The New York Times: Book Review Search Article. Flannery O'Connor: Gifts of Meaning & Mystery. Toward the end of her life, Flannery O’Connor was often asked to speak about being a Southerner, as though this were a peculiar condition in need of explanation. In “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South,” a composite essay published from two of her last public talks, she sums up what she thinks of her region: “What has given the South her identity are those beliefs and qualities which she has absorbed from the Scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: a distrust of the abstract, a sense of human dependence on the grace of God, and a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured.”[1] Of these three dimensions of the South, “distrust of the abstract” might remain the one most in need of a defense, whether for the South, for O’Connor herself, or for literature as a mode of knowledge.
Mrs. Freeman takes particular pleasure in staring at Mrs. Hopewell’s daughter, thirty-two-year-old Hulga, who has a wooden leg. Mrs. Notes: Dallas Public Library - Dallas Book Festival. 12, William Faulkner. William Faulkner, ca. 1954. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten William Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, where his father was then working as a conductor on the railroad built by the novelist’s great-grandfather, Colonel William Falkner (without the “u”), author of The White Rose of Memphis.
Soon the family moved to Oxford, thirty-five miles away, where young Faulkner, although he was a voracious reader, failed to earn enough credits to be graduated from the local high school. In 1918 he enlisted as a student flyer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He spent a little more than a year as a special student at the state university, Ole Miss, and later worked as postmaster at the university station until he was fired for reading on the job. Encouraged by Sherwood Anderson, he wrote Soldier’s Pay (1926). A steady succession of novels followed, most of them related to what has come to be called the Yoknapatawpha saga: Light in August (1932), Pylon (1935), Absalom, Absalom! Mr. ‘Shame and Wonder,’ by David Searcy.
Photo “When people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “because they think that it is only style that they are talking about.” But uncommon literary style is always integrative, both the mother and the daughter of invention, wrought from a writer’s desperation “to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought.” Astonishment is a quality central to David Searcy’s “Shame and Wonder,” a nonfiction collection from a writer best known for two horror-inflected novels, “Ordinary Horror” and “Last Things.” What unites these 21 essays, which range from extended, rolling meditations (including one on the semiotics of the cereal box prize) to a lyric fragment on watching the PBS docu-series “Lewis & Clark,” is the sense of a wildly querying intelligence suspended in a state of awe. Continue reading the main story Essays By David Searcy Illustrated. 228 pp.
Essays: ‘Shame And Wonder,’ by David Searcy. Almost by definition, a book of essays is an odd duck — not quite memoir, which usually focuses on a particular (often harrowing) episode in a writer’s life; not quite nonfiction, which usually focuses on a historic event (dramatic or controversial), and is often book-length journalism. Essays tend to be occasional, thoughtful and philosophical: a form where a writer can navel-gaze and be introspective, unfettered by facts. Texas has an excellent tradition of the form: Larry McMurtry’s In a Narrow Grave is one of the best. In this tradition flows David Searcy’s Shame and Wonder, like a river of thoughts meandering through the prairies of the Lone Star State. The subjects of Searcy’s essays are various and quirky, from the sadness of divorce to the sadness of baseball to the sadness of classic car buffs.
Most (but not all) of the Dallasite’s essays are set in Texas, one of the exceptions being “Santa in Anatolia,” which unfolds in Turkey. Is sadness a theme here? William J. Plan your life.
Cindyzzok added: Jorge Luis Borges - Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man (1999) Directed by Philippe Molins Runtime: 47mins Language: English Although honors came late in life to Jorge Luis Borges, his unique worldview had begun to emerge even as a child. This program examines the life and literary career of the charismatic Argentine writer, as well as the thematic, symbolic, and mythological underpinnings of his works. Archival interviews with Borges; his mother, Leonor Acevedo de Borges; his second wife, Maria Kodama; and collaborator Adolfo Bioy Casares provide insights into the private Borges, while readings from “The Mirrors,” “Dreamtigers,” “The Plot,” “The South,” “The Aleph,” and other landmarks of Latin American fiction demonstrate his virtuosity as a transformer of experiences.
Reviewed by Orlando Archibeque, Auraria Library, University of Colorado at Denver Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina’s most famous and beloved literary figure, was born in 1899. Jorge Luis Borges in UbuWeb Sound. Cindyzzok added: Borges-Jorge-Luis_Craft-of-Verse_01-The-Riddle-of-Poetry. Michel Faber Plans to Stop Writing Novels. Photo “I wanted this to be the saddest thing I’d ever written,” the writer Michel Faber said over coffee last month in Midtown Manhattan, looking tired and disoriented. Mr. Faber, who had flown in from Scotland to meet with his United States publisher, was talking about his new novel, “The Book of Strange New Things,” which he initially envisioned as a weird and outlandish story set among aliens on a faraway planet. But six years ago, the story took on the grim contours of reality when he and his wife, Eva, learned she had terminal cancer.
The novel morphed into an interstellar domestic drama, a wrenching tale of mortality, human frailty and the unbreachable distance between a couple, as well as an elegy to Eva, who died in July just as he was making final changes to the manuscript. The novel will also be his last. Mr. The premature end to Mr. Those who work closely with Mr. Mr. Mr. Philip Pullman, author of the fantasy trilogy “His Dark Materials” and a fan of Mr. But Mr. Mr. Mr. Joel Gardner/Interview — ragazine.cc. Thirty Years Later: A Conversation on John Gardner With John SmelcerContributing Editor This year marks the 30th commemoration of John Gardner’s tragic motorcycle accident.
Poet, playwright, translator, medievalist, he is the author of such novels as Nickel Mountain, Mickelsson’s Ghosts, The Sunlight Dialogues, and October Light, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. His Grendel, now a classic, is a magnificent retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view. JS: I knew your father from our letters. JG: Dad was indeed a generous teacher. JS: In 2004, my book Without Reservation won the Milt Kessler Prize for a book of poetry published in a given year by an American poet over 40.
JG: As long as you’ve been in Binghamton, you must have a lot of friends and colleagues who were also friends of my father, right? JS: I’ve met Liz at a few readings, but as far as I know I’ve never met Susan or Bernie. I only knew Gardner from our letters. Joel and his ride.
Shakespeare. David Foster Wallace. I am Andy Weir, author of "The Egg" and the forthcoming novel "The Martian." AMA! : sciencefiction. Kurt Vonnegut on Reading, Boredom, Belonging, and Hate. By Maria Popova “Hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide.” What makes the commencement address such a singular pinnacle of the communication arts is that, in an era where religion is increasingly being displaced by culture and secular thought, it offers a secular version of the sermon — a packet of guidance on how to be a good human being and lead a good life.
It is also one of the few cultural contexts in which a patronizing attitude, in the original sense of the term, is not only acceptable but desired — after all, the very notion of the graduation speech calls for a patronly father figure or matronly mother figure to get up at the podium and impart to young people hard-earned, experience-tested wisdom on how to live well.
And implicit to that is an automatic disarmament of our otherwise unflinching culturally conditioned cynicism — which is also why the best commencement addresses are timeless and ageless and sing to us beyond the boundaries of our own life-stage. Halloween Costume Ideas From Famous Writers. Halloween is just around the corner. Some people like this holiday because they can spend more time with their kids seeking candy, other part love this holiday for girls using the day as an excuse to dress like, hmm... cheeky girls. But every year we face the one huge common problem - where the hell I can find mind-blowing Halloween costumes or costume ideas? EssayMama.com (as a caring mother) is here to pamper her kids with this infographic, where you can find the answer. EssayMama's answer is simple - dress as your favorite writer. These are the most hipster costumes ever.
Happy Halloween! Created by Jessica Millis (Twitter @MillisJess) Read all news Rating: 4.8/5 (485 votes) 100% unique custom academic papers written to your exact details. This service has surpassed my expectations! Writers Who Published Great Books Before Age 25. Picture it: teenage Mary Shelley was on a vacation getaway, with her husband Percy and some of his rambunctious poet friends, like that rogue Lord Byron… and out of the group of legends, it’s Shelley herself who arguably published the greatest work of all at the ridiculous age of 20: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a book that has penetrated our human consciousness. In honor of Shelley’s birthday this month, here’s a list of 25 other writers who created heartbreakingly beautiful work before they could get a discount on a rental car or have their publishers demand an active Twitter account.
If you’re 26, get on out of here. (However, interestingly enough, 26 seems to be a magic age for a lot of writers, starting with Thomas Pynchon, which is a whole other list.) Enjoy the depressingly youthful visages and luminous skin below. Norman Mailer — The Naked and the Dead Mailer became a star when this book was published. 130, Italo Calvino. Upon hearing of Italo Calvino’s death in September of 1985, John Updike commented, “Calvino was a genial as well as brilliant writer. He took fiction into new places where it had never been before, and back into the fabulous and ancient sources of narrative.” At that time Calvino was the preeminent Italian writer, the influence of his fantastic novels and stories reaching far beyond the Mediterranean.
Two years before, The Paris Review had commissioned a Writers at Work interview with Calvino to be conducted by William Weaver, his longtime English translator. It was never completed, though Weaver later rewrote his introduction as a remembrance. Still later, The Paris Review purchased transcripts of a videotaped interview with Calvino (produced and directed by Damien Pettigrew and Gaspard Di Caro) and a memoir by Pietro Citati, the Italian critic.
What follows—these three selections and a transcript of Calvino’s thoughts before being interviewed—is a collage, an oblique portrait. Books By Bob White. Browse by Author (A) The Mystery of Charles Dickens by Joyce Carol Oates. Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin Penguin, 527 pp., $36.00 Charles Dickens: A Life (Waterstone’s Special Edition) by Claire Tomalin, with an appendix of selected letters by Dickens London: Viking, 542 pp., £30.00 The life of almost any man possessing great gifts, would be a sad book to himself. Is Dickens the greatest of English novelists? London. Fog everywhere. And equally characteristic of Dickens, a chapter opening in the lesser-regarded and uncompleted The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in which a natural observation acquires a portentous metaphoric significance: Irresistibly the reader is drawn into the voice—exquisitely lyric, yet with a profound melancholy beneath—of the child Philip Pirrip—“Pip”—of Great Expectations: Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.
The narrative is present-tense; the mood is suspenseful. This is a very small episode in the life of Dickens, but it allows us to see him in action…. Writers. Susan Sontag: Notes On "Camp" Published in 1964. Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp. " A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such.
Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous -- these are grave matters. Taste has no system and no proofs. These notes are for Oscar Wilde. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. Raymond Carver. Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. Carver was a major writer of the late 20th century and a major force in the revitalization of the American short story in literature in the 1980s. [citation needed] Early life[edit] Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington.[1] His father, a skilled sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker.
Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His one brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943. Writing career[edit] Carver continued his studies first at Chico State University and then at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California, where he studied with Richard Cortez Day and received his B.A. in 1963.
In the mid-1960s Carver and his family lived in Sacramento, California, where he briefly worked at a bookstore before taking a position as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. Jasper Fforde.com : Grand Central. Jack Kerouac’s List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Prose and Life. John Milton. John Ronald Reul Tolkien. Donna Tartt: "I've tried to write faster and I don't really enjoy it" List of 21st-century writers. A[edit] B[edit] C[edit] D[edit] E[edit] F[edit] G[edit] H[edit] I-J[edit] K[edit] L[edit] M[edit] N-O[edit] P-Q[edit] R[edit] S[edit] T[edit] U-W[edit] X-Z[edit] See also[edit]