His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.

    From supernatural creatures to medical mishaps, horrific crimes to secrets of the entertainment industry, nobody does horror quite like Japan. Find out the hidden secrets behind these legends and how they came to be. After all, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

    They include introductions for books of avant-garde poets; collaborations with visual artists, and articles for publications such as The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and October.One section focuses on writers and literary works: strange tales from classical and modern China; the Psalms in translation: a skeptical look at E. B. White’s New York. Another section is a continuation of Weinberger’s celebrated political articles collected in What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles (a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award), including a sequel to “What I Heard About Iraq,” which the Guardian called the only antiwar “classic” of the Iraq War. A new installment of his magnificent linked “serial essay,” An Elemental Thing, takes us on a journey down the Yangtze River during the Sung Dynasty.The reader will also find the unlikely convergences between Samuel Beckett and Octavio Paz, photography and anthropology, and, of course, oranges and peanuts, as well as an encomium for Obama, a manifesto on translation, a brief appearance by Shiva, and reflections on the color blue, death, exoticism, Susan Sontag, and the arts and war.

    Nancy Pearl comes to the rescue with this wide-ranging and fun guide to the best reading new and old. Pearl, who inspired legions of litterateurs with What If All (name the city) Read the Same Book, has devised reading lists that cater to every mood, occasion, and personality. These annotated lists cover such topics as mother-daughter relationships, science for nonscientists, mysteries of all stripes, African-American fiction from a female point of view, must-reads for kids, books on bicycling, chick-lit, and many more. Pearl's enthusiasm and taste shine throughout.

    Subsequent edition ensured that this study was kept up to date to include later authors, and a third and final revised edition was issued in 1993 in celebration of distinguished author/critic Julian Symons' 80th year. The views expressed are as candid as ever. One bestselling writer is called unreadable, another compared to writers of "strip cartoon stories". But the general tone is warmly appreciative of every sort of book within the genre.

    This detailed filmography covers these and 225 more. Section One provides an introduction and a brief history of the decade. Beginning with 1970 and proceeding chronologically by year of its release in the United States, Section Two offers an entry for each film. Each entry includes several categories of information: Critical Reception (sampling both '70s and later reviews), Cast and Credits, P.O.V., (quoting a person pertinent to that film's production), Synopsis (summarizing the film's story), Commentary (analyzing the film from Muir's perspective), Legacy (noting the rank of especially worthy '70s films in the horror pantheon of decades following). Section Three contains a conclusion and these five appendices: horror film cliches of the 1970s, frequently appearing performers, memorable movie ads, recommended films that illustrate how 1970s horror films continue to impact the industry, and the 15 best genre films of the decade as chosen by Muir.

    Not only does it describe the genre authoritatively, but it redefines it, offering an exciting new analysis of this highly diverse and hugely popular sphere of art. With more than 4,000 entries and over one million words, this volume covers every aspect of fantasy-literature, film, television, opera, art, and comics. Written and compiled by a team of editors with unparalleled collective experience in the field, it is an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the art of the fantastic. This paperback edition includes thirty-two pages of update material obtained since the hardcover when to press.

    Using translation as his lens, David Bellos shows how much we can learn about ourselves by exploring the ways we use translation, from the historical roots of written language to the stylistic choices of Ingmar Bergman, from the United Nations General Assembly to the significance of James Cameron's Avatar.Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across human experience to describe why translation sits deep within us all, and why we need it in so many situations, from the spread of religion to our appreciation of literature; indeed, Bellos claims that all writers are by definition translators. Written with joie de vivre, reveling both in misunderstanding and communication, littered with wonderful asides, it promises any reader new eyes through which to understand the world. In the words of Bellos: "The practice of translation rests on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all the same—that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth. Without both of these suppositions, translation could not exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life. Translation is another name for the human condition."

    A work sure to captivate all lovers of language and literature, it reveals in short, pithy chapters, the lives, loves, motivations, and quirky, fascinating details involving fifty of the best-loved books of the Western world.- When stacked up, the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind stood taller than Margaret Mitchell, its 4' 9½" author.- Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was part of the Allied team that cracked the Nazi's Enigma code.- Leo Tolstoy's wife copied War and Peace by hand ... seven times.From The Great Gatsby to Harper Lee, from Jaws to J. K . Rowling, Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara? offers an entertaining and informative journey through the minds of writers and the life experiences that took these amazing works from notion to novel.

    Anne’s College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature.A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith’s heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights—on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.

    For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work—his fiction, letter, and conversations—and distills from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognizing love and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris. At once slyly ironic and genuinely wise, How Proust Can Change Your Life is an unqualified delight.

    With elegance, humor, and sophistication, Gardner describes the life of a working novelist; warns what needs to be guarded against, both from within the writer and from without; and predicts what the writer can reasonably expect and what, in general, he or she cannot. "For a certain kind of person," Gardner writes, "nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist." But no other vocation, he is quick to add, is so fraught with professional and spiritual difficulties. Whether discussing the supposed value of writer's workshops, explaining the role of the novelist's agent and editor, or railing against the seductive fruits of literary elitism, On Becoming a Novelist is an indispensable, life-affirming handbook for anyone authentically called to the profession. "A miraculously detailed account of the creative process."—Anne Tyler, Baltimore Sun

    Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen's controversial l996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay," as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

    Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant continue their critically acclaimed and award-winning tradition with another stunning collection of stories. The fiction and poetry here is culled from an exhaustive survey of the field—nearly four dozen stories, ranging from fairy tales to gothic horror, from magical realism to dark tales in the Grand Guignol-style. Rounding out the volume are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantasy and horror and Year's Best sections—on comics, by Charles Vess, and on anime and manga, by Joan D. Vinge and on film and television by Edward Bryant. This is an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.*Terry Bisson *Kevin Brockmeier *Dan Chaon *Peter Crowther *Theodora Goss *Daphne Gottlieb *Glen Hirshberg *Brian Hodge *Nina Kiriki Hoffman *Kij Johnson *Paul LaFarge *Thomas Ligotti *Sara Maitland *Maureen F. McHugh *Steve Rasnic Tem *Benjamin Rosenbaum *Michael Marshall Smith *Michael Swanwick *Karen Traviss *Megan Whalen Turner

    The stories she loves most follow other organic patterns found in nature―spirals, meanders, and explosions, among others. Alison’s manifesto for new modes of narrative will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: “For centuries there’s been one path through fiction we’re most likely to travel―one we’re actually told to follow―and that’s the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. . . . But: something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?”W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc―or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her “museum of specimens” include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Gabriel García Márquez, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison.Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let’s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.