Fusing family memoir with a meditation on creative block, depression, solitude, class, place and the intractable politics of our present moment, Dan Fox draws upon his experiences as a writer to consider the role that fallow periods and states of impasse play in art and life. LIMBO is an essay about getting by when you can't get along, employing a cast of artists, exiles, ghosts, hermits and sailors - including the author's older brother who, in 1985, left England for good to sail the world - to reflect on the creative, emotional and political consequences of being stuck, and how these are also crucial to our understanding of inspiration, flow and productivity. From Thomas Aquinas to radical behavioural experiments, from creative constraints to the social horrors of THE TWILIGHT ZONE and Get Out's SUNKEN PLACE, LIMBO argues that there can be no growth without stagnancy, no movement without inactivity, and no progress without refusal.

    Think of films such as Casablanca and The English Patient, of novels such as Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. Think of romantic, obsessive love, the hot bed of passion we fall into, the emotion we call true love. This is the subject of Rosemary Sullivan's provocative and fascinating book. Beginning with her own telling of a fictional love story, she then, chapter by chapter, deconstructs it, skillfully pushing back the layers of meaning to look at what is really happening. Using literature, mythology, film, and personal anecdote; with graceful writing and an intimate knowledge of the subject, Rosemary Sullivan has written an exploration of our desire for romantic love.

    K. Rowling's Harry Potter series topped the best-seller charts, inspired the highest-grossing film series of all time, and has now become a $250 million Universal Studio theme park. What is it about this story that has ignited such fandom and struck such a chord with people around the world? As English professor, culture critic, and Potter devotee Greg Garrett explains, these novels not only entertain but teach deeply held truths about ourselves, others, and the world around us. Unlocking the textual intricacies behind the Harry Potter narrative, Garrett reveals Rowling's magical formula--one that, he contends, earns her a place right next to the literary giants of old.--Craig Detwiler, Director, Center for Entertainment, Media, and Culture, Pepperdine University

    

    Linguistics. Originally appearing in 1977 and now in its 11th printing, THE NEW SENTENCE by Ron Silliman is a classic collection of essays by one of the sharpest minds in American contemporary poetic thought. It is a collection with rich insight into Silliman's own monumental poetical work and the writing of his peers, a book which both illuminates the concerns of the era in which it was written and radiates outward with a tremendous scope that continues to bear fruit for the contemporary reader. Ron Silliman is a terrific prose critic...positively bristles with intellectual and political energy of a very high order -Bruce Boone.

    Tally Jr. explores differing aspects of the spatial in literary studies today, providing:An overview of the spatial turn across literary theory, from historicism and postmodernism to postcolonialism and globalization Introductions to the major theorists of spatiality, including Michel Foucault, David Harvey, Edward Soja, Erich Auerbach, Georg Lukacs, and Fredric Jameson Analysis of critical perspectives on spatiality, such as the writer as map-maker, literature of the city and urban space, and the concepts of literary geography, cartographics and geocriticism.This clear and engaging study presents readers with a thought provoking and illuminating guide to the literature and criticism of 'space'.

    It's just another dead Indian." Justine English, sister of murder victim Mary Jane SerloinJohn Martin Crawford is a serial killer who preys on native women. Convicted in 1996, Crawford is serving concurrent life sentences for brutally murdering Canadian Native women and is a suspect in the killing of at least one other Native woman. Crawford has staked his claim as one of the nation's most prolific sex killers with little fanfare. He is anonymous, his deeds are virtually forgotten. Who is he? Journalist Warren Goulding traces the crimes, prosecution, convictions, and media treatment surrounding Crawford and his victims. By raising disturbing questions about racism, police actions and policy, and the media, he draws the whole story out of obscurity and onto the public record. This disquieting book deaths of these four Native women and challenges all Canadians to consider the possibility that in this country, some lives are worth more than others.

    The end result of this conversation, Dark hopes, will be a better understanding that there is a reality more important, more lasting, and more infinite than the cultures to which we belong, the reality of the kingdom of God.

    Joyce's Voices is both a helpful guide through Joyce's complexities, and a brief treatise on the concept of objectivity: the idea that the world can be perceived as a series of reports to our senses. Objectivity, Kenner claims, was a modern invention, and one that the modernists--Joyce foremost among them--found problematic. Accessible and enjoyable, Joyce's Voices is what so much criticism is not: an aid to better understanding--and enjoying more fully--the work of one of the world's greatest writers.

    And yet at the same time, like another masterpiece of fiction, James Joyce's Ulysses, it's been deemed endlessly complex and filled with impenetrable mysteries. Now, however, in the first book-length investigation of Wolfe's literary puzzlebox, Robert Borski takes you inside the twisting corridors of the tetralogy and along the way reveals his solutions to many of the novel's conundrums and riddles, such as who really is Severian's lost twin sister (almost certainly not who you think) and why he believes the novel's main character may not even be the torturer Severian. Furthermore, and in essay after essay, Borski demonstrates how a single master key will unlock many of the book's secret relationships--all in the attempt to guide you through the labyrinth that is Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.

    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.

    Translation of: Orphee noir, originally published 1948 as the preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue francaise, edited by Leopold Sedar Senghor.

    The resulting volume is guaranteed to shake the assumptions of readers of every pigmentation and political allegiance.   In What's Going On, McCall adds up the hidden costs of the stereotype of black athletic prowess, which tells African American teenagers that they can only succeed on the white man's terms. He introduces a fresh perspective to the debates on gangsta rap and sexual violence. He indicts the bigotry of white churches and the complacency of the black suburban middle class, celebrates the heroism of Muhammad Ali, and defends the truth-telling of Alice Walker. Engaging, provocative, and utterly fearless, here is a commentator to reckon with, addressing our most persistent divisions in a voice of stinging immediacy.

    His ‘natural supernaturalism’, personal mythology and vision can leave readers dazzled by the intensity and passion of his verse. In this outstanding work, Chesterton goes right to the heart of the matter and addresses the question of whether Blake’s genius was tainted by madness or whether his peculiar outlook on the world was the key to his success. With a detailed exposition of Blake’s life, and by weaving lucid explanations of his philosophy and religion into a discourse on his poetry, Chesterton has produced a remarkable and sensitive biography.

    For blacks and whites alike, the experience has left us with a conflicted and contradictory history. Now, famed novelist Charles Johnson, whose Middle Passage won the National Book Award, presents a dozen tales of the effects and experience of slavery, each based on historical fact, and each about those Africans who arrived on our shores in shackles. From Martha Washington's management of her slaves, bequeathed to her at the death of the first president, to a boy chained in the bowels of a ship plying the infamous passage from Africa to the South laden with human cargo, from a lynching in Indiana to a hunter of escaped slaves searching the Boston market for his quarry, from an early Quaker meeting exploring resettlement in Africa to the day after Emancipation-the voices, terrors, and savagery of slavery come vividly and unforgettably to life. These stories, told by a master storyteller, transcend history even as they present it, and retell the mythic proportions of a historical period with astounding realism and beauty, power, and emotion.