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Author: Joshua Landy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019518856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
Why does Mark's Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates make bad arguments? Why are Beckett's novels so inscrutable? And why don't stage magicians even pretend to summon spirits anymore? In a series of captivating chapters on Mark, Plato, Beckett, Mallarm , and Chaucer, Joshua Landy not only answers these questions but explains why they are worth asking in the first place. Witty and approachable, How to Do Things with Fictions challenges the widespread assumption that literary texts must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit. It reveals that authors are sometimes best thought of not as entertainers or as educators but as personal trainers of the brain, putting their willing readers through exercises designed to fortify specific mental capacities, from form-giving to equanimity, from reason to faith. Delivering plenty of surprises along the way--that moral readings of literature can be positively dangerous; that the parables were deliberately designed to be misunderstood; that Plato knowingly sets his main character up for a fall; that metaphor is powerfully connected to religious faith; that we can sustain our beliefs even when we suspect them to be illusions--How to Do Things with Fictions convincingly shows that our best allies in the struggle for more rigorous thinking, deeper faith, richer experience, and greater peace of mind may well be the imaginative writings sitting on our shelves.
Author: Joshua Landy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019518856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why does Mark's Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates make bad arguments? Why are Beckett's novels so inscrutable? And why don't stage magicians even pretend to summon spirits anymore? In a series of captivating chapters on Mark, Plato, Beckett, Mallarm , and Chaucer, Joshua Landy not only answers these questions but explains why they are worth asking in the first place. Witty and approachable, How to Do Things with Fictions challenges the widespread assumption that literary texts must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit. It reveals that authors are sometimes best thought of not as entertainers or as educators but as personal trainers of the brain, putting their willing readers through exercises designed to fortify specific mental capacities, from form-giving to equanimity, from reason to faith. Delivering plenty of surprises along the way--that moral readings of literature can be positively dangerous; that the parables were deliberately designed to be misunderstood; that Plato knowingly sets his main character up for a fall; that metaphor is powerfully connected to religious faith; that we can sustain our beliefs even when we suspect them to be illusions--How to Do Things with Fictions convincingly shows that our best allies in the struggle for more rigorous thinking, deeper faith, richer experience, and greater peace of mind may well be the imaginative writings sitting on our shelves.
Author: Sarah Wasserman
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452964157
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
A comprehensive study of ephemera in twentieth-century literature—and its relevance to the twenty-first century “Nothing ever really disappears from the internet” has become a common warning of the digital age. But the twentieth century was filled with ephemera—items that were designed to disappear forever—and these objects played crucial roles in some of that century’s greatest works of literature. In The Death of Things, author Sarah Wasserman delivers the first comprehensive study addressing the role ephemera played in twentieth-century fiction and its relevance to contemporary digital culture. Representing the experience of perpetual change and loss, ephemera was central to great works by major novelists like Don DeLillo, Ralph Ellison, and Marilynne Robinson. Following the lives and deaths of objects, Wasserman imagines new uses of urban space, new forms of visibility for marginalized groups, and new conceptions of the marginal itself. She also inquires into present-day conundrums: our fascination with the durable, our concerns with the digital, and our curiosity about what new fictional narratives have to say about deletion and preservation. The Death of Things offers readers fascinating, original angles on how objects shape our world. Creating an alternate literary history of the twentieth century, Wasserman delivers an insightful and idiosyncratic journey through objects that were once vital but are now forgotten.
Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 080214764X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 97
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Book Description
The renowned novelist and author of This Year You Write a Novel shares a “compact but insight-rich” guide to fiction writing (Publishers Weekly). In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. For writers who want to approach the genius of Melville, Dickens, or Twain, The Elements of Fiction is a must-read. Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction’s most essential elements: character and char-acter development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting, and rewriting again. Throughout, The Elements of Fiction is enriched by brilliant demonstrative examples that Mosley himself has written here for the first time.
Author: M.L. Ronn
Publisher: Author Level Up LLC
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
The no-nonsense, no BS guide to becoming a prolific author--available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook! Do you want to write a lot of novels, but can't improve your writing speed? Writing fast is the most important skill you can develop as a writer. While it seems hard to hit high word counts, the secrets are easier than you think. In this writer's guide, prolific author M.L. Ronn pulls back the curtain on the process that he uses to write 6-8 novels a year. He has kept this pace while juggling responsibilities as a husband, father, manager at a Fortune 100 company, and a law school student. The result is a catalogue of over 40 books and counting. Create a writing habit that suits your lifestyle Use writing apps on your phone to double your word count Learn strategies to beat writer's block forever Discover how to write smarter by using unorthodox strategies used by the masters This book is the only thing standing between you and your writing dreams. Write faster, write smarter, beat writer's block, and be the prolific author you've always wanted to be! V1.0
Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1621450724
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
From acclaimed, New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach comes the complete collection of her “My Planet” articles published in Reader’s Digest. She was a hit columnist in the magazine, and this book features the articles she wrote in that time. Insightful and hilarious, Mary explores the ins and outs of the modern world: marriage, friends, family, food, technology, customer service, dental floss, and ants—she leaves no element of the American experience unchecked for its inherent paradoxes, pleasures, and foibles. On Cleanliness: Ed has crud vision, and I don’t. I don’t notice filth. Ed sees it everywhere. I am reasonably convinced that Ed can actually see bacteria. . . . He confessed he didn’t like me using his bathrobe because I’d wear it while sitting on the toilet. “It’s not like it goes in the water,” I protested, though if you counted the sash as part of the robe, this wasn’t strictly true. On the Internet: The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me. Right now, for instance, I’m feeling a shooting pain on the side of my neck. A Web search produces five matches, the first three for a condition called Arnold-Chiari Malformation. While my husband, Ed, reads over my shoulder, I recite symptoms from the list. “‘General clumsiness’ and ‘general imbalance,’” I say, as though announcing arrivals at the Marine Corps Ball. “‘Difficulty driving,’ ‘lack of taste,’ ‘difficulty feeling feet on ground.’” “Those aren’t symptoms,” says Ed. “Those are your character flaws.” On Fashion: My husband recently made me try on a bikini. A bikini is not so much a garment as a cloth-based reminder that your parts have been migrating all these years. My waist, I realized that day in the dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my rib cage, which now rests directly on my hips. I’m exhibiting continental drift in reverse. On Eating Healthy: So Ed and I were eating a lot of vegetables. Vegetables on pasta, vegetables on rice. This was extremely healthy, until you got to the part where Ed and I are found in the kitchen at 10 p.m., feeding on Froot Loops and tubes of cookie dough.
Author: James Wood
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374173401
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings—Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step. The result is nothing less than a philosophy of the novel—plainspoken, funny, blunt—in the traditions of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. It sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision. It will change the way you read.
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 164259380X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061804169
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
“A prodigiously imaginative collection.” —New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice “Dazzling tales from a master of the fantastic.” —Washington Post Book World Fragile Things is a sterling collection of exceptional tales from Neil Gaiman, multiple award-winning (the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Newberry, and Eisner Awards, to name just a few), #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Graveyard Book, Anansi Boys, Coraline, and the groundbreaking Sandman graphic novel series. A uniquely imaginative creator of wonders whose unique storytelling genius has been acclaimed by a host of literary luminaries from Norman Mailer to Stephen King, Gaiman’s astonishing powers are on glorious displays in Fragile Things. Enter and be amazed!
Author: Becky Chambers
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062569422
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
National Bestseller! Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Series! A Publishers Weekly "Best Books of 2017" pick! Nominated for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel! Shortlisted for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award! Winner of the Prix Julia-Verlanger! Embark on an exciting, adventurous, and dangerous journey through the galaxy with the motley crew of the spaceship Wayfarer in this fun and heart-warming space opera—the sequel to the acclaimed The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in a new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns to negotiate the universe and discover who she is, she makes friends with Pepper, an excitable engineer, who’s determined to help her learn and grow. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet introduced readers to the incredible world of Rosemary Harper, a young woman with a restless soul and secrets to keep. When she joined the crew of the Wayfarer, an intergalactic ship, she got more than she bargained for—and learned to live with, and love, her rag-tag collection of crewmates. A Closed and Common Orbit is the stand-alone sequel to that beloved debut novel, and is perfect for fans of Firefly, Joss Whedon, Mass Effect, and Star Wars.
Author: Nic Schuck
Publisher: Panhandle Books
ISBN: 1087936136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
In the tradition of other great ex-patriot stories like The Sun Also Rises or All the Pretty Horses, Native Moments is a coming-of-age adventure set among the lush landscape of Costa Rica. After the death of his brother, Sanch Murray leaves for a surf trip as a way to cope and sets out on a quixotic search for an alternative to the American Dream. Set in 1999 Costa Rica, Sanch and his friend Jake Higdon wander the dirt roads of Tamarindo and surrounding areas chasing waves as a way to live out the romantic fantasy lifestyle of traveling surfers. Jake Higdon, six years Sanch's senior, takes on the role of the wise leader and Sanch as his young apprentice. Sanch's adventure leads to encounters with people who share world views he had never considered and could potentially shape his own changing perceptions about life. Through sometimes humorous episodes such as trying his hand as a matador at a roadside rodeo or in his not so humorous battle with dysentery, Sanch explores life's beauty and wonder alongside the darker undercurrents of humanity. Along his journey, Sanch befriends a shamanic traveler named Rob, young revolutionaries from Venezuela, numerous expatriates from around the world trying to escape whatever it is that keeps chasing them, and a beautiful local girl named Andrea, who Sanch suspects is a prostitute but can't help falling for.
