Best of
Essays

1978

Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power


Audre Lorde - 1978
    The false dichotomies that Lorde debunks persist in our cultural imagination: the separation of the erotuc from the spiritual and political. Now, Kore Press brings this essay into stand-alone focus, reprinting it in a fine, handbound pamphlet illustrated with photographs by Tucson photographer Camille Bonzani. Designed by book artist Nancy Solomon, the essay is offset and letterpress printed in an edition of 1000.

Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings


Walter Benjamin - 1978
    Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times.

The Power of the Powerless


Václav Havel - 1978
    The essay dissects the nature of the communist regime of the time, life within such a regime and how by their very nature such regimes can create dissidents of ordinary citizens. The essay goes on to discuss ideas and possible actions by loose communities of individuals linked by a common cause, such as Charter 77. Officially suppressed, the essay was circulated in samizdat form and translated into multiple languages. It became a manifesto for dissent in Czechoslovakia, Poland and other communist regimes.

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher


Lewis Thomas - 1978
    

Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview


Jonathan Cott - 1978
    . . and I don’t believe it’s true. . . . I have the impression that thinking is a form of feeling and that feeling is a form of thinking.”Susan Sontag, one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Now, more than three decades later, Yale University Press is proud to publish the entire transcript of Sontag’s remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cott’s preface and recollections. Sontag’s musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described "besotted aesthete" and "obsessed moralist."“I really believe in history, and that’s something people don’t believe in anymore. I know that what we do and think is a historical creation. . . .We were given a vocabulary that came into existence at a particular moment. So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate, and am tuned in better because I’ve read Nietzsche.”“There’s no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into this electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world and enjoying what can be enjoyed. I love rock and roll. Rock and roll changed my life. . . .You know, to tell you the truth, I think rock and roll is the reason I got divorced. I think it was Bill Haley and the Comets and Chuck Berry that made me decide that I had to get a divorce and leave the academic world and start a new life.”

The Star Thrower


Loren Eiseley - 1978
    This volume includes selections that span Eiseley’s entire writing career and provide a sampling of the author as naturalist, poet, scientist, and humanist. “Loren Eiseley’s work changed my life” (Ray Bradbury). Introduction by W. H. Auden.

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing


Richard Hugo - 1978
    The Triggering Town is Hugo's now-classic collection of lectures, essays, and reflections, all "directed toward helping with that silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity: writing poems." Anyone, from the beginning poet to the mature writer to the lover of literature, will benefit greatly from Hugo's sayd, playful, profound insights and advice concerning the mysteries of literary creation.

Russian Thinkers


Isaiah Berlin - 1978
    The Birth of the Russian IntelligentsiaII. German Romanticism in Petersburg and MoscowIII. Vissarion BelinskyIV. Alexander Herzen- Russian Populism- Tolstoy and Enlightenment- Fathers and ChildrenIndex

Silences


Tillie Olsen - 1978
    In this classic work, now back in print, Olsen broke open the study of literature and discovered a lost continent—the writing of women and working-class people. From the excavated testimony of authors’ letters and diaries we learn the many ways the creative spirit, especially in those disadvantaged by gender, class and race, can be silenced. Olsen recounts the torments of Melville, the crushing weight of criticism on Thomas Hardy, the shame that brought Willa Cather to a dead halt, and struggles of Virginia Woolf, Olsen’s heroine and greatest exemplar of a writer who confronted the forces that would silence her. This 25th-anniversary edition includes Olsen’s now infamous reading lists of forgotten authors and a new introduction and author preface.

Writing the Australian Crawl


William Stafford - 1978
    Stafford's advice to beginning poets has become a favorite text in writing programs

The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography


Angela Carter - 1978
    So says the Marquis de Sade, philosopher and pornographer. His virtuous Justine, who keeps to the rules, is rewarded with rape and humiliation; his Juliette, Justine's triumphantly monstrous antithesis, viciously exploits her sexuality.With brilliance and wit, Angela Carter takes on these outrageous figments of de Sade's extreme imagination and transforms them into symbols of our time: The Hollywood sex goddesses, mothers and daughters, pornography, even the sacred shrines of sex and marriage lie devastatingly exposed before our eyes.Author Bio: Angela Carter (1940-1992) was best known for her subversive short stories, including her most famous collection, The Bloody Chamber. Carter translated the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, and wrote the screenplay for Neil Jordan's 1984 film, The Company of Wolves, based on her short story.

The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939


W.H. Auden - 1978
    The reader recaptures the excitement of a young poet who struck readers first by the austere saga-like strangeness of his poetry, and then by his intoxication with disruptive, uninhibited ideas. The English Auden is the resurrection of the body of the poetry as it existed in England between 1927 and 1939.'-Stephen Spender, Sunday Telegraph

The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews


Eudora Welty - 1978
    In addition to seven essays on craft, this collection brings together her penetrating and instructive commentaries on a wide variety of individual writers, including Jane Austen, E. M. Forster, Willa Cather, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.

Where I Live: Selected Essays


Tennessee Williams - 1978
    Many of these were collected in the 1978 volume Where I Live, which is now expanded by noted Williams scholar John S. Bak to include all of Williams’ theater essays, biographical pieces, introductions and reviews. This volume also includes a few occasional pieces, program notes, and a discreet selection of juvenilia such as his 1927 essay published in Smart Set, which answers the question “Can a good wife be a good sport?” Wonderful and candid stories abound in these essays—from erudite observations on the theater to veneration for great actresses. In “Five Fiery Ladies” Williams describes his fascinated, deep appreciation of Vivien Leigh, Geraldine Page, Anna Magnani, Katharine Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor, all of whom created roles in stage or film versions of his plays. There are two tributes to his great friend Carson McCullers; reviews of Cocteau’s film Orpheus and of two novels by Paul Bowles; a portrait of Williams’ longtime agent Audrey Wood; a salute to Tallulah Bankhead; a political statement from 1972, “We Are Dissenters Now”; some hilarious stories in response to Elia Kazan’s frequent admonition, “Tennessee, Never Talk to An Actress”; and Williams’ most moving and astute autobiographical essay, “The Man in the Overstuffed Chair.” Theater critic and essayist John Lahr has provided a terrific foreword which sheds further light on Tennessee Williams’ writing process, always fueled by Williams’ self-deprecating humor and his empathy for life’s nonconformists.

The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature, and Science


Jacob Bronowski - 1978
    Ariotti in collaboration with Rita Bronowski

The Teachings Of The Essenes: from Enoch to the Dead Sea Scrolls


Edmond Bordeaux Szekely - 1978
    The essence of Edmond Bordeaux Szekely's well-known books on the Essenes.

The Thematic Process in Music.


Rudolph Reti - 1978
    

The Great British Films


Jerry Vermilye - 1978
    Illustrates and provides synopses of the best British films imported to the United States from 1933 to 1971, including The Lavender Hill Mob, Women in Love, Tom Jones and A Night to Remember

Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970-76


Donald Hall - 1978
    They derive from a unified point of view about creativity and about the function of poetry. For the interested reader they can provide a key to the universe of the contemporary poet. In this work, Donald Hall speaks in a conversational way about his poetry and about his poetic wishes, endeavors, failures, and successes.

Semantics: An Introduction To The Science Of Meaning


Stephen Ullmann - 1978
    

The Underside Of History: A View Of Women Through Time


Elise Boulding - 1978
    This classic in feminist literature provides an account of women's creativity in every age from pre-history to the present, and attempts to view women's roles in the context of the total time span of human experience. In clear and elegant prose, the author takes us on a breathtaking tour through time: we move through the hundred-thousand-year wanderings of the Paleolithic into the great transition from hunting and gathering to herding and planting; from life inside city walls to the great primary civilizations of the Middle East and Asia, as well as the feudal civilizations on its fringes; and from the sweep of culture generated by the Greco-Romanic-Islamic empires to "European Enlightenment" and, finally, to the last two centuries and the gradual industrialization-urbanization of the planet. New to this volume is a look at the 20th century women's movement--including a chapter on Third World women--as well as a provocative epilogue entitled "Creating Futures for the 21st Century." When we look at the imbalances regarding women in the social record, we are not simply gleaning information about the status of women: we are getting clues about general imbalances within society at large. For this reason, students, professionals, and practitioners alike will find The Underside of History to be an invigorating intellectual exercise and an essential addition to their libraries. "It is a classic, in all meaningsof the word. This book contains a lot of important information and shows us how to re-vision history and historical data. It won't 'scare' men or newcomers to women's studies." --Elizabeth Moen, University of Colorado, Boulder "Its presentation of this 'forgotten' history is irreplaceable. This book is a treasure house of detail and stories which should not be lost. In addition, it is extremely well written." --Joanna Macy "For anyone teaching gender courses at college or in other education centers, this book is most useful since each chapter gives a complete overview of the question and is followed by a very thorough bibliography which proves very useful." --Andree Michel, Ministere de l'Education Nationale, Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique, Paris "No other book that I know of covers so much. This book ranges from prehistory right up to the present. . . .It therefore becomes not only a text, but a useful reference work as well." --Carol Farley Kessler, Pennsylvania State University, Delaware