Matthew Arnold called Emerson’s essays “the most important work done in prose.”   INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDE

    Among the contents are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter's healing words.

    Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he called “the great and crescive self,” he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes.Here are the indispensable and most renowned works, including “The American Scholar” (“our intellectual Declaration of Independence,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes called it), “The Divinity School Address,” considered atheistic by many of his listeners, the summons to “Self-Reliance,” along with the more embattled realizations of “Circles” and, especially, “Experience.” Here, too, are his wide-ranging portraits of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and other “representative men,” and his astute observations on the habits, lives, and prospects of the English and American people.This volume includes Emerson’s well-known Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (1849), his Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), plus Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and his later book of essays, The Conduct of Life (1860). These are the works that established Emerson’s colossal reputation in America and found him admirers abroad as diverse as Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Proust.Emerson’s enduring power is apparent everywhere in American literature: in those, like Whitman and some of the major twentieth-century poets, who seek to corroborate his vision, and among those, like Hawthorne and Melville, who questioned, qualified, and struggled with it. Emerson’s vision reverberates also in the tradition of American philosophy, notably in the writings of William James and John Dewey, in the works of his European admirers, such as Nietzsche, and in the avant-garde theorists of our own day who write on the nature and function of language. The reasons for Emerson’s durability will be obvious to any reader who follows the exhilarating, exploratory movements of his mind in this uniquely full gathering of his work.Not merely another selection of his essays, this volume includes all his major books in their rich entirety. No other volume conveys so comprehensively the exhilaration and exploratory energy of perhaps America’s greatest writer.

    She wrote it but she shouldn't have. She wrote it but look what she wrote about. She wrote it but she isn't really an artist, and it isn't really art. She wrote it but she had help. She wrote it but she's an anomaly. She wrote it BUT..." How to Suppress Women's Writing is a meticulously researched and humorously written "guidebook" to the many ways women and other "minorities" have been barred from producing written art. In chapters entitled "Prohibitions," "Bad Faith," "Denial of Agency," Pollution of Agency," "The Double Standard of Content," "False Categorization," "Isolation," "Anomalousness," "Lack of Models," Responses," and "Aesthetics" Joanna Russ names, defines, and illustrates those barriers to art-making we may have felt but which tend to remain unnamed and thus insolvable.

    Both male and female readers have acclaimed it as a witty, warm, and life-changing view of the world—"as if women mattered." Steinem's truly personal writing is here, from the humorous exposé "I Was a Playboy Bunny" to the moving tribute to her mother "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)" to prescient essays on female genital mutilation and the difference between erotica and pornography. The satirical and hilarious "If Men Could Menstruate" alone is worth the price of admission.This second edition features a new preface by the author and added notes on classic essays.

    Exploring the "peculiar and mysterious particulars of nature," Gould introduces the reader to some of the many and wonderful manifestations of evolutionary biology.

    Divorce taught Grizzard that Sunday nights are endless and that strange things grow on food left uncovered in the refrigerator. If Love Were Oil, I'd be About a Quart Low is the bittersweet account of Grizzard's three marriages and three subsequent divorces. Based on his bestselling book of the same name, this program features the inimitable talent of Lewis Grizzard and his very personal, often humorous views on women.The Lewis Grizzard column is syndicated nationally in more than 250 newspapers. He has written eight bestselling books, and is in great demand as an after dinner speaker. He and his dog, Catfish, live in Atlanta, Georgia.Other titles by Lewis Grizzard available through Sound Editions from Random House: My Daddy was a Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun and Elvis is Dead and I Don't Feel so Good Myself.

    for understanding the basic, early and continuing perspectives of feminists. And for all of us they provide a theoretical framework in which to read the present as well as the past." - WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS"The style is both scholarly and direct without being ponderous. Frye makes a concerted effort to stimulate discussion, as opposed to arguing unopposed, so that much of the work is novel and candid... An important addition to a complete feminist library." - CHOICE"Only those who wish to remain ignorant of contemporary feminist themes, pursued here by a thinker of an unusual cast of mind, can afford to neglect a careful reading on the essays collected in the present volume." - ETICHS, AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY"This is radical feminist theory at its best: clear, careful and critical." - SIGNS

    I had the urge to poison a monk.' Along the way, it touches on bad books, ideal readers, historical form, and the metaphysics of the detective story.

    His name is Sam Maloof, and this book is his life and work told in his own words.Sam Maloof started making furniture immediately after World War II, when there was very little demand for hand-made objects. His perseverance through 'years of difficulty is a testament to the depth of his love for wood and for working with it. Since childhood, Sam has also been in love with technique and has constantly developed his precise sense of form and design. These three loves-of wood, of making things, and of designbrought him to the world of furniture and eventually to an honored place among America's leading artistcraftsmen.As with true great art, everything Sam Maloof makes seems simple. His furniture has a clear rhythm and flow, a bright vitality that eludes analysis. All his furniture is functional: chairs are comfortable; tables, while sculptural, are still tables to be used; desks are custom-designed to meet the needs of each user. Though Maloof furniture designs are all intensely his own, they remain unassuming and natural. His work has the calm, sure quality that comes from technical mastery combined with a creative joy in finding ways to let wood speak. A first encounter with a piece of Maloof furniture is like meeting a friend from the past-the warmth of relationship is immediate and delightful. This warmth never pales.The qualities of his work are mirrored in the artist. Sam is open, direct, and gracious. He projects a feeling of affable dignity and goodwill, and he works with the ease and clarity seen in his furniture. Work for him is not drudgery. It is a renewal, an affirmation.He and his wife, Alfreda, live in a meandering house that nestles in a lemon orchard at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, near San Bernardino, California. Sam has been building and expanding the house for thirty years. It unfolds as a series of surprises, from Sam's workshop at one end to the new guestroom at the other. Every room contains the ceramics, woodwork, textiles, baskets, Pictures, and other beautiful things that nourish the Maloofs and give them pleasure.Sam Maloof's technical mastery of woodworking is coupled with mature, strongly personal artistic expression. He has set a standard for his craft in North America and the world. Future generations of craftsmen will see him as one of the major artistic lights of this century.

    Authors include Edmund Wilson, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, Muriel Spark, Anne Tyler, Italo Calvino, Henry Green, Robert Pinget, L.E. Sissman, R.K. Narayan and Roland Barthes. He also writes of actresses Louise Brooks and Doris Day and golfers Sam Snead and Arnold Palmer.

    Luminous, witty, and provocative, the essays address such topics as "The Attic of the Brain," "Falsity and Failure," "Altruism," and the effects the federal government's virtual abandonment of support for basic scientific research will have on medicine and science.Profoundly and powerfully, Thomas questions the folly of nuclear weaponry, showing that the brainpower and money spent on this endeavor are needed much more urgently for the basic science we have abandoned--and that even medicine's most advanced procedures would be useless or insufficient in the face of the smallest nuclear detonation. And in the title essay, he addresses himself with terrifying poignancy to the question of what it is like to be young in the nuclear age."If Wordsworth had gone to medical school, he might have produced something very like the essays of Lewis Thomas."--TIME "No one better exemplifies what modern medicine can be than Lewis Thomas."--The New York Times Book Review

    From the special perspectives of "my corner of Europe," a classical and Catholic education, a serious encounter with Marxism, and a life marked by journeys and exiles, Milosz has developed a sensibility at once warm and detached, flooded with specific memory yet never hermetic or provincial.Milosz addresses many of the major problems of contemporary poetry, beginning with the pessimism and negativism prompted by reductionist interpretations of man's animal origins. He examines the tendency of poets since Mallarme to isolate themselves from society, and stresses the need for the poet to make himself part of the great human family. One chapter is devoted to the tension between classicism and realism; Milosz believes poetry should be "a passionate pursuit of the real." In "Ruins and Poetry" he looks at poems constructed from the wreckage of a civilization, specifically that of Poland after the horrors of World War II. Finally, he expresses optimism for the world, based on a hoped-for better understanding of the lessons of modern science, on the emerging recognition of humanity's oneness, and on mankind's growing awareness of its own history.

    The title esay consider's time's transforming effect on arrt, meditating on the erosion of a statue and the resulting production of a new, sublime work of art.

    Caustic, slyly observant, transgressive, verbally scintillating, Barthelme's essays, stories, and novels redefined a generation of American letters and remain unparalleled for the way they capture our national pastimes and obsessions, but most of all for the way they caputure the strangeness of life. Not-Knowing amounts to the posthumous manifesto of one of our premier literary modernists. Here are Barthelme's thoughts on writing (his own and others); his observations on art, architecture, film, and city life; interviews, including two never previously published; and meditations on everything from Superman III to the art of rendering "Melancholy Baby" on jazz banjolele. This is a rich and eclectic selection of work by the man Robert Coover has called "one of the great citizens of contemporary world letters."

    The book's first two parts, "Recollections" and "Interviews," provide autobiographical glimpses of the very private Larkin's childhood, his youth at Oxford, the genesis of his forty-year career as a librarian, and the influences that initially steered his poetry. The second half of the book reflects Larkin's literary standards and opinions in often witty and surprising, always beautifully wrought, essays and reviews. His subjects range from Emily Dickinson (were her first lines her best?) to the contemporary mystery novel. Required Writing concludes with a selection of pieces on jazz music."Larkin is a punctilious, honest critic. He prefers good clear writing to pretentious eyewash; he prefers tunes to discordant wailing; and he prefers home to abroad. Unlike the majority of critics, he is clear-sighted enough to say so." --A. N. Wilson, Sunday Telegraph"I read the collection with growing excitement, agreement and admiration. It is the best contemporary account of the writer's true aims I have encountered." --John Mortimer, Sunday Times (London)"Subtle, supple, craftily at ease, Required Writing is on a par with Larkin's poetry--which is just about as high as praise can go." --Clive James, Observer Philip Larkin was the author of poetry collections, including High Windows, The Whitsun Weddings, and The Less Deceived; a book of essays entitled All What Jazz: A Record Diary; and two novels, Jill, and A Girl in Winter, published early in his career. Required Reading was originally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

    With a new introduction by the author.

    

    In The Anti-Aesthetic, preeminent critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman's film stills, to Barbara Kruger's collages. With a redesigned cover and a new afterword that situates the book in relation to contemporary criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic provides a strong introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism. Includes a new afterword by Hal Foster and 12 black and white photographs.

    As Dr Bauer points out in his Introduction, many of the questions that scholars are asking now were also being asked in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, there is still little agreement on methodology in the study of word-formation or theoretical approaches to it; even the kind of data relevant to its study is open to debate. Dr Bauer here provides students and general linguists alike with a new perspective on what is a confused and often controversial field of study, providing a resolution to the terminological confusion which currently reigns in this area. In doing so, he clearly demonstrates the challenge and intrinsic fascination of the study of word-formation. Linguists have recently become increasingly aware of the relevance of word-formation to work in syntax and semantics, phonology and morphology, and Dr Bauer discusses - within a largely synchronic and transformational framework - the theoretical issues involved. He considers topics where word-formation has a contribution to make to other areas of linguistics and, without pretending to provide a fully-fledged theory of word-formation, develops those points which he sees as being central to its study. The book draws on a wide range of sources, and general points are illustrated from a variety of languages. As the title suggests, though, the exposition is principally illustrated with material drawn from English, including close analysis of a number of sets of neologisms. A survey of the types of word-formation found in English is also included. Some background in linguistics is assumed, but students of linguistics and English language with no previous knowledge of word-formation or of morphology at all will find English Word-Formation an accessible and stimulating textbook.

    Essays on rural life that not only address the many how-to questions that bedevil country dwellers, but also the larger direction that life is taking on this planet.Perrin, a transplanted New Yorker and now a "real" Vermonter, candidly admits his early mistakes while giving concrete advice on matters such as what to do with maple syrup (other than put it on your pancakes), how to use a peavey, and how to replace your rototiller with a garden animal.

    VECTORS AND SMOOTHABLE CURVES, the collected essays of one of our foremost writers, brings together "The New World," "A Partial Glossary," "The Brother in Elysium," and shorter works on Thoreau and Oppen. Included are meditations on time, desire, and the roots of American literary thought. Few books in our time are as provocative and rewarding

    

    

    In this clear-sighted and enjoyable book, Cleanth Brooks, acknowledged to be "the best critic of our best novelist," introduces the general reader to Faulkner's most important novels and stories: The Sound and the Fury; As I lay Dying; The Hamlet; Go Down, Moses; Light in August; and Absalom, Absalom!  Brooks focuses on theme, character, and plot as well as on Faulkner's world—the fictional Yoknapatawpha County that provides a unique setting for Faulkner's tragicomic vision.

    

    Joseph Sobran writes about all of them (and much more) in this book. Now considered one of the nation’s most brilliant critics (William F. Buckley, Jr. HAS called Sobran “unquestionably the wittiest, most trenchant yet, finally, lyrical—moralist to have appeared in my time”) he has been writing many of his finest essays for The Human Life Review since it began in 1975. They demonstrate a broad range of knowledge, imagination, and penetrating insight that has brought Sobran acclaim even from those who do not agree with his “strong opinions, strongly held.” This is his first published collection of essays.

    The prolific author's vision is unmatched today, and his pointed honesty shines through in The Roving Mind, now reissued in this special tribute edition.This collection of essays is wide-ranging, reflecting Asimov's extraordinary skill in disseminating knowledge from across the spectrum of human thought. Some of the areas explored in this volume of 62 essays include creationism, pseudoscience, censorship, population, philosophy of science, transportation, computers and corporations of the future, and astronomy. His predictions about cloning which has only recently become the topic of public debate the theory of "technophobia," and other scientific developments are astounding. In a lighter tone, Asimov includes several personal stories from his life including thoughts on his style of writing and memories of family in younger days.With tributes by Arthur C. Clarke, L. Sprague de Camp, Harlan Ellison, Kendrick Frazier, Martin Gardner, Donald Goldsmith, Stephen Jay Gould, E. C. Krupp, Frederik Pohl, and Carl Sagan

    

    Fearlessly offering opinions on a wealth of subjects--from the lives of the famous and infamous to popular culture to the state of contemporary art--Rorem proves once again that he is an artist who tells unforgettable stories not only through music, but with a pen, as well. "Setting the Tone "gathers together essays and commentary previously published elsewhere and combines them with pages from Rorem's ongoing diary, offering readers a vivid and enlightening view of Rorem's world along with an honest portrait of the author himself. Whether he's lambasting critics and former friends and acquaintances, vivisecting opera, or presenting his views on theater, film, books, or composers and their music, Rorem is ingenious, incorrigible, and madly entertaining.

    The volume includes four interviews and some memoirs. Part of Ann Arbor's "Poets on Poetry" series.

    It also contains some Afterthoughts in which he responds candidly to the questions and challenges he most frequently receives. They include, Why are you so rude about teachers?, What you say is impossible, How can you teach a child who isn't interested?, How will children learn if they are not continually corrected?, and What would your ideal school be like?

    "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self." 1983. The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction. Ed. Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al. 14th ed. New York: Norton, 2016. 74-79. Print.

    Barzun makes use of a variety of contexts as a forum for evidence and opinion, including essays, program notes, letters, and reviews. And he approaches a wide variety of particular and general questions. What is it like to sit in on a recording session with a great orchestra? What is the role of the piano in Western culture? What is art in relation to objective reality and to the perceiving mind? Can one translate music into words? What is cultural history? For anyone unfamiliar with Barzun's work, Critical Questions will serve as a valuable introduction to one of the most important cultural historians of our time. Others will be glad to have these pieces—most of them no longer easily available—brought together in a single volume. Uniformly insightful, provocative, and a pleasure to read, they show the consistency of Barzun's thought even as they exhibit diversity.

    

    

    Zweig's Vienna was a world of bright, brittle superficialities, in which the bourgeoisie "gradually elevated the eternal business of seeing and being seen to the purpose of the existence." To break through the facades of this society, Zweig developed a remarkable literary and psychological method.In The World of Yesterday's Humanist Today, thirty scholars of history, literature, and music share their studies of Zweig and their insight into his works.

    The uncollected writings of Stevie Smith

    His awards include the Lannan Literary Award, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

    

    This full collection of these reviews nearly doubles the number that have appeared in print elsewhere and represents a significant body of primary materials from the O'Connor canon. We find in the reviews the same personality so vividly apparent in her fiction and her lectures--the unique voice of the artist that is one clear sign of genius. Her spare precision, her humor, her extraordinary ability to permit readers to see deeply into complex and obscure truths-all are present in these reviews and letters.

    We may have a general sense that women poets are more likely than men, at the present time, to write in detail about their bodies; to take power relationships as a theme; to want to speak with a strong rather than a subdued voice; are less likely to seek distance, more likely to seek intimacy, in poetic tone. But generalization would be foolish here. 'Woman poet,' like 'American poet' or 'French poet' or 'Russian poet,' allows--even insists on--diversity, while implying something valuable in common, some shared language and life, of tremendous importance to the poet and the poet's readers." --Alicia Ostriker