Credos And Curios
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Remember Laughter
| Author | : Neil A. Grauer |
| Publisher | : U of Nebraska Press |
| Total Pages | : 252 |
| Release | : 1995-01-01 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 9780803270565 |
One of the great American humorists of this century, James Thurber is still read and cherished by many readers more than thirty years after his death. He is most famous for the hilarious, often bittersweet stories that he published in the 1930s and 1940s in the New Yorker. He was also a brilliant cartoonist whose unique drawings were an eagerly awaited feature in Harold Ross’s New Yorker and in Thurber’s books. This biography is a book much in the spirit of Thurber himself. Readable, anecdotal, and often delightfully funny, Remember Laughter will be cherished by all fans of Thurber. Yet Neil A. Grauer by no means sentimentalizes Thurber. He addresses serious, and often disturbing, features of Thurber’s life while highlighting Thurber’s courage, inexhaustible humor, and unique literary and artistic talents. The result is a biography that both celebrates Thurber’s genius and shrewdly appraises his qualities as a man.
Assorted Prose
| Author | : John Updike |
| Publisher | : Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| Total Pages | : 289 |
| Release | : 2012-09-18 |
| Genre | : Literary Collections |
| ISBN | : 0812983777 |
John Updike’s first collection of nonfiction pieces, published in 1965 when the author was thirty-three, is a diverting and illuminating gambol through midcentury America and the writer’s youth. It opens with a choice selection of parodies, casuals, and “Talk of the Town” reports, the fruits of Updike’s boyish ambition to follow in the footsteps of Thurber and White. These jeux d’esprit are followed by “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” an immortal account of Ted Williams’s last at-bat in Fenway Park; “The Dogwood Tree,” a Wordsworthian evocation of one Pennsylvania childhood; and five autobiographical essays and stories. Rounding out the volume are classic considerations of Nabokov, Salinger, Spark, Beckett, and others, the earliest efforts of the book reviewer who would go on to become, in The New York Times’s estimation, “the pre-eminent critic of his generation.” Updike called this collection “motley but not unshapely.” Some would call it a classic of its kind.
The Cases of Blue Ploermell
| Author | : James Thurber |
| Publisher | : Peschel Press |
| Total Pages | : 219 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : Humor |
| ISBN | : |
In 1923, the young reporter James Thurber was given a half a page in the Sunday Evening Dispatch of Columbus, Ohio, every week to fill with anything he wanted. For most of that year, he turned out book reviews, humorous commentary, jokes, stories, and even literary criticism. He also wrote a series of 13 short Sherlockian parodies — 10,000 words in all — starring Blue Ploermell, a “psychosocial” detective with a fondness for animal crackers. Aided (and occasionally impeded) by his Chinese manservant, Gong Low, Ploermell investigates cases marked by his cock-eyed deductions, loopy logic, and a knack for leaping to the wrong conclusion. These juvenilia represents Thurber’s first attempts at learning the craft of humor writing. Looking back at this work years later, he even considered publishing the Ploermell stories. The Cases of Blue Ploermell, for the first time in a century, collects the 13 stories. Edited and annotated by Bill Peschel, they show Thurber trying his hand at characterization, story structure, ethnic humor, and serial writing in a style rarely seen at any newspaper. In addition to the annotations, Peschel wrote essays on Thurber’s years in Columbus, Ohio; journalism in the 1920s; the state of Sherlockian parodies; and depictions of Chinese men and women in American popular culture. Note: The 13 stories are very short, and take up 40 pages of this 200-page book. The rest of the book consists of these essays: “Becoming James Thurber” (39 pages); “Journalism in Thurber’s Time” (4 pages); “Sherlockian Parodies in the 1920s” (8 pages); “The Ancestors of Gong Low” (13 pages); “The Chinese in Popular Culture” (35 pages); movie reviews (19 pages); chronology (9 pages); lists (7 pages). SHORT DESCRIPTION: In 1923, a young James Thurber wrote 13 short Sherlockian parodies (10,000 words) for his newspaper in Columbus, Ohio. They starred Blue Ploermell, a “psychosocial” detective with a fondness for animal crackers. Aided by his Chinese manservant, he solves cases with his cock-eyed deductions and a knack for leaping to the wrong conclusion. This book contains the stories plus essays about Thurber.
Beyond the Epic
| Author | : Gene Phillips |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 590 |
| Release | : 2006-11-24 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0813171555 |
Two-time Academy Award winner Sir David Lean (1908–1991) was one of the most prominent directors of the twentieth century, responsible for the classics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). British-born Lean asserted himself in Hollywood as a major filmmaker with his epic storytelling and panoramic visions of history, but he started out as a talented film editor and director in Great Britain. As a result, he brought an art-house mentality to blockbuster films. Combining elements of biography and film criticism, Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean uses screenplays and production histories to assess Lean’s body of work. Author Gene D. Phillips interviews actors who worked with Lean and directors who knew him, and their comments reveal new details about the director’s life and career. Phillips also explores Lean’s lesser-studied films, such as The Passionate Friends (1949), Hobson’s Choice (1954), and Summertime (1955). The result is an in-depth examination of the director in cultural, historical, and cinematic contexts. Lean’s approach to filmmaking was far different than that of many of his contemporaries. He chose his films carefully and, as a result, directed only sixteen films in a period of more than forty years. Those films, however, have become some of the landmarks of motion-picture history. Lean is best known for his epics, but Phillips also focuses on Lean’s successful adaptations of famous works of literature, including retellings of plays such as Brief Encounter (1945) and novels such as Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), and A Passage to India (1984). From expansive studies of war and strife to some of literature’s greatest high comedies and domestic dramas, Lean imbued all of his films with his unique creative vision. Few directors can match Lean’s ability to combine narrative sweep and psychological detail, and Phillips goes beyond Lean’s epics to reveal this unifying characteristic in the director’s body of work. Beyond the Epic is a vital assessment of a great director’s artistic process and his place in the film industry.
1,000 Books to Read Before You Die
| Author | : James Mustich |
| Publisher | : Workman Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 961 |
| Release | : 2018-10-02 |
| Genre | : Reference |
| ISBN | : 1523504455 |
“The ultimate literary bucket list.” —THE WASHINGTON POST Celebrate the pleasure of reading and the thrill of discovering new titles in an extraordinary book that’s as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus titles it recommends. Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage. Flip it open to any page and be transfixed by a fresh take on a very favorite book. Or come across a title you always meant to read and never got around to. Or, like browsing in the best kind of bookshop, stumble on a completely unknown author and work, and feel that tingle of discovery. There are classics, of course, and unexpected treasures, too. Lists to help pick and choose, like Offbeat Escapes, or A Long Climb, but What a View. And its alphabetical arrangement by author assures that surprises await on almost every turn of the page, with Cormac McCarthy and The Road next to Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings, Alice Walker next to Izaac Walton. There are nuts and bolts, too—best editions to read, other books by the author, “if you like this, you’ll like that” recommendations , and an interesting endnote of adaptations where appropriate. Add it all up, and in fact there are more than six thousand titles by nearly four thousand authors mentioned—a life-changing list for a lifetime of reading. “948 pages later, you still want more!” —THE WASHINGTON POST
Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker
| Author | : Thomas Vinciguerra |
| Publisher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
| Total Pages | : 580 |
| Release | : 2015-11-09 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0393248747 |
“Exuberant . . . elegantly conjures an evocative group dynamic.” —Sam Roberts, New York Times From its birth in 1925 to the early days of the Cold War, The New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as the country’s most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra paints a portrait of the magazine’s cadre of charming, wisecracking, driven, troubled, brilliant writers and editors. He introduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, and author of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine. We meet the demanding and eccentric founding editor Harold Ross, who would routinely tell his underlings, "I'm firing you because you are not a genius," and who once mailed a pair of his underwear to Walter Winchell, who had accused him of preferring to go bare-bottomed under his slacks. Joining the cast are the mercurial, blind James Thurber, a brilliant cartoonist and wildly inventive fabulist, and the enigmatic E. B. White—an incomparable prose stylist and Ross's favorite son—who married The New Yorker's formidable fiction editor, Katharine Angell. Then there is the dashing St. Clair McKelway, who was married five times and claimed to have no fewer than twelve personalities, but was nonetheless a superb reporter and managing editor alike. Many of these characters became legends in their own right, but Vinciguerra also shows how, as a group, The New Yorker’s inner circle brought forth a profound transformation in how life was perceived, interpreted, written about, and published in America. Cast of Characters may be the most revealing—and entertaining—book yet about the unique personalities who built what Ross called not a magazine but a "movement."
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature
| Author | : Jay Parini |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 2273 |
| Release | : 2004 |
| Genre | : American literature |
| ISBN | : 0195156536 |
This set treats the whole of American literature, from the European discovery of America to the present, with entries in alphabetical order. Each of the 350 substantive essays is a major interpretive contribution. Well-known critics and scholars provide clear and vividly written essays thatreflect the latest scholarship on a given topic, as well as original thinking on the part of the critic. The Encyclopedia is available in print and as an e-reference text from Oxford's Digital Reference Shelf.At the core of the encyclopedia lie 250 essays on poets, playwrights, essayists, and novelists. The most prominent figures (such as Whitman, Melville, Faulkner, Frost, Morrison, and so forth) are treated at considerable length (10,000 words) by top-flight critics. Less well known figures arediscussed in essays ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words. Each essay examines the life of the author in the context of his or her times, looking in detail at key works and describing the arc of the writer's career. These essays include an assessment of the writer's current reputation with abibliography of major works by the writer as well as a list of major critical and biographical works about the writer under discussion.A second key element of the project is the critical assessments of major American masterworks, such as Moby-Dick, Song of Myself, Walden, The Great Gatsby, The Waste Land, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Death of a Salesmanr, or Beloved. Each of these essays offers a close reading of the given work,placing that work in its historical context and offering a range of possibilities with regard to critical approach. These fifty essays (ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words) are simply and clearly enough written that an intelligent high school student should easily understand them, but sophisticatedenough that a college student or general reader in a public library will find the essays both informative and stimulating.The final major element of this encyclopedia consists of fifty-odd essays on literary movements, periods, or themes, pulling together a broad range of information and making interesting connections. These essays treat many of the same authors already discussed, but in a different context; they alsogather into the fold authors who do not have an entire essay on their work (so that Zane Grey, for example, is discussed in an essay on Western literature but does not have an essay to himself). In this way, the project is truly "encyclopedic," in the conventional sense. These essays aim forcomprehensiveness without losing anything of the narrative force that makes them good reading in their own right.In a very real fashion, the literature of the American people reflects their deepest desires, aspirations, fears, and fantasies. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature gathers a wide range of information that illumines the field itself and clarifies many of its particulars.
The Undeclared War between Journalism and Fiction
| Author | : D. Underwood |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 255 |
| Release | : 2013-09-25 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 1137353481 |
In this volume, Doug Underwood asks whether much of what is now called literary journalism is, in fact, 'literary,' and whether it should rank with the great novels by such journalist-literary figures as Twain, Cather, and Hemingway, who believed that fiction was the better place for a realistic writer to express the important truths of life.
Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume 1
| Author | : Philip A. Greasley |
| Publisher | : Indiana University Press |
| Total Pages | : 980 |
| Release | : 2001-05-30 |
| Genre | : Reference |
| ISBN | : 9780253108418 |
The Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume One, surveys the lives and writings of nearly 400 Midwestern authors and identifies some of the most important criticism of their writings. The Dictionary is based on the belief that the literature of any region simultaneously captures the experience and influences the worldview of its people, reflecting as well as shaping the evolving sense of individual and collective identity, meaning, and values. Volume One presents individual lives and literary orientations and offers a broad survey of the Midwestern experience as expressed by its many diverse peoples over time.Philip A. Greasley's introduction fills in background information and describes the philosophy, focus, methodology, content, and layout of entries, as well as criteria for their inclusion. An extended lead-essay, "The Origins and Development of the Literature of the Midwest," by David D. Anderson, provides a historical, cultural, and literary context in which the lives and writings of individual authors can be considered.This volume is the first of an ambitious three-volume series sponsored by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature and created by its members. Volume Two will provide similar coverage of non-author entries, such as sites, centers, movements, influences, themes, and genres. Volume Three will be a literary history of the Midwest. One goal of the series is to build understanding of the nature, importance, and influence of Midwestern writers and literature. Another is to provide information on writers from the early years of the Midwestern experience, as well as those now emerging, who are typically absent from existing reference works.
