Six Literary Lives

Six Literary Lives PDF Author: Reed Whittemore
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826208743
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
A brilliant tour de force, informative, unapologetically opinionated and a pleasure to read," exclaimed Newsweek about Reed Whittemore's recent book on biography, Whole Lives. The Washing Times proclaimed that his earlier work Pure Lives revealed biography as "a troubled genre-but as this book testifies brilliantly, a fascinating one." Whittemore continues to build upon his formidable reputation in the field of biography with Six Literary Lives, in which he deepens our understanding of six major twentieth-century writers. Whittemore's subjects-Henry Adams, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Allen Tate-were writers of widely diverse talents and interests. However, Wittemore says, they all shared a "common climate of thought," a nineteenth-century view, now unfashionable, of literature's role in our culture. Although each biography could stand alone, Whittemore focuses on the ideas-literary, scientific, cultural-that united these six literary lives and emphasizes the shared impiety. The book is an experiment in group biography with an ideological base. Using as a foundation American culture before World War II, which Daniel Bell described as "the end of ideology," Whittemore introduces these biographies with a discussion of the intellectual climate these writers shared. There is also a supplementary essay on three naturalists-Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, and Gerard Manley Hopkins-who shared similarly impious mind-sets. Six Literary Lives reasserts values of character and art that have been belittled or attacked in the late twentieth century. The six figures studied here were all aggressive individuals ill at ease with solidarity. Their personal relations were slight, yet their common underlying stance in relation to their culture illuminates both that culture and, by comparison, our own.

Six Literary Lives

Six Literary Lives PDF Author: Reed Whittemore
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826208743
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
A brilliant tour de force, informative, unapologetically opinionated and a pleasure to read," exclaimed Newsweek about Reed Whittemore's recent book on biography, Whole Lives. The Washing Times proclaimed that his earlier work Pure Lives revealed biography as "a troubled genre-but as this book testifies brilliantly, a fascinating one." Whittemore continues to build upon his formidable reputation in the field of biography with Six Literary Lives, in which he deepens our understanding of six major twentieth-century writers. Whittemore's subjects-Henry Adams, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Allen Tate-were writers of widely diverse talents and interests. However, Wittemore says, they all shared a "common climate of thought," a nineteenth-century view, now unfashionable, of literature's role in our culture. Although each biography could stand alone, Whittemore focuses on the ideas-literary, scientific, cultural-that united these six literary lives and emphasizes the shared impiety. The book is an experiment in group biography with an ideological base. Using as a foundation American culture before World War II, which Daniel Bell described as "the end of ideology," Whittemore introduces these biographies with a discussion of the intellectual climate these writers shared. There is also a supplementary essay on three naturalists-Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, and Gerard Manley Hopkins-who shared similarly impious mind-sets. Six Literary Lives reasserts values of character and art that have been belittled or attacked in the late twentieth century. The six figures studied here were all aggressive individuals ill at ease with solidarity. Their personal relations were slight, yet their common underlying stance in relation to their culture illuminates both that culture and, by comparison, our own.

H G Wells

H G Wells PDF Author: Adam Roberts
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030264211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
This is the first new complete literary biography of H G Wells for thirty years, and the first to encompass his entire career as a writer, from the science fiction of the 1890s through his fiction and non-fiction writing all the way up to his last publication in 1946. Adam Roberts provides a comprehensive reassessment of Wells’ importance as a novelist, short-story writer, a theorist of social prophecy and utopia, journalist and commentator, offering a nuanced portrait of the man who coined the phrases ‘atom bomb’, ‘League of Nations’ ‘the war to end war’ and ‘time machine’, who wrote the world’s first comprehensive global history and invented the idea of the tank. In these twenty-six chapters, Roberts covers the entirety of Wells’ life and discusses every book and short story he produced, delivering a complete vision of this enduring figure.

Making a Literary Life

Making a Literary Life PDF Author: Carolyn See
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307415961
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
As Carolyn See says, writing guides are like preachers on Sunday—there may be a lot of them, but you can’t have too many, and there’s always an audience of the faithful. And while Making a Literary Life is ostensibly a book that teaches you how to write, it really teaches you how to make your interior life into your exterior life, how to find and join that community of like-minded souls you’re sure is out there somewhere. Carolyn See distills a lifetime of experience as novelist, memoirist, critic, and creative-writing professor into this marvelously engaging how-to book. Partly the nuts and bolts of writing (plot, point of view, character, voice) and partly an inspirational guide to living the life you dream of, Making a Literary Life takes you from the decision to “become” a writer to three months after the publication of your first book. A combination of writing and life strategies (do not tell everyone around you how you yearn to be a writer; send a “charming note” to someone you admire in the industry five days a week, every week, for the rest of your life; find the perfect characters right in front of you), Making a Literary Life is for people not usually considered part of the literary loop: the non–East Coasters, the secret scribblers. With sagacity, a magical sense of humor, and an abiding belief in the possibilities offered to “ordinary” people living “ordinary” lives, Carolyn See has summed up her life’s work in a book so beguiling, irreverent, and giddily inspiring that you won’t even realize it’s changing your life until it already has.

Lives Through Literature

Lives Through Literature PDF Author: Helane Levine-Keating
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780023623011
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1420

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Book Description


Literary Lives

Literary Lives PDF Author: David Ellis
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474468047
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "Literary Lives".

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy PDF Author: Thomas Hardy
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 0857285920
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 2377

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Book Description
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was a major English poet and novelist; his works, often set in the fictional county of Wessex, are memorable for their realism and criticism of social constraints. This book, the first volume of a two volume selected collection of his works, includes ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’, ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, ‘The Return of the Native’, ‘The Trumpet-Major’ and ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’.

Writers in Paris

Writers in Paris PDF Author: David Burke
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458759067
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
No city has attracted so much literary talent, launched so many illustrious careers, or produced such a wealth of enduring literature as Paris. From the 15th century through the 20th, poets, novelists, and playwrights, famed for both their work an...

Reading for Our Lives

Reading for Our Lives PDF Author: Maya Payne Smart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593332172
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as a reader and a learner. When her child went off to school, Maya Smart was shocked to discover that a good education in America is a long shot, in ways that few parents fully appreciate. Our current approach to literacy offers too little, too late, and attempting to play catch-up when our kids get to kindergarten can no longer be our default strategy. We have to start at the top. The brain architecture for reading develops rapidly during infancy, and early language experiences are critical to building it. That means parents’ work as children’s first teachers begins from day one too—and we need deeper knowledge to play our positions. Reading for Our Lives challenges the bath-book-bed mantra and the idea that reading aloud to our kids is enough to ensure school readiness. Instead, it gives parents easy, immediate, and accessible ways to nurture language and literacy development from the start. Through personal stories, historical accounts, scholarly research, and practical tips, this book presents the life-and-death urgency of literacy, investigates inequity in reading achievement, and illuminates a path to a true, transformative education for all.

Not Quite What I Was Planning

Not Quite What I Was Planning PDF Author: Larry Smith
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061750913
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity—six words at a time. One Life. Six Words. What's Yours? When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving. From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.

Texas Literary Outlaws

Texas Literary Outlaws PDF Author: Steven L. Davis
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 0875656803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
At the height of the sixties, a group of Texas writers stood apart from Texas’ conservative establishment. Calling themselves the Mad Dogs, these six writers—Bud Shrake, Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, and Peter Gent—closely observed the effects of the Vietnam War; the Kennedy assassination; the rapid population shift from rural to urban environments; Lyndon Johnson’s rise to national prominence; the Civil Rights Movement; Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys; Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, the new Outlaw music scene; the birth of a Texas film industry; Texas Monthly magazine; the flowering of “Texas Chic”; and Ann Richards’ election as governor. In Texas Literary Outlaws, Steven L. Davis makes extensive use of untapped literary archives to weave a fascinating portrait of writers who came of age during a period of rapid social change. With Davis’s eye for vibrant detail and a broad historical perspective, Texas Literary Outlaws moves easily between H. L. Hunt’s Dallas mansion and the West Texas oil patch, from the New York literary salon of Elaine’s to the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, from Dennis Hopper on a film set in Mexico to Jerry Jeff Walker crashing a party at Princeton University. The Mad Dogs were less interested in Texas’ mythic past than in the world they knew firsthand—a place of fast-growing cities and hard-edged political battles. The Mad Dogs crashed headfirst into the sixties, and their legendary excesses have often overshadowed their literary production. Davis never shies away from criticism in this no-holds-barred account, yet he also shows how the Mad Dogs’ rambunctious personae have deflected a true understanding of their deeper aims. Despite their popular image, the Mad Dogs were deadly serious as they turned their gaze on their home state, and they chronicled Texas culture with daring, wit, and sophistication.