S. Lewis's famed but apparently disorganised Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser's Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the structure of Narnia's symbolism has remained a mystery.Michael Ward has finally solved the enigma. In Planet Narnia he demonstrates that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis's writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the Chronicles), Ward reveals how the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets - - Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn - - planets which Lewis described as "spiritual symbols of permanent value" and "especially worthwhile in our own generation." Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that in each book the plot-line, the ornamental details, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. The cosmological theme of each Chronicle is what Lewis called 'the kappa element in romance', the atmospheric essence of a story, everywhere present but nowhere explicit. The reader inhabits this atmosphere and thus imaginatively gains connaitre knowledge of the spiritual character which the tale was created to embody.Planet Narnia is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major revaluation not only of the Chronicles, but of Lewis's whole literary and theological outlook. Ward uncovers a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized, whose central interests were hiddenness, immanence, and knowledge by acquaintance."

    She invites us behind the scenes of novel-writing, sharing her own habits and spilling the secrets of her craft. And she offers priceless advice to aspiring authors. As she works her way through one hundred novels–from classics such as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji to recent fiction by Zadie Smith and Alice Munro–she infects us anew with the passion for reading that is the governing spirit of this gift to book lovers everywhere.

    Tolkien's imagination and the breadth of his talent as a creator of fantastic fiction.

    Beginning with: "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?", Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view and styles, transcending the constraints of the scholarly exercise for an evocative and lyrical meditation in the tradition of William Carlos William's Spring and All and William H. Gass's On Being Blue.

    These collected interviews, like a visit with Percy at his home on the Bogue Falaya River, provide refreshing close-up encounters with one of America's most celebrated writers.These twenty-seven interviews cover a period of twenty-two years, from the time of the publication of Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer, in 1961, until 1983, when he was interviewed about his friendship with Thomas Merton.These unabridged interviews, collected from a variety of sources, will give reading pleasure to general readers who wish to know Percy and his works more closely, and they will be of great use to Percy scholars.

    The social function of the creative personality is a recurrent theme with Henry Miller, and this book is perhaps his most poignant and concentrated analysis of the artist's dilemma.

    . .When the Atlantic Monthly first published an excerpted version of B.R. Myers' polemic—in which he attacked literary giants such as Don Delillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, quoting their work extensively to accuse them of mindless pretension—it caused a world-wide sensation."A welcome contrarian takes on the state of contemporary American literary prose," said a Wall Street Journal review. "Useful mischief," said Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. "Brilliantly written," declared The Times of London.But Myers' expanded version of the essay does more than just attack sanctified literary heavyweights.It also:* Examines the literary hierarchy that perpetuates the status quo by looking at the reviews that the novelists in question received. It also considers the literary award system. "Rick Moody received an O. Henry Award in 1997," Myers observes, "whereupon he was made an O. Henry juror himself. And so it goes."* Showcases Myers' biting sense of wit, as in the new section, "Ten Rules for 'Serious' Writers," and his discussion of the sex scenes in the bestselling books of David Guterson ("If Jackie Collins had written that," Myers says after one example, "reviewers would have had a field day.")* Champions clear writing and storytelling in a wide range of writers, from "pop" novelists such as Stephen King to more "serious" literary heavyweights such as Somerset Maugham. Myers also considers the classics such as Balzac and Henry James, and recommends numerous other undeservedly obscure authors.* Includes an all-new section in which Myers not only considers the controversy that followed the Atlantic essay, but responds to several of his most prominent critics.Published on the one-year anniversary of original Atlantic Monthly essay, the new, expanded A READER'S MANIFESTO continues B.R. Myers' fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and brilliantly exposing the literary status quo.

    Offering children gems of advice such as "Strive to learn" and "Be not a dunce," it was no fun at all. So how did we get from there to "Let the wild rumpus start"? And now that we're living in a golden age of children's literature, what can adults get out of reading Where the Wild Things Are and Goodnight Moon, or Charlotte's Web and Little House on the Prairie?In Wild Things, Bruce Handy revisits the classics of every American childhood, from fairy tales to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and explores the back stories of their creators, using context and biography to understand how some of the most insightful, creative, and witty authors and illustrators of their times created their often deeply personal masterpieces. Along the way, Handy learns what The Cat in the Hat says about anarchy and absentee parenting, which themes link The Runaway Bunny and Portnoy's Complaint, and why Ramona Quimby is as true an American icon as Tom Sawyer or Jay Gatsby.It's a profound, eye-opening experience to reencounter books that you once treasured after decades apart. A clear-eyed love letter to the greatest children's books and authors, from Louisa May Alcott and L. Frank Baum to Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, Mildred D. Taylor, and E.B. White, Wild Things will bring back fond memories for readers of all ages, along with a few surprises.

    Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, "The Novel: An Alternative History" is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the premodern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these premodern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining - "The Novel: An Alternative History" is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

    This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it's quite new. In medieval Europe, God's calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in “the zone,” you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a “wrong” choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal?All Things Shining says we can. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with and responsiveness to the world. Their journey takes us from the wonder and openness of Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert.Dreyfus, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, for forty years, is an original thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new relevance for people’s everyday lives. His lively, thought-provoking lectures have earned him a podcast audience that often reaches the iTunesU Top 40. Kelly, chair of the philosophy department at Harvard University, is an eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the culture— and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away—captures a generation adrift.Re-envisioning modern spiritual life through their examination of literature, philosophy, and religious testimony, Dreyfus and Kelly unearth ancient sources of meaning, and teach us how to rediscover the sacred, shining things that surround us every day. This book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves. It offers a new—and very old—way to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern world.

    Hoping to explore the “real ground of literature,” she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES.The shelf has everything Rose could wish for—a classic she has not read, a remarkable variety of authors, and a range of literary styles. The early nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside those about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a picaresque novel from the seventeenth century. There are several novels by a wonderful, funny, contemporary novelist who has turned to raising dogs because of the tepid response to her work.In The Shelf, Rose investigates the books on her shelf with exuberance, candor, and wit while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf—those texts that accompany us through life. “Fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels,” she sustains a sense of excitement as she creates a refreshingly original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.

    Dealing with writers such as Nabokov, Barth, Coover, Pynchon, Borges, García Márquez, Beckett, and Calvino, Annie Dillard shows why fiction matters and how it can reveal more of the modern world and modern thinking than all the academic sciences combined. Like Joyce Cary's Art and Reality, this is a book by a writer on the issues raised by the art of literature. Readers of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm will recognize Dillard's vivid writing, her humor, and the lively way in which she tackles the urgent questions of meaning in experience itself.

    For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf's The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us."Art Objects is a book to be admired for its effort to speak exorbitantly, urgently and sometimes beautifully about art and about our individual and collective need for serious art."--Los Angeles Times

    Two hundred of his creatures inhabit his fictional world, and sixty writers hover over them. These writers--among them various classical authors of the seventeenth century such as Mme de Sévigné the letter-writer, Racine the playwright, Saint-Simon the memoirist, and novelists and poets of the nineteenth century, including Balzac, Baudelaire and Dostoevsky--are not there for show; their works play an active role in the construction of In Search of Lost Time. A life without books was inconceivable for Proust. Not surprisingly, he made literary taste and reading habits a primary means of defining his characters. Everybody in the novel reads: servants and masters, children, parents and grandparents, artists and physicians, and even generals. Conversations at dinner tables and among friends are mostly literary. The more sophisticated characters find it natural to speak in quotations, and quoting from memory is much appreciated in the narrator's family--his grandmother, grandfather, and mother all excel at this pastime.Literature is omnipresent in Proust's work but takes many different forms. It may be straightforward when it comes to the books read by the narrator and other characters; it may be a tool used to define the personality of a personage, a clue to hidden traits of character, or a comical ploy when quotations are taken out of context or when turns of speech are directly inspired by classical writers.In this wonderfully entertaining book, scholar and biographer Anka Muhlstein, the author of Balzac's Omelette, draws out these themes in Proust's work and life, thus providing an indispensable introduction to his long and intricate novel.More Praise for Balzac's Omelette:"Original, delectable, and entirely readable." --Washington Post"Scholarly yet escapist . . . irresistible." --Daily Beast"Balzac's Omelette . . . is a charming and modest little book." --New York Review of Books

    Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.