Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova. With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge. Views: 45
A towering figure in American literature, Norman Mailer has in recent years reached a new level of accessibility and power. His last novel, The Castle in the Forest, revealed fascinating ideas about faith and the nature of good and evil. Now Mailer offers his concept of the nature of God. His conversations with his friend and literary executor, Michael Lennon, show this writer at his most direct, provocative, and challenging. “I think,” writes Mailer, “that piety is oppressive. It takes all the air out of thought.”In moving, amusing, probing, and uncommon dialogues conducted over three years but whose topics he has considered for decades, Mailer establishes his own system of belief, one that rejects both organized religion and atheism. He presents instead a view of our world as one created by an artistic God who often succeeds but can also fail in the face of determined opposition by contrary powers in the universe, with whom war is waged for the souls of humans. In turn, we have been given freedom–indeed responsibility–to choose our own paths. Mailer trusts that our individual behavior–always a complex mix of good and evil–will be rewarded or punished with a reincarnation that fits the sum of our lives. Mailer weighs the possibilities of “intelligent design” at the same time avowing that sensual pleasures were bestowed on us by God; he finds fault with the Ten Commandments–because adultery, he avers, may be a lesser evil than others suffered in a bad marriage–and he holds that technology was the Devil’s most brilliant creation. In short, Mailer is original and unpredictable in this inspiring verbal journey, a unique vision of the world in which “God needs us as much as we need God.”From The Naked and the Dead to The Executioner’s Song and beyond, Mailer’s major works have engaged such themes as war, politics, culture, and sex. Now, in this small yet important book, Mailer, in a modest, well-spoken style, gives us fresh ways to think about the largest subject of them all.From the Hardcover edition.Review“[Displays] the glory of an original mind in full provocation.”–USA Today“[Mailer’s] theology is not theoretical to him. After eight decades, it is what he believes. He expects no adherents, and does not profess to be a prophet, but he has worked to forge his beliefs into a coherent catechism.”–New York“At once illuminating and exciting . . . a chance to see Mailer’s intellect as well as his lively conversational style of speech.”–American Jewish LifeFrom the Trade Paperback edition.About the AuthorNorman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner’s Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot’s Ghost; Oswald’s Tale; The Gospel According to the Son; and The Castle in the Forest. Mr. Mailer passed away Saturday November 10th, 2007. Views: 45
Under her mother's constant scrutiny and lost in the shadow of her famous senator father, Melissa is the third child in the politically prominent Dickenson family, where ambition comes first and Melissa often comes last. In college, she meets Blake, a man of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage. His adoptive parents are lawyers whose defense of death-row cases in the past brought them head-to-head with Melissa's father when he was the governor of Pennsylvania.While Melissa and Blake's attraction is immediate and fiery, a dangerous secret lurks beneath their relationship -- one that could destroy them ... and their families.Provocative and beautifully written, and dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity, and the consequences of ambition, The Third Child is a remarkable page-turner. Views: 45
Stormy-Rain and Marcus are polar opposites: she’s a free-spirited, Tarot card reading, star sign obsessed, rainbow-haired hippie-slash-actress; he wears a suit and tie and over-shines his already too-shiny shoes. She believes in ancient aliens, crystal healing and auras; he's governed by law and logic, and doesn't believe in Fate. But Fate believes in them… So what happens when their worlds collide and disaster strikes? Views: 45
Bartleby the Scrivener (1853), by Herman Melville, tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. One day Bartleby declines the assignment his employer gives him with the inscrutable "I would prefer not." The utterance of this remark sets off a confounding set of actions and behavior, making the unsettling character of Bartleby one of Melville's most enigmatic and unforgettable creations. Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen. Two of the most admired of these - `Bartleby` and `Benito Cereno` - first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled `The Piazza Tales`. `Bartleby` (also known as `Bartleby the Scrivener`) is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter`s conscience, even after Bartleby`s dismissal. `Benito Cereno`, considered one of Melville`s best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. A splendid parable of man`s struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable. Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best. Views: 45
Nikki Giovanni's poetry has spurred movements and inspired songs, turned hearts and informed generations. She's been hailed as a healer and as a national treasure. But Giovanni's heart resides in the everyday, where family and lovers gather, friends commune, and those no longer with us are remembered. And at every gathering there is food--food as sustenance, food as aphrodisiac, food as memory. A pot of beans is flavored with her mother's sighs--this sigh part cardamom, that one the essence of clove; a lover requests a banquet as an affirmation of ongoing passion; homage is paid to the most time-honored appetizer: soup.With Chasing Utopia, Giovanni demands that the prosaic--flowers, birdsong, win-ter--be seen as poetic, and reaffirms once again why she is as energetic, "remarkable" (Gwendolyn Brooks), "wonderful" (Marian Wright Edelman),"outspoken, prolific, energetic" (New York Times), and relevant as ever. Views: 45
Mr. Berryman's posthumous book of poems, Delusions, Etc., had been completed and was in proof before his death on January 7, 1972. The opening section, "Opus Dei," is a sequence of eight poems based on the offices of the day from Lauds to Compline—the lines above being quoted from Nones. Part two consists of five poems whose subject are George Washington ("Rectitude, and the terrible upstanding member"), Beethoven, Emily Dickinson, Georg Trakl, and Dylan Thomas. The thirteen poems in the third part include "Gislebertus' Eve," "Scholars at the Orchid Pavilion," "Ecce Homo," Tampa Stomp," and "Hello." The fourth part is arranged as a scherzo. It starts with "Navajo Setting the Record Straight" and ends with "Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up." The concluding section is reflective and meditative in tone, with "The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man," "Somber Prayer," "Minnesota Thanksgiving," and "A Usual Prayer," and a coda that rises to the high spirits of "King... Views: 45
