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Understanding Anthony Powell by Nicholas Birns
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The Way of the Dog
Sam Savage - 2012
. . . Readers are left with a voice so strong that Savage is able to derive significance from these events by sheer literary force."—Kevin Larimer, Poets & Writers"Savage's skill is in creating complex first-person characters using nothing but their own voice."—Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times"[Savage] creates one of the most intriguing stories—and one of the most vivid characters—that this reader has encountered this year."—The WriterSam Savage's most intimate, tender novel yet follows Harold Nivenson, a decrepit, aging man who was once a painter and arts patron. The death of Peter Meinenger, his friend turned romantic and intellectual rival, prompts him to ruminate on his own career as a minor artist and collector and make sense of a lifetime of gnawing doubt.Over time, his bitterness toward his family, his gentrifying neighborhood, and the decline of intelligent artistic discourse gives way to a kind of peace within himself, as he emerges from the shadow of the past and finds a reason to live, every day, in "the now."Sam Savage is the best-selling author of Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, The Cry of the Sloth, and Glass. A native of South Carolina, Savage holds a PhD in philosophy from Yale University. He resides in Madison, Wisconsin.
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
Jonathan Crary - 2013
The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life.Jonathan Crary examines how this interminable non-time blurs any separation between an intensified, ubiquitous consumerism and emerging strategies of control and surveillance. He describes the ongoing management of individual attentiveness and the impairment of perception within the compulsory routines of contemporary technological culture. At the same time, he shows that human sleep, as a restorative withdrawal that is intrinsically incompatible with 24/7 capitalism, points to other more formidable and collective refusals of world-destroying patterns of growth and accumulation.
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Benjamin M. Friedman - 2021
No book could be more important." --George A. Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in EconomicsCritics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets--among economists as well as many ordinary citizens--is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea.Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin M. Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset. Friedman makes clear how the foundational transition in thinking about what we now call economics, beginning in the eighteenth century, was decisively shaped by the hotly contended lines of religious thought within the English-speaking Protestant world. Beliefs about God-given human character, about the after-life, and about the purpose of our existence, were all under scrutiny in the world in which Adam Smith and his contemporaries lived.Friedman explores how those debates go far in explaining the puzzling behavior of so many of our fellow citizens whose views about economic policies--and whose voting behavior--seems sharply at odds with what would be to their own economic benefit. Illuminating the origins of the relationship between religious thinking and economic thinking, together with its ongoing consequences, Friedman provides invaluable insights into our current economic policy debates and demonstrates ways to shape more functional policies for all citizens.
Genie
Richard Powers - 2012
Her off-and-on boyfriend, Warren the statistician, frowns on the behavior, until their analysis of the cells' ancient DNA chains reveals a pattern too regular to be anything but deliberate. Is it the signature of the Creator himself? Or a message left billions of years ago by an alien life form? In "Genie," master fiction writer Richard Powers goes sci-fi, to delightful and deranging effect.
Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series
Tyler Knott Gregson - 2014
The miracle in the mundane.One day, while browsing an antique store in Helena, Montana, photographer Tyler Knott Gregson stumbled upon a vintage Remington typewriter for sale. Standing up and using a page from a broken book he was buying for $2, he typed a poem without thinking, without planning, and without the ability to revise anything.He fell in love.Three years and almost one thousand poems later, Tyler is now known as the creator of the Typewriter Series: a striking collection of poems typed onto found scraps of paper or created via blackout method. Chasers of the Light features some of his most insightful and beautifully worded pieces of work—poems that illuminate grand gestures and small glimpses, poems that celebrate the beauty of a life spent chasing the light.
13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
Jane Smiley - 2005
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.
Regarding the Pain of Others
Susan Sontag - 2003
How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newspapers) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001. In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag once again changes the way we think about the uses and meanings of images in our world, and offers an important reflection about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time.Features an analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. This title alters our thinking about the uses and meanings of images, and about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.
Death by Cyanide: The Murder of Dr. Autumn Klein
Paula Reed Ward - 2016
Autumn Klein, a neurologist specializing in seizure disorders in pregnant women, had already been named chief of women’s neurology at Pittsburgh’s largest health system. More than just successful in her field, Dr. Klein was beloved—by her patients, colleagues, family, and friends. She collapsed suddenly on April 17, 2013, writhing in agony on her kitchen floor, and died three days later. The police said her husband, Dr. Robert Ferrante, twenty-three years Klein’s senior, killed her through cyanide poisoning. Though Ferrante left a clear trail of circumstantial evidence, Klein’s death from cyanide might have been overlooked if not for the investigators who were able to use Ferrante’s computer, statements from the staff at his lab, and his own seemingly odd actions at the hospital during his wife’s treatment to piece together what appeared to be a long-term plan to end his wife’s life. In Death by Cyanide, Paula Reed Ward, reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, describes the murder investigation and the trial in this sensational case, taking us from the poisoning and the medical staff’s heroic measures to save Klein’s life to the investigation of Ferrante and the emotion and drama inside the courtroom.
The Persistence of Memory
Tony Eprile - 2004
The Baltimore Sun declared Eprile's "horrifying yet heartrendingly beautiful" prose to be "comparable to his fellow authors of Apartheid Andre Brink and Nadine Gordimer." As the novel builds to a harrowing conclusion, the protagonist, a veteran of the secret war in Angola and Namibia, is forced to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Committee with astonishing results. Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee calls The Persistence of Memory "a story of coming to maturity in South Africa in the bad old days. Always warm-hearted, sometimes comic, ultimately damning."
Out Loud: A Memoir
Mark Morris - 2019
Often the only boy in the dance studio, he was called a sissy, a term he wore like a badge of honor. He was unlike anyone else, deeply gifted and spirited.Moving to New York at nineteen, he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. Audiences in 1976 had the luxury of Merce Cunningham's finest experiments with time and space, of Twyla Tharp's virtuosity, and Lucinda Childs's genius. Morris was flat broke but found a group of likeminded artists that danced together, travelled together, slept together. No one wanted to break the spell or miss a thing, because "if you missed anything, you missed everything." This collective, led by Morris's fiercely original vision, became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group.Suddenly, Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorker's critic as one of the great young talents, an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelo's David, he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Lou Harrison, and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era, the worst of the AIDS epidemic, through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues, Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance, a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body, an artist as joyful as he is provocative.Out Loud is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candor and disarming wit, Morris's memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mold, a brilliant maverick who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance.
You're Living All Over Me
Nick Attfield - 2011
An in-depth study of the visceral slacker classic from 1987, an album that influenced enormously the nascent alternative scene.
Infinity Blues
Ryan Adams - 2009
Fans are going to love it, and newcomers will be pleased and startled by his intensity and originality. The images are vivid and the voice is honest and powerful.”—Stephen King, author of Duma Key“Ryan Adams writes with equal parts precision and recklessness; the blood he draws from the text is easily as unnerving as its unapologetic tenderness. He is proof that poetry will find its writer.”—Mary-Louise Parker, actress“Infinity Blues is Ryan Adams at his personal, unforgettable best. Strong and beautiful and funny and pure. Like all his work, it’s soul poetry of the highest order.”—Cameron Crowe, filmmaker“This is much better than reading a friend’s journal. It’s more like watching somebody you love in the bathtub talking to himself. You’re like, wow, he’s even good at taking a bath. After reading Infinity Blues (which I think is a great title), I give Ryan Adams the best compliment I ever got—and the only reason for reading anyone’s poetry. Ryan, I really like your mind.”—Eileen Myles, author of Cool for YouRyan Adams may be known primarily for acclaimed albums such as Cardinology, Heartbreaker, Gold (which includes the popular hit songs “When the Stars Go Blue” and “New York, New York”), Love Is Hell, Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, and Easy Tiger, but the world renowned singer/songwriter has always been a poet and fiction writer at heart. With the release of Infinity Blues, his nonmusical writing is for the first time ever unveiled in book form. Mr. Adams’s work rings of an emotional authenticity that provides perhaps an even deeper insight into the man than is revealed through the songs that have resonated with his hundreds of thousands of fans the world over.RYAN ADAMS is usually performing in some city on the globe at any given moment with his longtime band the Cardinals. Adams is known for his prolific nature, which in the last ten years has produced various international hit albums. Adams has also produced Willie Nelson’s Songbird album and contributed to records by Toots and the Maytals, Beth Orton, the Wallflowers, Counting Crows, and Cowboy Junkies; additionally, he has appeared on CMT’s Crossroads with Elton John. He was a longtime Manhattan resident before relocating to France in 2009, and he listens to A LOT of heavy metal.
Now and Then...
Gil Scott-Heron - 2000
The song-poems of this undisputed "bluesologist" triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished Gil Scott-Heron's career. This collection carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and the realities of modern day life. His message is black, political, historically accurate, urgent, uncompromising, and mature, and as relevant now as it was in the early 1970s.
Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, and Collaborations with Artists
Paul Auster - 2003
An essential collection from one of the finest thinkers and stylists in contemporary letters.The celebrated author of The New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions, and Oracle Night presents here a highly personal collection of essays, prefaces, true stories, autobiographical writings, and collaborations with artists, as well as occasional pieces written for magazines and newspapers, including The Invention of Solitude his "breathtaking memoir." (Financial Times Magazine London)Ranging in subject from Sir Walter Raleigh to Kafka, Nathaniel Hawthorne to the high-wire artist Philippe Petit, conceptual artist Sophie Calle to Auster's own typewriter, the World Trade Center catastrophe to his beloved New York City itself, Collected Prose records the passions and insights of a writer who "will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time" (San Francisco Chronicle).
Zeitgeist
Bruce Sterling - 2000
His market is staring him in the face: millions of teenagers trapped in a world of mullahs and mosques, all ready to blow their pocket change on G-7's massive merchandising campaign - and to wildly anticipate music the band will never release.Leggy's brilliant plan means doing business with some of the world's most dangerous people. Among these thieves, schemers, and killers, he must act quickly and decisively. Y2K is just around the corner - and the only rule to live by is that the whole scheme stops before the year 2000. But Leggy's G-7 Zeitgeist is in serious jeopardy, for in Istanbul his former partners are getting restless - and the G-7 girls are beginning to die...Cover illustration by Eric Dinyer