgeoning desire for political and sexual equality in nineteenth-century France. This thoughtful critical translation by Gretchen van Slyke brings the complexity of the original story to life. Her introduction explores the autobiographical and political dimensions of the novel, and her translation preserves the rustic charm and archaic flavor of Sand’s language.An invaluable contribution to French literary studies and nineteenth-century literature studies, this new edition ensures that La Petite Fadette will be read by generations to come.