Best of
American

1967

The Power of the Dog


Thomas Savage - 1967
    Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent. Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business.Phil is a vicious sadist, with a seething contempt for weakness to match his thirst for dominance; George has a gentle, loving soul. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years. When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins a relentless campaign to destroy his brother's new wife. But he reckons without an unlikely protector.From its visceral first paragraph to its devastating twist of an ending, The Power of the Dog will hold you in its grip.WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ANNIE PROULX

The Collected Poems, Vol. 2: 1939-1962


William Carlos Williams - 1967
    'And when the second and final colume of Williams' 'Collected Poems' is published, it should become even more apparent that he is this century's major American poet.' --Larry Kart, 'Chicago Tribune'

Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar


Richard Brautigan - 1967
    Trout Fishing in America is by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America's rural waterways; In Watermelon Sugar expresses the mood of a new generation, revealing death as a place where people travel the length of their dreams, rejecting violence and hate; and The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster is a collection of nearly 100 poems, first published in 1968.

All the Little Live Things


Wallace Stegner - 1967
    Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat.

Selected Poems


John Ashbery - 1967
    Now, from the whole range of a lifetime's work, Ashbery has chosen his own selection of 138 poems, including short lyrics, haiku, prose poems, and many of his major long poems. Seeing these great works together in one volume, readers will be able to savor a distillation of John Ashbery's work and appreciate fully how remarkable is his achievement.

The Thanksgiving Visitor


Truman Capote - 1967
    Buddy and his closest friend, his eccentric elderly cousin, Miss Sook--the memorable characters from Capote's A Christmas Memory--love preparing their old country house for Thanksgiving. But this year, there's trouble in the air. Full color illustrations.

The Back Country


Gary Snyder - 1967
    Gary Snyder worked as a logger and forest ranger; "Far East"—poems written between 1956 and 1964 in Japan where he studied Zen at the monastery in Kyoto; "Kali"—poems inspired by a visit to India and his reading of Indian religious texts, particularly those of Shivaism and Tibetan Buddhism; and "Back"—poems done on his return to this country in 1964 which look again at our West with the eyes of India and Japan. The book concludes with a group of translations of the Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), with whose work Snyder feels a close affinity. The title, The Back Country, has three major associations; wilderness. the "backward" countries, and the “back country" of the mind with its levels of being in the unconscious.

Life Studies and For the Union Dead


Robert Lowell - 1967
    This popular volume collects two of Lowell's finest books of poetry.

I Heard the Owl Call My Name


Margaret Craven - 1967
    Yet in this Eden of such natural beauty and richness, the old culture of totems and potlaches is under attack - slowly being replaced by a new culture of prefab houses and alcoholism. Into this world, where an entire generation of young people has become disenchanted and alienated from their heritage, Craven introduces Mark Brian, a young vicar sent to the small isolated parish by his church.This is Mark's journey of discovery - a journey that will teach him about life, death, and the transforming power of love. It is a journey that will resonate in the mind of readers long after the book is done.

Pimp: The Story of My Life


Iceberg Slim - 1967
    It is the smells, the sounds, the fears and the petty triumphs in the world of the street pimp.

The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain


Mark Twain - 1967
    Featuring popular tales such as “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” as well as some delightful excerpts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, this compilation also includes darker works written in the author’s twilight years. These selections illuminate the depth of Twain’s artistry, humor, irony, and narrative genius.From the Trade Paperback edition.Jim Smiley and his jumping frog --The story of the bad little boy who didn't come to grief --Cannibalism in the cars --Journalism in Tennessee --The story of the good little boy who did not prosper --How I edited an agricultural paper once --Political ecoonomy --A true story, repeated word for word as I heard it --The facts concerning the recent carnival of crime in Connecticut --Punch, brothers, punch! --Jim Baker's blue-jay yarn --The stolen white elephant --The McWilliamses and the burglar alarm --The private history of a campaign that failed --Extracts from Adam's diary --The man that corrupted Hadleyburg --The $30,000 bequest --Eve's diary --Captain Stormfield's visit to heaven --Letter from the recording angel --The great dark --The second advent ; Appendix War times --Private history of the "Jumping Frog" story --How to tell a story.

A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings


John Cage - 1967
    Includes lectures, essays, diaries and other writings, including "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)" and "Juilliard Lecture."

The Confessions of Nat Turner


William Styron - 1967
    He is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of 'that peculiar institution'. William Styron's ambitious and stunningly accomplished novel is Turner's confession, made to his jailers under the duress of his God. Encompasses the betrayals, cruelties and humiliations that made up slavery - and that still sear the collective psyches of both races.

On the Yard


Malcolm Braly - 1967
    At its center are the violently intertwined stories of Chilly Willy, in trouble with the law from his earliest years and now the head of the prison's flourishing black market in drugs and sex, and of Paul, wracked with guilt for the murder of his wife and desperate for some kind of redemption. At once brutal and tender, clear-eyed and rueful, On the Yard presents the penitentiary not as an exotic location, an exception to everyday reality, but as an ordinary place, one every reader will recognize, American to the core.

In Memory of My Feelings


Frank O'Hara - 1967
    In addition to the contribution he made to American literature, O'Hara was a vital figure in the New York cultural scene and spent many years working at The Museum of Modern Art, where, having begun by taking a job selling postcards on the admissions desk, he ultimately became an associate curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. And when he unexpectedly died, in an accident on the beach at Fire Island, New York, he was deeply mourned by the Museum's staff and by the New York art world.In Memory of My Feelings was published by the Museum in 1967 to honor its late curator. The book was edited by the poet Bill Berkson, who had been a close friend of O'Hara's and was then a guest editor in the Museum's Department of Publications. Berkson invited 30 artists who had known O'Hara, ranging from Willem to Kooning to Claes Oldenburg, from Joan Mitchell to Jasper Johns, to produce works to accompany his poems. The book was issued in a limited edition as a set of folded sheets held loose in a cloth-and-board folio that was itself contained in a slipcase. Now, for the first time, it Museum has republished In Memory of My Feelings in a conventionally bound edition, and with a newly designed paper jacket instead of a slipcase. In every other way, however, this book is an exact facsimile of the edition of 1967.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace


Richard Brautigan - 1967
    As with several of his early works, the entire edition (of 1,500 copies) was distributed for free. The title poem envisions a world where cybernetics has advanced to a stage where it allows a return to the balance of nature and an elimination of the need for human labor.

The Betrayal of the Body


Alexander Lowen - 1967
    Alexander Lowen teaches how the conflict between the ego and the body produces splits in the personality that affects all aspects of an individual's existence. The Betrayal of the Body teaches about the neurotic and schizoid personalities. Chapters include: The Schizoid Disturbance; The Problem of Identity; The Forsaken Body; The Psychology of Desperation; Illusion and Reality; Demons and Monsters. Understanding the importance of healing the mind-body split through the recovery of an emotionally fulfilling mind-body relationship is demonstrated with case studies.

The Eighth Day


Thornton Wilder - 1967
    While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children.At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.

The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World


Gay Talese - 1967
    Bestselling author Talese lays bare the secret internal intrigues behind the tradition of front page exposes in a story as gripping as a work of fiction and as immediate as today's headlines.

Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination


Josiah Thompson - 1967
    Using eye- and ear-witness testimony, drawings made from stills of the Zapruder film (which may have been tampered with but is NOT a fabrication!), and expert analysis, Josiah Thompson's SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS remains the best study of the assassination--and the best proof of a conspiracy--to have emerged from the 60s, or any other decade for that matter.By Rocco Dormarunno on August 20, 2004

Berrymans Sonnets


John Berryman - 1967
    It was an unusual choice—even an unpopular one—for a poet in a midcentury American literary scene that was less interested in forms. But it was the right choice, for Berryman found himself in a situation that called for the sonnet: after several years of a happy marriage, he had fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with the young wife of a colleague.     “Passion sought; passion requited; passion delayed; and, finally, passion utterly thwarted”: this is how the poet April Bernard, in her vivid, intimate introduction, characterizes the sonnet cycle, and it is the cycle that Berryman found himself caught up in. Of course the affair was doomed to end, and end badly. But in the meantime, on the page Berryman performs a spectacular dance of tender, obsessive, impossible love in his “characteristic tonal mixture of bravado and lacerating shame-facedness.” Here is the poet as lover, genius, and also, in Bernard’s words, as nutcase.     In Berryman’s Sonnets, the poet draws on the models of Petrarch and Sidney to reanimate and reimagine the love-sonnet sequence. Complex, passionate, filled with verbal fireworks and the emotional strains of joy, terror, guilt, and longing, these poems are ripe for rediscovery by contemporary readers.

The Minute Men: The First Fight: Myths and Realities of the American Revolution


John R. Galvin - 1967
    The fact that he may have had military training and drilled—and that April 19, 1775 was not his first battle—usually goes unmentioned. Winner of the American Revolution Round Table Award, The Minute Men will be of keen interest to those curious about the true history of some of America’s first soldiers.

Stranger from the Depths


Gerry Turner - 1967
    After sleeping for thousands of years the last survivor of a lost civilization returns to life to reveal secrets of the earth's core never imagined.

Eustace Chisholm and the Works


James Purdy - 1967
    A seedy Depression-era boardinghouse in Chicago plays host to a game of emotional chairs (Guardian) in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society."

Stop-Time


Frank Conroy - 1967
    Here is Frank Conroy's wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father's early death and a son's exhilarating escape into manhood.

The Yeshiva: Vol. 1


Chaim Grade - 1967
    Tsemakh Atlas, torn between his commitment to the ascetic life of the yeshiva community and his natural longings, tries to protect his students from the earthy villagers of Valkenik

Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862


Thomas Lawrence Connelly - 1967
    The responsibility for defending the Confederacy rested with two great military forces. One of these armies defended the "heartland" of the Confederacy--a vital area which embraced the state of Tennessee and large portions of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Kentucky.This is the story of that army--the first detailed study to be based upon research in manuscript collections and the first to explore the military significance of the heartland.The Army of Tennessee faced problems and obstacles far more staggering than any encountered by the other great Confederate force. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee's army was charged with the defense of an area considerably smaller in size. And while Lee's line of defense extended only about 125 miles, the front defended by the Army of Tennessee stretched for some 400 miles.Yet the Army of the Heartland has heretofore been given relatively slight attention by historians. With this volume Thomas Lawrence Connelly, a native Tennessean, has brought Confederate military history more nearly into balance.Throughout the war the Army of Tennessee was plagued by ineffective leadership. There were personality conflicts between commanding generals and corps commanders and breakdowns in communications with the Confederate government at Richmond. Lacking the leadership of a Lee, the Army of Tennessee failed to attain a real esprit at the corps level. Instead, the common soldiers, sensing the quarrelsome nature of their leaders, developed at regimental and brigade levels their own peculiar brand of morale which sustained them through continuous defeats.Connelly analyzes the influence and impact of each successive commander of the Army. His conclusions regarding Confederate command and leadership are not the conventional ones.

The Great Conductors


Harold C. Schonberg - 1967
    Schonberg, the New York Times music critic of many years, writes here one from his series of books on music history.

The Farm


Clarence L. Cooper Jr. - 1967
    It is a stylistic tour de force and one of the most honest and unrelenting novels dealing with drug addiction ever written.

The Manor & The Estate


Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1967
    The Manor and The Estate—combined in this one-volume edition—bold tales of Polish Jews in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time of rapid industrial growth and radical social change that enabled the Jewish community to move from the ghetto to prominent positions within Polish society.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre


Juanita Brooks - 1967
    The men on the ground after the bloody deed took an oath that they would never mention the event again, either in public or in private. The leaders of the Mormon church also counseled silence. The first report, soon after the massacre, described it as an Indian onslaught at which a few white men were present, only one of whom, John D. Lee, was actually named.With admirable scholarship, Mrs. Brooks has traced the background of conflict, analyzed the emotional climate at the time, pointed up the social and military organization in Utah, and revealed the forces which culminated in the great tragedy at Mountain Meadows. The result is a near-classic treatment which neither smears nor clears the participants as individuals. It portrays an atmosphere of war hysteria, whipped up by recitals of past persecutions and the vision of an approaching "army" coming to drive the Mormons from their homes.

Bean Spasms


Ted Berrigan - 1967
    Originally published in 1967 by Kulchur Press in an edition of 1,000, and out of print for more than 40 years, "Bean Spasms" is a book many have heard about but relatively few have seen, and which--until now--has been consequently shrouded in legend. The text is comprised of collaborations between poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, with further writings, illustrations and cover by artist and writer Joe Brainard. The three began collaborating in 1960, and kept a folder of their works titled "Lyrical Bullets" (a humorous homage to the well-known collaboration between Coleridge and Wordsworth, "Lyrical Ballads"). As Ron Padgett describes, in his introduction to this new facsimile edition, their collaborations included "plays, a fictitious correspondence, a picaresque novel, goofy interviews and poems of various types and lengths, as well as mistranslations and parodies of each other's work and the work of others." Poet friends dropping by during writing sessions would also add lines, and although Berrigan and Padgett also contributed visuals, and Brainard contributed texts, all works in the book were intentionally left unattributed. Full of wild wit and joy in experimentation, competition and collaboration, "Bean Spasms" is a classic document of the New York School.

Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge


Delmore Schwartz - 1967
    Summer Knowledge won for him both the prestigious Bollingen Prize in Poetry and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. lronically, indeed tragically, the praise and prizes Schwartz's poems received did not forestall his decline, and this, his poetic testament, proved to be a final one as well. Overcome by mental illness, alienated from his friends and supporters, he disappeared from the literary scene, in the end to die in 1966 in an obscure Broadway hotel. The tragedy of his life pales before the triumph of his art and craft. Selected Poems clearly places him among the foremost poets of his generation.

Son of the Martini Cookbook


Jane Trahey - 1967
    This is a book designed especially for those Hosts and Hostesses who are too drunk to crawl to a restaurant or even the corner discotheque. This is a collection of recipes that are a delight to the starving palate but not necessarily a joy to behold.

Spotted Tail's Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux


George E. Hyde - 1967
    Although he was branded a traitor by many members of his tribe, the canny Brule, with all the skill of an accomplished diplomat, fought a delaying action over the council tables with the high officials in Washington. The only man in the tribe big enough to stand up to the whites and insist upon the rights of the Brulés under existing treaties with the U. S. government, he used every means available to him, short of a shooting war, to protect his people from being rushed into the white man's ways by government agents and eastern "Friends of the Indians."Thus the story of Spotted Tail is the story of the Brulé struggle against being made into imitation whites overnight, even when they were forced on the reservation, where they were expected to farm the land, raise cattle, send their children to school, and adopt Christianity-all at once.The assassination of Spotted Tail in 1881 by his political enemy, Crow Dog, ended the history of the Brulé Sioux as a tribe. With the great voice stilled, at Rosebud Agency only the voices of little men were heard, quarreling about little matters. With his death, the government effected its purpose: to break the tribal organization to bits and put the Brulés under the control of their white agent.

Suddenly Last Summer and Other Plays


Tennessee Williams - 1967
    'Suddenly Last Summer' is the starkly told story of Catherine, who seemingly goes insane after her cousin Sebastian dies in grisly circumstances on a trip to Europe. 'The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore' is a passionate examination of a wealthy old woman as she recounts her memories in the face of death, while in 'Small Craft Warnings' a motley group of people - including a blowsy beautician, a discredited alcoholic doctor, a vulnerable waif and two gay men - sit around a seedy bar on the Californian coast, each contemplating their own desperate fate.