Book picks similar to
The Life of Henry Brulard by Stendhal
france
nyrb
french
classics
Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps
Emmett Grogan - 1972
While Kesey's Merry Prankster's were off tripping the light fantastic, the Diggers were transforming the Haight from a seedy district of abandoned Victorian houses into an evanescent paradise on earth.For anyone who thinks that those were days only of peace, love and flower power, Ringolevio will be a revelation, as it evokes the gritty urban sensibility that supplied the backbone to the community's free flights of fancy.Vastly entertaining, Ringolevio is at once high adventure, political screed, social history. and hyperbolic memoir. This classic traces the story of Emmett Grogan, a larger-than-life sixties legend of great controversy, from the streets of New York to the heights of the Haight.Citadel Underground's edition of Ringolevio features a new introducing by the actor Peter Coyote, one of Grogan's oldest friends, a fellow Digger and a veteran of the San Francisco Mime Troupe."The San Francisco Diggers combined Dada street theater with the revolutionary politics of free." Slum-alley saints, they lit up the period by spreading the poetry of love and anarchy with broad strokes of artistic genius. Their free store, communications network of instant offset survival poetry, along with an Indian-inspired consciousness, was the original white light of the era. Emmett Grogan was the hippie warrior par excellence. He was also a junkie, amaniac, a gifted actor, a rebel hero, ...and above all a pain in the ass to all his friends. Ringolevio is half-brilliant." -- Abbie Hoffman
Last Words
George Carlin - 2009
Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acerbic humor with never-before-told stories from his own life. Carlin’s early conflicts, his long struggle with substance abuse, his turbulent relationships with his family, and his triumphs over catastrophic setbacks all fueled the unique comedic worldview he brought to the stage. From the heights of stardom to the low points few knew about, Last Words is told with the same razor-sharp honesty that made Carlin one of the best-loved comedians in American history.
What Is the What
Dave Eggers - 2006
When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.-back cover
Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby
Geoffrey Wolff - 1976
P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the twenties and directing the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the lost generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby's pastimes until 1929, when he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.Black Sun is novelist and master biographer Geoffrey Wolff's subtle and striking picture of a man who killed himself to make his life a work of art.