Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the world's greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician’s style.

    A moving account of Dillard’s own experiences while writing her works, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.

    Always an impassioned and far-sighted advocate for a just relationship between the natural world and humankind, Williams has broadened her concerns over the past several years to include a reconfiguration of family and community in her search for a deeper understanding of what it means to be human in an era of physical and spiritual fragmentation. Williams begins in Ravenna, Italy, where "jeweled ceilings became lavish tales" through the art of mosaic. She discovers that mosaic is not just an art form but a form of integration, and when she returns to the American Southwest, her physical and spiritual home, and observes a clan of prairie dogs on the brink of extinction, she apprehends an ecological mosaic created by a remarkable species in the sagebrush steppes of the Colorado Plateau. And, finally, Williams travels to a small village in Rwanda, where, along with fellow artists, she joins survivors of the 1994 genocide and builds a memorial literally from the rubble of war, an act that becomes a spark for social change and healing. A singular meditation on how the natural and human worlds both collide and connect in violence and beauty, this is a work of uncommon perceptions that dares to find intersections between arrogance and empathy, tumult and peace, constructing a narrative of hopeful acts by taking that which is broken and creating something whole.

    Thompson collaborator Ralph Steadman delivers a heaping helping of anti-American vitriol with trademarked bombast, based on his travels throughout the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

    To anyone familiar with this writer -- whom the New York Times calls "taut, chillingly ironic," the Washington Post Book World terms "brilliant," and the Village Voice deems capable of "religious intensity" -- it will come as no surprise that before he achieved success as a novelist, Dennis Cooper was best known as a poet. The Dream Police collects the best poems from five of his previous books and also includes a selection of new works. From his darkly erotic early verse to the more refined, post-punk poems that led critics to dub him "the spokesman for the Blank Generation," to his later experimental pieces, Cooper's evolving study of the distances and dangers in romantic relationships has made him a singular voice in American poetry. The Dream Police is a vital addition to Dennis Cooper's riveting and disarming vision of life, love, obsession, and the depths of human need. "There can be no doubt about the power and originality of Cooper's writing." -- The Washington Post Book World; "Cooper's vision is at first intense, nearly minimal, then suddenly it ascends into vision." -- Kathy Acker; "In another country or another era, Dennis Cooper's books would be circulated in secret, explosive samizdat editions that friends and fans would pass around and savor like forbidden absinthe. He would risk his life for them, or maybe he'd just be sent to a mental asylum, like the Marquis de Sade, to whom he has been compared. This is high risk literature. It takes enormous courage for a writer to explore, as Mr. Cooper does, the extreme boundaries of human behavior and amorality, right to the abyss where desire and lust topple to death." -- Catherine Texier, The New York Times Book Review.

    In My 1980s and Other Essays, a collection of extravagant range and style, he rises to the challenge of that improbable description.My 1980s and Other Essays opens with a series of manifestos—or, perhaps more appropriately, a series of impassioned disclosures, intellectual and personal. It then proceeds to wrestle with a series of major cultural figures, the author's own lodestars and lodestones: literary (John Ashbery, Roberto Bolaño, James Schuyler), artistic (Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol), and simply iconic (Brigitte Bardot, Cary Grant, Lana Turner). And then there is the personal—the voice, the style, the flair—that is unquestionably Koestenbaum. It amounts to a kind of intellectual autobiography that culminates in a string of passionate calls to creativity; arguments in favor of detail and nuance, and attention; a defense of pleasure, hunger, and desire in culture and experience. Koestenbaum is perched on the cusp of being a true public intellectual—his venues are more mainstream than academic, his style is eye-catching, his prose unfailingly witty and passionate, his interests profoundly wide-ranging and popular. My 1980s should be the book that pushes Koestenbaum off that cusp and truly into the public eye.

    These have been separated into chapters based on the books in which they were originally published, and are as follows:Drum-TapsLeaves of GrassThe Patriotic Poems of Walt WhitmanThe Complete Prose WorksThe Wound DresserThe Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman.This beautifully designed ebook has an interactive table of contents for ease of navigation, carefully formatted texts and chapter illustrations.

    Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, thepitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues oflanguage and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook charts new directions for future critics and affirms the classic status of the novel.

    Her debut work of fiction, what purpose did i serve in your life, examines the nature of sex and the possibility of real connection in the face of degradation and blankness. Its interlocking stories follow a chronological arc from innocence to sexual experience, taking in the humiliations of one night stands with male strangers, the perils of sex work, and the caustic reception that greets a woman working and writing in public. It is a brave and pitiless examination of yearning in an era of hyper-exposure and a riveting account of the moments of transcendence seized from an otherwise blank world."Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she's masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure." -Edmund WhiteI have never read a book like this before. It’s painful, shocking, and compellingly written, composed with great sensitivity to which details should be revealed and which must stay concealed. Its genre-muddle and formal complexity make for a completely unforgettable, profoundly contemporary, and plainly great work of courage and art. Here’s a terrifying proposal: could this be The Great American Novel for the twilight of �'Great' America?" - Sheila Heti (author of "How Should a Person Be?")"'�This society hates feelings,' Kathy Acker said about a million times. A chain of regulation controls us by making us fear that we will be expelled from the human club for being the wrong kind of person. Marie Calloway breaks that chain of regulation by displaying her body like a beggar displays her wounds, by asserting awkwardness and shame (for the body, for ambition). Her book should be called, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman Who Can’t Be Controlled. Or is she the fiction, Holden Caulfield, Lolita, or Mme. Merteuil? How does a questing intelligence live inside the commodity?—searching for identity or personal branding? And if she is an attention whore, am I the attention john? Yes--but Calloway wonders as strongly as I do about what she might be, and she invites misunderstanding into her work. One thing is certain, though—She can really write about sex!" - Robert Glück"what purpose did i serve in your life is moving, unprecedented, threatening, and surreal—the exciting, rare work of someone with nothing to lose. It's intuitive and overpowering, concise and extreme. And, like a plant or a comet, it doesn't pause to explain what it's doing, defend or rationalize its existence, or attempt to obscure or distort its intentions. If you're attentive toward it—and earnest and open-minded and non-malicious in your attention—you will likely question and examine what you yourself are doing and why, and how to change." — Tao Lin"'Adrien Brody' is riveting, fresh, and written with a distinctive new voice." — Stephen Elliott"That's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.""What is?" I asked, though I knew."Your face right now."I was vaguely aware my eyes were open very wide.Marie Calloway's fiction debut, what purpose did i serve in your life, is both a portrait of American youth and a gamble, a chance taken, in answer to the following: for a young woman, is there such a thing as the soul, a life more than the organs, or is she forever recalled to her body? Marie does not answer this question but instead acts it out through a series of intertwined stories. The result is a fusillade of brutally self-aware and insightful pieces that take on the meaning of sex, art, and, most of all, survival in the age of Internet-based sex work and love that can flame and turn to ash in the space of a tweet.Marie Calloway (b. 1990) is interested in sexuality and gender. She rose to prominence in 2011 with her controversial story, "Adrien Brody," which was published by Muumuu House.

    One of the original Beat poets (the coinage "beatnik" is his), Kaufman’s work has always been essentially improvisational, often done to jazz accompaniment. And he became something of a legendary figure at the poetry readings in the early days of the San Francisco renaissance of the 1950s. With his extemporaneous technique, akin in many ways to Surrealist automatic writing, he has produced a body of work ranging from a visionary lyricism infused with satirical, almost Dadaistic elements to a prophetic poetry of political and social protest. Born in New Orleans of mixed Black and Jewish parentage, Kaufman was one of fourteen children. During twenty years in the Merchant Marine, he cultivated an intense taste for literature on his long sea voyages. Settling in California, in the ’50s, he became active in the burgeoning West Coast literary scene. Disappointment, drugs, and imprisonment led him to take a ten-year vow of complete silence that lasted until 1973. The present volume includes previously uncollected poems written prior to his pledge and newer work composed in the years 1973-1978, before the poet once again lapsed into silence.

    100 lines from the author's MSN messenger chat history, set in large bold helvetica.

    Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.This edition has a new afterword, "Thirty Years Later," in which Sontag restates the terms of her battle against philistinism and against ethical shallowness and indifference.

    It is a witty fricassee of food and fashion, pets and painters, musicians, friends, and artists, served up with a healthy garnish of "Steinien" humor and self-indulgence. For readers who have previously considered Gertrude Stein to be a difficult or even unreadable author, Paris France provides a delightful window on her personal and unique world.

    The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!"Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft—everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style—as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays.Zen in the Art of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.

    This anthology serves as an introduction to Jeffers's work for the general reader and for students in courses on American poetry. Jeffers composed each volume of his verse around one or two long narrative or dramatic poems. The Wild God of the World follows this practice: in it, Cawdor, one of Jeffers's most powerful narratives, is surrounded by a representative selection of shorter poems. At the end of the book, the editor has provided revealing statements about Jeffers's poetry and poetics, and about his philosophy of nature and human nature.