The Untidy Pilgrim

The Untidy Pilgrim
Author: Eugene Walter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1954
Genre: Law students
ISBN:

Eugene Walter's first novel is about a young man from a small central Alabama town who goes south of the "salt line" to Mobile to work in a bank and study law. As soon as this unnamed pilgrim arrives, he realizes that--although he is still in Alabama—he has entered a separate physical kingdom of banana trees and palm fronds, subtropical heat and humidity, old houses and lacy wrought-iron balconies. In the "land of clowns" and the "kingdom of monkeys"—in the town that can claim the oldest Mardi Gras in America--there is no Puritan work ethic; the only ruling forces are those of chaos, craziness, and caprice. Such forces overtake the pilgrim, seduce him away from the beaten career path, and set him on a zigzag course through life. The Untidy Pilgrim celebrates the insularity as well as the eccentricity of southerners—and Mobilians, in particular—in the mid-20th century. Cut off from the national mainstream, they are portrayed as devoid of that particularly American angst over what to "do" and accomplish with one's life, and indulge instead in art, music, cooking, nature, and love. --Amazon.com.

Milking the Moon

Milking the Moon
Author: Eugene Walter
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1611877709

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD This sumptuous oral biography of Eugene Walter, the best-known man you’ve never heard of, is an eyewitness history of the heart of the last century—enlivened with personal glimpses of luminaries from William Faulkner and Martha Graham to Judy Garland and Leontyne Price—and a pitch-perfect addition to the Southern literary tradition that has critics cheering. In his 76 years, Eugene Walter ate of “the ripened heart of life,” to quote a letter from Isak Dinesen, one of his many illustrious friends. Walter savored the porch life of his native Mobile, Alabama, in the the l920s and ‘30s; stumbled into the Greenwich Village art scene in late-1940s New York; was a ubiquitous presence in Paris’s expatriate café society in the 1950s (where he was part of the Paris Review at its inception); and later, in 1960s Rome, participated in the golden age of Italian cinema. He was somehow everywhere, bringing with him a unique and contagious spirit, putting his inimitable stamp on the cultural life of the twentieth century. “Katherine Clark…has edited Eugene Walter’s oral history into a book as amazing as the man himself.” JONATHAN YARDLEY, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD “Milking the Moon has perfect pitch and flawlessly captures Eugene’s pixilated wonderland of a life…. I love this book—and I couldn’t put it down.” PAT CONROY “Surprising and serendipitous.” NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Anecdotes so frothy they ought to be served with a paper parasol over crushed ice.” PEOPLE “A rare literary treat…the temptation is to wolf it down all at once, but it’s much more satisfying to take your sweet time. The most unique oral history of the mid-twentieth century.” TIMES-PICAYUNE (NEW ORLEANS) “An exceptionally fun read.” ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

A Cry of Angels

A Cry of Angels
Author: Jeff Fields
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2010-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 082033863X

“An authentic cry of American innocence . . . The author seizes the reader with a Southern gift for storytelling and never lets go.”—Time Magazine It is the mid-1950s in Quarrytown, Georgia. In the slum known as the Ape Yard, hope’s last refuge is a boardinghouse where a handful of residents dream of a better life. Earl Whitaker, who is white, and Tio Grant, who is black, are both teenagers, both orphans, and best friends. In the same house live two of the most important adults in the boys’ lives: Em Jojohn, the gigantic Lumbee Indian handyman, is notorious for his binges, his rat-catching prowess, and his mysterious departures from town. Jayell Crooms, a gifted but rebellious architect, is stuck in a loveless marriage to a conventional woman intent on climbing the social ladder. Crooms’s vision of a new Ape Yard, rebuilt by its own residents, unites the four—and puts them on a collision course with a small-town Machiavelli who rules the community like a feudal lord. Jeff Fields’s exuberantly defined characters and his firmly rooted sense of place have earned A Cry of Angels an intensely loyal following. Its republication, more than three decades since it first appeared, is cause for celebration. “A humdinger . . . even better than To Kill a Mockingbird . . . funny, touching, and gripping.”—Chicago Daily News “Heartwarming . . . We find ourselves wondering why delightful novels like this aren’t written anymore, and grateful that this one has come along to fill the void.”—The New York Times “A flooded-with-life novel with a story to tell and characters to be cherished.”—Boston Sunday Globe

Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays

Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays
Author: Richard Wagner
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780803297630

"Saint Beethoven!. . . . He was clad in somewhat untidy houseclothes, with a red woolen scarf wrapped round his waist; long, bushy grey hair hung in disorder from his head, and his gloomy, forbidding expression by no means tended to reassure. . . ." When Wagner published the first collection of his writings he was pleased to admit how well he wrote, even when young. Historians and musicians ever since have agreed that some of his most important and revelatory works were written when he was first establishing his reputation in Paris and Dresden. Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays provides translations of the first two volumes of his Gesammelte Schriften (1871-1873). These works reveal how committed he was to emphasizing Germanic qualities in his music and define his opposition to the music of France and Italy. In addition to his influential essay on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, this volume includes two early essays on Germanic myth—"The Wibelungen" and "The Nibelungen-Myth"—his homages to Carl Maria von Weber, and the complete text of his autobiographical A German Musician in Paris, with its famous "Pilgrimage to Beethoven." The volume concludes with his "Plan of Organisation of a German National Theatre" (1849), founded upon Beethoven's moral music. Listeners "inspired by Beethoven's music have been more active and energetic citizens-of-State than those bewitched by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti." Throughout these essays, as throughout his life, Wagner knew how to provoke. This edition includes the complete volume 7 of the 1898 translation commissioned by the London Wagner Society.

The Well of Loneliness

The Well of Loneliness
Author: Radclyffe Hall
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473374081

This early work by Radclyffe Hall was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Well of Loneliness' is a novel that follows an upper-class Englishwoman who falls in love with another woman while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born on 12th August 1880, in Bournemouth, England. Hall's first novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was a lengthy and grim tale that proved hard to sell. It was only published following the success of the much lighter social comedy The Forge (1924), which made the best-seller list of John O'London's Weekly. Hall is a key figure in lesbian literature for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). This is her only work with overt lesbian themes and tells the story of the life of a masculine lesbian named Stephen Gordon.

The Journey

The Journey
Author: Alister McGrath
Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2000-08-03
Genre: Christian life
ISBN: 9780340735336

In an evocative and personal style, Alister McGrath takes readers on a journey that retraces the path of the great Exodus from Egypt. Through the Wilderness and over the Mountains, he helps us to address a series of spiritual obstacles - doubt, distraction, temptation, tiredness, emptiness and low self-esteem - by learning from fellow travellers we meet along the way: giants of Christian spirituality including C. S. Lewis, J. I. Packer and John Bunyan. This is a book of spirituality, not about spirituality, aimed at the modern-day Christian for whom the spiritual classics can often seem inaccessible.

I Am Scout

I Am Scout
Author: Charles J. Shields
Publisher: Square Fish
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1250082218

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most widely read novels in American literature. It's also a perennial favorite in highschool English classrooms across the nation. Yet onetime author Harper Lee is a mysterious figure who leads a very private life in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, refusing to give interviews or talk about the novel that made her a household name. Lee's life is as rich as her fiction, from her girlhood as a rebellious tomboy to her days at the University of Alabama and early years as a struggling writer in New York City. Charles J. Shields is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, which he has adapted here for younger readers. What emerges in this riveting portrait is the story of an unconventional, high-spirited woman who drew on her love of writing and her Southern home to create a book that continues to speak to new generations of readers. Anyone who has enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird or Go Set a Watchman will appreciate this glimpse into the life of its fascinating author, which includes photographs of Harper Lee, her family, and the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck. I Am Scout is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.