How Life Writes the Book

How Life Writes the Book PDF Author: Thomas Lahusen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501745239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
'A gripping, unsettling, and highly original book that turns the making of a Soviet socialist-realist classic—Azhaev's Far from Moscow—into a detective story, and sheds as strange and ambiguous a light on the Stalin era, from gulag to Writers'Union, as one could hope for. Lahusen is a disarmingly low-key scholarly virtuoso who performs simultaneously as an archive-based historian, an interpreter of texts (including Azhaev's own self-organized archive), and a gently relentless biographer whose stalking of his prey is reminiscent of Nabokov. The final chilling paragraph typically economical and understated, is a reminder that the author/investigator, too, is a collaborator in the multiple reworkings of Azhaev's text, and of his life, that How Life Writes the Book has so finely analyzed.'—Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago 'This is a wonderfully original work: a history of a book, a literary analysis of an age, a montage of a life. Lahusen writes with a postmodern sensibility but without the postmodernist jargon.'—Yuri Slezkine, University of California, Berkeley 'Thomas Lahusen has written an imaginative and archivally grounded book that presents the most fascinating picture to date of the literary process that produced canonical works of Socialist Realism and the people who wrote them. How Life Writes the Book is alternatingly chilling and funny as it demonstrates the interpenetration of literary institutions, massive construction projects and the Soviet system of prison camps and slave labor. With this study, as with his earlier Intimacy and Terror, Lahusen continues his own project of revolutionizing our understanding of the Soviet subject and Soviet subjectivity.'—Eric Naiman, University of California, Berkeley 'Lahusen's case study marks a new genre of inquiry into the very nature of socialist realism, a genre which became possible after archives and memory in Russia regained their voice. It shows how life is transformed into Soviet myth.'—Hans G'nther, editor of The Culture of the Stalin Period

How Life Writes the Book

How Life Writes the Book PDF Author: Thomas Lahusen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
This remarkable volume is at once a history of a book and an attempt to come to terms with the traumatic experience of a man and his generation. Thomas Lahusen was doing research on Far from Moscow, a classic socialist realist novel by a writer named Vasilii Azhaev, when he made an astonishing discovery. Azhaev had assembled an extensive personal archive integrating his personal history with the political history of his time. Drawing on the archive, Lahusen reconstructs the genesis, writing, reworking, and reception of the Stalin Prize novel. He leads us from a forced labor camp to the highest reaches of the Soviet literary bureaucracy and back again, in the process helping us better to understand the failure of the bold Soviet effort to integrate literature and life, utopia and reality.

Your Life Is a Book - And It's Time to Write It!

Your Life Is a Book - And It's Time to Write It! PDF Author: Kevin Quirk
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 1936780216
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 159

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do you have a story that you just have to tell? Do you seek to preserve your life history as a gift for loved ones, or to pay tribute to those who have meant the most to you? Do you yearn to write about one major life experience to inspire others? You're not alone. The desire to write our life story is a timeless, universal urge. Somewhere inside us we know that writing a book about our life will touch those we love, while enriching our lives in today's cell phone-laptop lifestyle. Life is a book, and women and men from 19 to 99 are hearing the call to write it. Someone is waiting to hear you tell your life story: who you are, how you've lived, what you've learned. They want to hear all the stories that have shaped your life. Your Life Is a Book - And It's Time to Write It! An A-to-Z Guide to Help Anyone Write Their Life Story will take you on the journey of creating your memoir, autobiography, or life story. It doesn't matter how old or how young you are, or whether you've written a lot, a little, or not at all. Through practical tools, lively writing exercises, engaging questions, and helpful illustrations, you'll receive the guidance and encouragement you need from an expert life-writing teacher. Start writing your life story today! Kevin Quirk, M.A., has been helping ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds write their life stories as ghostwriter, personal historian, and Writing Your Life Story teacher since 1998. A former journalist and founder of Life Is a Book, he is coauthor of Brace for Impact: Miracle on the Hudson Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life.

How Life Writes the Book

How Life Writes the Book PDF Author: Thomas Lahusen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501745239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
'A gripping, unsettling, and highly original book that turns the making of a Soviet socialist-realist classic—Azhaev's Far from Moscow—into a detective story, and sheds as strange and ambiguous a light on the Stalin era, from gulag to Writers'Union, as one could hope for. Lahusen is a disarmingly low-key scholarly virtuoso who performs simultaneously as an archive-based historian, an interpreter of texts (including Azhaev's own self-organized archive), and a gently relentless biographer whose stalking of his prey is reminiscent of Nabokov. The final chilling paragraph typically economical and understated, is a reminder that the author/investigator, too, is a collaborator in the multiple reworkings of Azhaev's text, and of his life, that How Life Writes the Book has so finely analyzed.'—Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago 'This is a wonderfully original work: a history of a book, a literary analysis of an age, a montage of a life. Lahusen writes with a postmodern sensibility but without the postmodernist jargon.'—Yuri Slezkine, University of California, Berkeley 'Thomas Lahusen has written an imaginative and archivally grounded book that presents the most fascinating picture to date of the literary process that produced canonical works of Socialist Realism and the people who wrote them. How Life Writes the Book is alternatingly chilling and funny as it demonstrates the interpenetration of literary institutions, massive construction projects and the Soviet system of prison camps and slave labor. With this study, as with his earlier Intimacy and Terror, Lahusen continues his own project of revolutionizing our understanding of the Soviet subject and Soviet subjectivity.'—Eric Naiman, University of California, Berkeley 'Lahusen's case study marks a new genre of inquiry into the very nature of socialist realism, a genre which became possible after archives and memory in Russia regained their voice. It shows how life is transformed into Soviet myth.'—Hans G'nther, editor of The Culture of the Stalin Period

Bird by Bird

Bird by Bird PDF Author: Anne Lamott
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307424987
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times). “Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Blueprint for a Book

Blueprint for a Book PDF Author: Jennie Nash
Publisher: Tree Farm Books
ISBN: 9781733251129
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Get Book Here

Book Description
How to write a novel in the most efficient way by tackling the hardest part before you start to write, from top book coach Jennie Nash "This process makes me want to write, and it makes what I'm writing better. I read it before every draft. It's that good." -KJ Dell'Antonia, New York Times bestselling author of The Chicken Sisters Whether you're writing your first novel or your tenth, there is a temptation to pin it to the page before it disappears. It's such a brilliant idea and you can see the whole thing shimmering in your mind, just out of reach. Maybe you do some work on character development and plotting, but you're a racehorse at the gate, ready to run, ready to write. This book is an argument to stop and define the foundational elements of your story before you keep writing - which means understanding your motivation as a writer, considering your reader's expectations, and making sure your story has a solid structure that will hold up inside and out from beginning to end. This clarity is what gives a novel its power and a writer their confidence. Jennie Nash is the creator of the Book Coach Certification program at Author Accelerator and has taught hundreds of book coaches and thousands of novelists how to use the Blueprint for a Book system-and the Inside Outline at the heart of it - to help them produce their best work in the most efficient way. "Jennie Nash turned me into a plotter and changed the way I think about approaching any new project. I'm an Inside Outside outline fan for life!" -Alison Hammer, author of You and Me and Us and Little Pieces of Me "If you are about to start writing or revising your novel - hold up! You need this book before putting fingers to keyboard. It's a step-by-step design-your-novel manual that encapsulates the most important aspect of great story-telling: how to reach deep into your writerly heart and into the heart of the story you want to bring to life." - Janet Fox, author of The Artifact Hunters "I will sing the praises of the Inside Outline forever. It's f*ing genius." -Carla Naumburg, author of How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids "The Inside Outline is making writing easier. I can focus more on the writing rather than discovering what the scene is about when I'm creating it. Why isn't every writer using it? Instead, people are plonking down good money to be told ten key steps in writing dialogue or setting a scene. I'm so grateful I'm no longer one of them." - Kate Kimball, first time novelist

Churchill and Orwell

Churchill and Orwell PDF Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143110888
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holidays!

Every Day I Write the Book

Every Day I Write the Book PDF Author: Amitava Kumar
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478007192
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
Amitava Kumar's Every Day I Write the Book is for academic writers what Annie Dillard's The Writing Life and Stephen King's On Writing are for creative writers. Alongside Kumar's interviews with an array of scholars whose distinct writing offers inspiring examples for students and academics alike, the book's pages are full of practical advice about everything from how to write criticism to making use of a kitchen timer. Communication, engagement, honesty: these are the aims and sources of good writing. Storytelling, attention to organization, solid work habits: these are its tools. Kumar's own voice is present in his essays about the writing process and in his perceptive and witty observations on the academic world. A writing manual as well as a manifesto, Every Day I Write the Book will interest and guide aspiring writers everywhere.

Write Your Book - Tell Your Life Story

Write Your Book - Tell Your Life Story PDF Author: Var Kelly
Publisher: Just Write It Services
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Get Book Here

Book Description
Write Your Book - Tell Your Life Story is a profound exploration into the psyche of aspiring authors, offering a compass to navigate the often-tumultuous journey of penning one's life narrative. Through its evocative three-part structure, this book shines light on the emotional battleground of the mind before writing, equips readers with the know-how of the writing process, and establishes the path to a successfully published book. More than a mere guide, Write Your Book - Tell Your Life Story is a heartwarming testament to the transformative power of storytelling. It seeks to empower those with a tale burning inside, urging them to rise above their reservations and share their unique stories with the world. If you've ever felt the stirrings of a story within or been encouraged to pen your experiences, this book is the clarion call to bring your narrative to life. For those ready to embark on this literary voyage, the author, a seasoned writing mentor, offers a guiding hand with insights and expertise, ensuring every storyteller's vision finds its rightful place on paper. Your legacy is a page away; let Write Your Book - Tell Your Life Story be the catalyst to penning it.

How to Write a Book Report Gr. 5-8

How to Write a Book Report Gr. 5-8 PDF Author: Brenda Rollins
Publisher: Classroom Complete Press
ISBN: 1553199022
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 64

Get Book Here

Book Description
Blend comprehension and creativity skills through book reports with clear and concise instruction. Our resource makes book reports fun again while providing instruction on the correct form and mechanics of all book reports. Start off by learning what is a book report before delving into the different kinds, like science fiction and historical nonfiction. Get tips on what to do before you write with graphic organizers for prewriting. Identify which books would be good for a fiction book report. Get help with the format of a nonfiction book report. Find out how to have a great oral book report by following our checklist. Finally, practice proofreading by reviewing a provided book report. Aligned to your State Standards and written to Bloom's Taxonomy, reproducible writing tasks, crossword, word search, comprehension quiz and answer key are also included.

You Should Really Write a Book

You Should Really Write a Book PDF Author: Regina Brooks
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312609345
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The days are long gone when publishing professionals were willing to take on a manuscript simply because it's based on a "good idea" or even because it's well written. With eyes focused on the bottom line, agents and editors now look for skilled and creative authors who come with an established audience, too. You Should Really Write a Book is essential reading for those wanting to write commercially viable memoirs in today's vastly changed publishing industry. It is designed as a guide for writers, editors, and marketing professionals. Brooks and Richardson utilize the newest social networking, marketing and promotional trends and explain how to conceptualize and strategize campaigns that cause buzz, dramatically fueling word-of-mouth and boosting the chances of attracting attention in the publishing world and beyond. Created to give writers a competitive advantage, this handy and concise book focuses on six major memoir categories, explains what sells and why, and teaches writers to think like publishers"--Provided by publisher.