Book picks similar to
Flow Chart by John Ashbery


poetry
american
20th-century
literature

Naked Masks: Five Plays


Luigi Pirandello - 1952
    His modern and sensationally original plays dramatize with force and eloquence the isolation of the individual from society and from himself.The editor, Eric Bentley, is an international theater authority. In addition to the Introduction and the biographical and bibliographical material in the Appendices, Mr. Bentley has prepared for this volume the first English translations of the play Liolà and Pirandello's important "Preface" to Six Characters in Search of an Author.Included Plays: Liolà It Is So! (If You Think So) Henry IV Six Characters in Search of an Author Each in His Own Way

The Occasions


Eugenio Montale - 1949
    This book is his most experimental work, but a work no less tradition-saturated than Eliot's. As poet, private individual, and "good European", Montale's way of dealing with his difficulties was to seize the occasions offered him by writing poetry in which the lover's passions for his beloved country would convey the truth of both his public and his private situations.

Advertisements for Myself


Norman Mailer - 1959
    Laying bare the heart of a witty, belligerent and vigorous writer, this manifesto of Mailer's key beliefs contains pieces on his war experiences in the Philippines (the basis for his famous first novel The Naked and the Dead), tributes to fellow novelists William Styron, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal and magnificent polemics against pornography, advertising, drugs and politics. Also included is his notorious exposition of the phenomenon of the 'White Negro', the Beat Generation's existentialist hero whose life, like Mailer's, is 'an unchartered journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self'.

Collected Stories of John O'Hara


John O'Hara - 1984
    American LiteratureContains:The doctor's son -- It must have been spring -- Over the river and through the wood -- Price's always open -- Are we leaving tomorrow? -- Pal Joey -- The gentleman in the tan suit -- Good-bye, Herman -- Olive -- Do you like it here? -- Now we know -- Free -- Too young -- Bread alone -- Graven image -- Common sense should tell you -- Drawing room B -- The pretty daughters - The moccasins -- Imagine kissing Pete -- The girl from California -- In the silence -- Exactly eight thousand dollars exactly -- Winter dance -- The flatted saxophone -- The friends of Miss Julia -- How can I tell you? -- Ninety minutes away -- Our friend the sea -- Can I stay here? -- The hardware man -- The pig -- Zero -- Fatimas and kisses -- Natica Jackson -- We'll have fun.

The Long March


William Styron - 1952
    Deciding that his battalion has been 'doping off', Colonel Templeton calls for a 36-mile forced march to inculcate discipline. The Long March is a searing account of this ferocious ordeal - and of the two officers who resist.

Second Skin


John Hawkes - 1964
    The past: the suicides of his father, wife and daughter, the murder of his son-in-law, a brutal rape, and subsequent mutiny at sea. The present: caring for his granddaughter on a "northern" island where he works as an artificial inseminator of cows, and attempts to reclaim the innocence with which he faced the tragedies of his earlier life. Combining unflinching descriptions of suffering with his sense of beauty, Hawkes is a master of nimble and sensuous prose who makes the awful and mundane fantastic, and occasionally makes the fantastic surreal.

Poems 1913-1956


Bertolt Brecht - 1969
    The editing, with excellent notes, excerpts from Brecht's own views about poetry and Mr. Willett's concise introduction is exemplary. Most important, the translations by 35 poets, among them H.R. Hayes, Peter Levi, Christopher Middleton, and Naomi Replansky, maintain a high standard of accuracy and often convey a very clear idea of the texture and feeling of the German." --Stephen Spender, "The New York Times Book Review"

Station Island


Seamus Heaney - 1984
    Heaney's pilgrim is on an inner journey and proceeds through a series of dream encounters which lead him back into the world that formed him, and then forward to face the crises of the present. Writing in The Washington Post Book World, Hugh Kenner called this narrative sequence "as fine a long poem as we've had in fifty years." It is preceded by a section of richly meditative lyrics ("Wry, spare, compressed, subtle, strange, they have a furtive intensity and exicitement." - Richard Ellmann, The New York Review of Books), and leads naturally into a third group of poems, in which the poet's voice is at one with the voice of the legendary Sweeney, a king of Ulster whose story Heaney translated from the Irish.

Tender Buttons


Gertrude Stein - 1914
    Stein's strong influence on 20th-century literature is evident in this 1915 work of highly original prose rendered in thought-provoking experimental techniques.

Counter-Statement


Kenneth Burke - 1953
    For this new paperback edition, Mr. Burke continues his "curve of development" in an Addendum which surveys the course of his though in subsequent books (up to the publication of his Collected Poems, 1915 - 1967) and work-in-progress.

Complete Verse


Rudyard Kipling - 1988
    Included are both the familiar favorites and Kipling's lesser-known works. This is the only complete collection of Kipling's poems available in paperback.

The Immortal Bartfuss


Aharon Appelfeld - 1983
    Using the techniques of omission and indirection perfected in such masterpieces as Badenheim 1939 and To the Land of the Cattails, Appelfeld tells the story of Bartfuss, enigmatically "the immortal" because of his experience in the camps. Now locked in a hopeless marriage, Bartfuss struggles to suppress the emotions and recollections he fears and despises, while trying to keep alive the poise, dignity, and compassion essential to a human being. The Immortal Bartfuss is an overwhelming and unforgettable study of a man reduced to his tragic limits.

H.M. Pulham, Esq.


John P. Marquand - 1942
    Through him Marquand reveals lives of quiet desperation lived by successful people with the "right" background. A deft dissection of the Ivy League milieu and an absorbing read.

New and Collected Poems


Richard Wilbur - 1988
    Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.

The Harder They Come


Michael Thelwell - 1980
    With passion and precision, Michael Thelwell recounts Rhygin’s journey from a morally coherent rural universe to the teeming, predatory slums of Kingston, his rebellion against the poverty and corruption of postcolonial Jamaica, his blazing, simultaneous rise to the top of the charts and the Most Wanted list.