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books tagged “experimental fiction”
books tagged “experimental fiction”
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100 Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia MarquezISBN 0899667031 (0-89966-703-1)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books
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Almost No Memoryby Lydia DavisISBN 088001606X (0-88001-606-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Alphabetical Africaby Walter AbishISBN 0811205339 (0-8112-0533-9)
Softcover, New Directions
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alphabetical Africa'Book summary:Abish, Alphbetical Africa. A continent forms and crumbles through a linguistic tour de force. [via]
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At Swim-Two-Birdsby Flann O'BrienISBN 156478181X (1-56478-181-X)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'At Swim-Two-Birds'Book summary:In a 1938 letter to a literary agent, Flann O'Brien described his first novel as "a very queer affair, unbearably queer perhaps." The book in question was At Swim-Two-Birds--and if we take queer to mean diabolically eccentric, then truer words were never spoken. The author, whose real name was Brian O'Nolan, had successfully stirred Gaelic legend, pulp fiction, and grimy Dublin realism into a hilarious cocktail. His mastery of modernist collage would have been an ample accomplishment itself. But O'Brien was also blessed with the writer's equivalent of perfect pitch, and in At Swim-Two-Birds he squeezes the maximum beauty and banality out of the English language. All he lacks is a tragic register, but he makes up for this deficit with a sense of comedy so acute that even James Joyce couldn't resist blurbing his fellow Dubliner's creation: "A really funny book."
O'Brien labored mightily to make At Swim-Two-Birds summary-proof. But here, anyway, are the bare bones: the narrator, a university student, is writing a novel, which keeps morphing from mock-heroics to middlebrow naturalism. Meanwhile, one of his characters, Dermot Trellis, is himself writing a Western--an Irish Western--whose cowpunching protagonists will eventually throw off their fictional shackles and attempt to murder their creator. (Talk about the death of the author!) There's enough structural shenanigans here to keep an entire industry of critics afloat. Still, what matters most is the pungency of O'Brien's prose. His dialogue is agreeably grungy, his parodies delicious, and the narrator speaks in the sort of Jesuitical dialect that we associate with Samuel Beckett:
That same afternoon I was sitting on a stool in an intoxicated condition in Grogan's licensed premises. Adjacent stools bore the forms of Brinsley and Kelly, my two true friends. The three of us were occupied in putting glasses of stout into the interior of our bodies and expressing by fine disputation the resulting sense of physical and mental well-being. In my thigh pocket I had eleven and eightpence in a weighty pendulum of mixed coins.
Snippets, alas, do little justice to At Swim-Two-Birds, which relies heavily on cumulative chaos for its effect. Graham Greene, an early fan, compared its comic charge to "the kind of glee one experiences when people smash china on the stage." A half century after its initial appearance, O'Brien's masterpiece remains a gleeful read--a marvelous, inventive, and (last but not least) really funny book. --James Marcus [via]More editions of At Swim-Two-Birds:
Bergby Ann Quin, Giles GordonISBN 1564783022 (1-56478-302-2)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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Blade Runner: A Movie [novel]by William S. BurroughsISBN 0912652462 (0-912652-46-2)
Softcover, Blue Wind Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blade Runner: A Movie'Book summary:(the movie got its title from this earlier book) [via]
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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Library Editionby Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Philip GabrielISBN 1400096081 (1-4000-9608-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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The Blond Boxby Toby OlsonISBN 1573661104 (1-57366-110-4)
Softcover, Univ of Alabama Pr
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The Blue Flowersby Raymond Queneau, Barbara WrightISBN 0811209458 (0-8112-0945-8)
Softcover, New Directions
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The Bone Peopleby Keri HulmeISBN 1417702931 (1-4177-0293-1)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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The Brief And Frightening Reign of Philby George SaundersISBN 1594481520 (1-59448-152-0)
Softcover, Riverhead Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Brief And Frightening Reign of Phil'Book summary:Book Description
Welcome to Inner Horner, a nation so small it can only accommodate one citizen at a time. The other six citizens must wait their turns in the Short-Term Residency Zone of the surrounding country of Outer Horner. It's a long-standing arrangement between the fantastical, not-exactly-human citizens of the two countries. But when Inner Horner suddenly shrinks, forcing three-quarters of the citizen then in residence over the border into Outer Horner territory, the Outer Hornerites declare an Invasion In Progress--having fallen under the spell of the power-hungry and demagogic Phil.So begins The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. Fueled by Saunders's unrivaled wit, outlandish imagination, and incisive political sensibility, here is a deeply strange yet strangely familiar fable of power and impotence, justice and injustice--an Animal Farm for our times.
Praise for George Saunders Author of Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline "An astoundingly tuned voice--graceful, dark, authentic, and funny--telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times."
--Thomas Pynchon"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut. [His] satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"A master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction."
--Salon.comAmazon.com Exclusive
Want to know the story behind the story of award-winning author George Saunders's new novella, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil? Then read "Why I Wrote Phil," an exclusive essay from Saunders concerning the genesis of his new work, which has been praised as possessing "an absurdist wit as playful as Monty Python's and a vision as dark as Samuel Beckett's."
Read George Saunders's Essay, "Why I Wrote Phil"More from George Saunders
Pastoralia
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
The Very Persistent Gappers of FripMore editions of The Brief And Frightening Reign of Phil:
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Catastrophe Practiceby John Banks, Nicholas MosleyISBN 091658335X (0-916583-35-X)
Hardcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Catastrophe Practice'Book summary:Catastrophe Practice is a novel in the form of three plays with prefaces and a novella, in which six characters, or actors, try to find their ways through some catastrophe that is less in the world outside than in their minds. They feel that conventional ways of seeing things have become disastrous and instead try to put catastrophe theory into practice in order to break through to something different.
Mosley draws upon catastrophe theory to investigate the discontinuities in human personality and our tendency to progress suddenly rather than smoothly. That we do progress underlines the basic optimism of the book. In Catastrophe Practice characters (and author) try to move away from the tragic or comic models hitherto provided by literature into categories more suited to growth and life.
First published in England in 1979, this edition contains an introduction by John Banks, the leading authority on Mosley's fiction, as well as a new postscript by the author, who has made numerous revisions throughout. [via]
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Catastrophe Practiceby Nicholas Mosley, John BanksISBN 1564782522 (1-56478-252-2)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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Chasmby Dorothea TanningISBN 1585675849 (1-58567-584-9)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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Chinese Sunby Terry Myers, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Evgeny PavlovISBN 1933254041 (1-933254-04-1)
Softcover, Ugly Duckling Pr
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Cien Anos De Soledadby Gabriel Garcia MarquezISBN 082882567X (0-8288-2567-X)
Softcover, French & European Pubns
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Cities of the Red Night : A Novelby William S. BurroughsISBN 0805039554 (0-8050-3955-4)
Softcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities of the Red Night : A Novel'Book summary:While young men wage war against an evil empire of zealous mutants, the population of this modern inferno is afflicted with the epidemic of a radioactive virus. An opium-infused apocalyptic vision from the legendary author of Naked Lunch is the first of the trilogy with The Places of the Dead Roads and his final novel, The Western Plains.
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Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney'S, Humor Category 1998-2003by Lee Epstein, Kevin J. Shay, John Warner, Dave Eggers, Suzanne KleidISBN 1400076854 (1-4000-7685-4)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney'S, Humor Category 1998-2003'Book summary:Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's, Humor Category, a collection from the clever young writers that bring us the McSweeney's literary journal and Web site, and co-edited by their leader, Dave Eggers, is funny from the first page. And by "first page," we mean the table contents. Of course not every essay, list, and swatch of dialogue are created equal, but the collection has many tasty morsels that are well worth a read, a read to friends, and then a re-read, after a decent interval has elapsed.
Most appealing in the book's starting lineup is J.M. Tyree's "On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor." Humorous as well as thought-provoking, this essay makes the perfect amuse bouche for what is arguably the collection's main course of hilarity, "Fire: the Next Sharp Stick?", "Candle Party," and "Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002, for the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD (Platinum Series Extended Version), Part One," all to be found in the early middle. Though a familiarity with candle parties, Howard Zinn, sharp sticks, and other topics satirized in this book is helpful, it's not necessarily required for understanding the jokes. The biggest risk here is binge-reading, as you may exchange audible laughter for the feeling that you are being force-fed an ice cream sundae. If you pace yourself--say no more than four to six pieces at a time--you should have the energy for the final third, including the funny list marathon at the end. Or save a few portions for later when you are really starving for a good laugh. --Leah Weathersby [via]
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- Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney'S, Humor Category 1998-2003: ISBN 1400042240 (1-4000-4224-0)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc - Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney'S, Humor Category 1998-2003: ISBN 1400076854 (1-4000-7685-4)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
- Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney'S, Humor Category 1998-2003: ISBN 1400042240 (1-4000-4224-0)
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeby Mark HaddonISBN 1400032717 (1-4000-3271-7)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'Book summary:Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years. [via]
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Dhalgrenby Samuel R. DelanyISBN 0819562998 (0-8195-6299-8)
Softcover, Wesleyan Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dhalgren'Book summary:What is Dhalgren? Dhalgren is one of the greatest novels of 20th-century American literature. Dhalgren is one of the all-time bestselling science fiction novels. Dhalgren may be read with equal validity as SF, magic realism, or metafiction. Dhalgren is controversial, challenging, and scandalous. Dhalgren is a brilliant novel about sex, gender, race, class, art, and identity.
A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast--the marginalized.
Dhalgren is many things, but instantly accessible isn't one of them. While most of this big, ambitious, deeply detailed novel is beautifully pellucid, the opening pages will be difficult for some: the novel starts with the second half of an incomplete sentence, in the viewpoint of a man who doesn't know who he is. If you find the early pages rough going, push on; the story soon becomes clear and fascinating. But--fair warning--the central nature of the disaster, of its strange devastations and disruptions, remains a puzzle for many readers, sometimes after several readings.
Spoiler warning: If you want to figure out the secret of the novel as you read Dhalgren, then stop reading this review right now! If you want to know the secret before you start, this is what the novel is about: the experience of existence inside a novel. Time passes differently for different characters. A river changes location. Stairs change their number. The Kid looks in a mirror and sees not himself, but someone who looks an awful lot like Samuel R. Delany. Central images include mirrors, lenses, and prisms, devices that focus, reflect--and distort. The Kid fills a notebook with a journal that may be Dhalgren, and is uncertain if he has written much, or any, of it. The characters don't know they're in a novel, but they know something is wrong. Dhalgren explores the relationship between characters and author (or, perhaps, characters, "author," and author).
The final chapter can be even tougher going than the opening pages, with its viewpoint change and its stretches of braided narrative--and the novel ends with the beginning of an unfinished sentence. But the last chapter becomes clear as you persevere; and when you get to that unfinished closing line, turn to the first line of the novel to finish the sentence and close the narrative circle. --Cynthia Ward [via]
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Ella Minnow Peaby Mark DunnISBN 0967370167 (0-9673701-6-7)
Hardcover, Macadam Cage Pub
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ella Minnow Pea'Book summary:Ella Minnow Pea is an epistolary novel set in the fictional island of Nollop situated off the coast of South Carolina and home to the inventor the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Now deceased, the islanders have erected a monument to honor their hero, but one day a tile with the letter z falls from the statue. The leaders interpret the falling tile as a message from beyond the grave and the letter is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride themselves on their love of language, this is seen as a tragedy. They are still reeling from the shock, when another tile falls and then another.... Mark Dunn takes us on a journey against time through the eyes of Ella Minnow Pea and her family as they race to find another phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet to save them from being unable to communicate. Eventually, the only letters remaining are LMNOP, when Ella finally discovers the phrase that will save their language. [via]
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Europeana: A Brief History Of The Twentieth Centuryby Patrik Ourednik, Gerald TurnerISBN 1564783820 (1-56478-382-0)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Europeana: A Brief History Of The Twentieth Century'Book summary:Patrik Ouredník's first novel to be translated into English is a unique version of the history of the twentieth century.
Told in an informal, mesmerizing voice, Ouredník represents the twentieth century in all its contradictions and grand illusions, demonstrating that nothing substantial has changed between 1900 and 1999humanity is still hopeful for the future and still mired in age-old conflicts. As he demonstrates that nothing can be reduced to a single, true viewpoint, Ouredník mixes hard facts and idiosyncratic observations, highlighting the horror and absurdity of the twentieth century and the further absurdity of attempting to narrate this history. [via]More editions of Europeana: A Brief History Of The Twentieth Century:
Exercises in Styleby Raymond QueneauISBN 0811207897 (0-8112-0789-7)
Softcover, New Directions
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Expelled from Edenby William T. Vollmann, Michael A. HemmingsonISBN 1560254416 (1-56025-441-6)
Softcover, Thunder's Mouth Pr
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Famous Writers Schoolby Steven CarterISBN 1582433569 (1-58243-356-9)
Hardcover, Counterpoint
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The Female Manby Joanna RussISBN 0807062995 (0-8070-6299-5)
Softcover, Beacon Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Female Man'Book summary:It's influenced William Gibson and been listed as one of the ten essential works of science fiction. Most importantly, Joanna Russ's THE FEMALE MAN is a suspenseful, surprising and darkly witty chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael--four alternate selves from drastically different realities--meet. [via]
The Flight of Icarusby Raymond QueneauISBN 0811204839 (0-8112-0483-9)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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A Form of Taking It Allby Rosmarie WaldropISBN 0882680919 (0-88268-091-9)
Softcover, Barrytown/Station Hill Press
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The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novelby Salman RushdieISBN 0805053085 (0-8050-5308-5)
Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel'Book summary:Salman Rushdie's most ambitious and accomplished novel, sure to be hailed as his masterpiece. At the beginning of this stunning novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music. Their epic romance is narrated by Ormus's childhood friend and Vina's sometime lover, her "back-door man," the photographer Rai, whose astonishing voice, filled with stories, images, myths, anger, wisdom, humor, and love, is perhaps the book's true hero. Telling the story of Ormus and Vina, he finds that he is also revealing his own truths: his human failings, his immortal longings. He is a man caught up in the loves and quarrels of the age's goddesses and gods, but dares to have ambitions of his own. And lives to tell the tale. Around these three, the uncertain world itself is beginning to tremble and break. Cracks and tears have begun to appear in the fabric of the real. There are glimpses of abysses below the surfaces of things. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is Salman Rushdie's most gripping novel and his boldest imaginative act, a vision of our shaken, mutating times, an engagement with the whole of what is and what might be, an account of the intimate, flawed encounter between the East and the West, a brilliant remaking of the myth of Orpheus, a novel of high (and low) comedy, high (and low) passions, high (and low) culture. It is a tale of love, death, and rock 'n' roll. [via]
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Hannibal Lecter, My Fatherby Kathy AckerISBN 0936756683 (0-936756-68-3)
Softcover, Semiotext
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hannibal Lecter, My Father'Book summary:You can say I write stories with sex and violence and therefore my writing isn't worth considering because it uses content much less lots of content. Well, I tell you this: 'Prickly race, who know nothing except how to eat out your hearts with envy, you don't eat cunt'...Edited by Sylvere Lotringer and published in 1991, this handy, pocket-sized collection of some early and not-so-early work by the mistress of gut-level fiction-making, Hannibal Lecter, My Father gathers together Acker's raw, brilliant, emotional and cerebral texts from 1970s, including the self-published 'zines written under the nom-de-plume, The Black Tarantula. This volume features, among others, the full text of Acker's opera, The Birth of the Poet, produced at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1985, Algeria, 1979 and fragments of Politics, written at the age of 21. Also included is the longest and definitive interview Acker ever gave over two years: a chatty, intriguing and delightfully self-deprecating conversation with Semiotext(e) editor Sylvere Lotringer -- which is trippy enough in itself as Lotringer, besides being a real person, has appeared as a character in Acker's fiction. And last, but not least, is the full transcript of the decision reached by West Germany's Federal Inspection Office for Publications Harmful to Minors in which Acker's work was judged to be "not only youth-threatening but also dangerous to adults," and subsequently banned.Acker is the sort of the writer that should be read first at 16, so that you can spend the rest of your life trying to figure her out; she confuses, infuriates, perplexes and then all of a sudden the writing seems to be in your bloodstream, like some kind of benign virus. She's definitely not for the easily offended -- but then, there are worse things in life than being offended. Such as the things that Acker writes about...
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A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chaptersby Julian BarnesISBN 1850893489 (1-85089-348-9)
Hardcover, Ulverscroft Large Print Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters'Book summary:The tale of the stowaway weevil aboard Noah's Ark, the trial of the insects in 16th-century France, an analysis of Gericault's picture "The Wreck of the Medusa", two Victorian lady travellers on Mount Ararat and an after-life of unbridled pleasure in an hedonistic heaven. [via]
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The Human Countryby Harry MathewsISBN 1564783219 (1-56478-321-9)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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John Lennon in His Own Writeby John LennonISBN 1568491476 (1-56849-147-6)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'John Lennon in His Own Write'Book summary:"Irreverent . . . and hilarious" (New York Times) this book will appeal to Lennon's thousands of fans and create instant sales on its publication on his 47th birthday. 30 two-color line drawings. [via]
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Kafka On The Shoreby Haruki Murakami, J. Philip Gabriel, Philip GabrielISBN 1400079276 (1-4000-7927-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kafka on the Shore'Book summary:With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.
This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddleyet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.
Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the worlds truly great storytellers at the height of his powers. [via] 
Kaspar and Other Playsby Peter HandkeISBN 0809015463 (0-8090-1546-3)
Softcover, Hill & Wang Pub
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Larva: Midsummer Night's Babelby Julian RiosISBN 091658366X (0-916583-66-X)
Hardcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Larva: Midsummer Night's Babel'Book summary:First published in Spain in 1983 and proclaimed "an instant postmodern classic, without a doubt the most disturbingly original Spanish prose of the century" (Encyclopedia Britannica 1985 Book of the Year), Larva is a rollicking account of a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. Milalias (disguised as Don Juan) searches for Babelle (as Sleeping Beauty) though a linguistic funhouse of polylingual puns and wordplay recalling Joyce's "Finnegans Wake". A mock-scholarly commentary reveals the backgrounds of the masked revelers, while Ros's punning and allusive language shows that words too wear masks, hiding an astonishing range of further meanings and implications.
Larva's tale, a reassessment of the Don Juan myth in our time, is told in single-minded pursuit of double meanings, but it is serious play. It revives a Hispanic tradition repressed for centuries by introducing the Madhatter English tradition of puns, palindromes, and acrostics, by creating Joycean echoes and pushing language to its maximum connotative capacity. Larva has been praised by such leading Spanish-language writers as Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, and Severo Sarduy, and establishes Ros as the most accomplished successor to Joyce. [via]
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Literally No Place: Communes, Bars And Greenroomsby Liam GillickISBN 1870699661 (1-870699-66-1)
Softcover, Ram Pubns & Dist
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The Metamorphosis and Other Storiesby Franz Kafka, Donna Freed, Jason BakerISBN 1593080298 (1-59308-029-8)
Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'Book summary:[via]The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the worlds most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern mans anxiety and alienation in a bizarre, hostile, and dehumanized world. This vision is most fully realized in Kafkas masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.
Bringing together some of Kafkas finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the authors artistry. The Judgment, which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and The Stoker, which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with The Metamorphosis, form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as The Sons, and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.
Also included are In the Penal Colony, a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and A Hunger Artist, about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafkas lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.
Jason Baker is a writer of short stories living in Brooklyn, New York.More editions of The Metamorphosis and Other Stories:
- The Metamorphosis and Other Stories: ISBN 1593081804 (1-59308-180-4)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc - Metamorphosis : And Other Stories: ISBN 1843914093 (1-84391-409-3)
Hardcover, Hesperus Press - The Metamorphosis and Other Stories: ISBN 1566199697 (1-56619-969-7)
Softcover, Barnes & Noble Books - Metamorphosis: ISBN 1843910144 (1-84391-014-4)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square - The Metamorphosis and Other Stories: ISBN 1566199700 (1-56619-970-0)
Hardcover, Barnes & Noble Books - The Metamorphosis and Other Stories: ISBN 1593080298 (1-59308-029-8)
Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
- The Metamorphosis and Other Stories: ISBN 1593081804 (1-59308-180-4)
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The Metamorphosis, the Penal Colony, and Other Storiesby Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, Arthur SamuelsonISBN 0805210571 (0-8052-1057-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories'Book summary:Literature [via]
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The Mezzanineby Nicholson BakerISBN 1555842585 (1-55584-258-5)
Hardcover, Grove Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mezzanine'Book summary:In his startling, witty, and inexhaustibly inventive novel, bestselling author Nicholson Baker uses a one-story escalator ride as the occasion for a dazzling reappraisal of everyday objects and rituals. From the humble milk carton to the act of tying ones shoes, The Mezzanine at once defamiliarizes the familiar world and endows it with loopy and euphoric poetry. At first glance, The Mezzanine appears to be a book about nothing. In reality, it is a brilliant celebration of things, simultaneously demonstrating the value of reflection and the importance of everyday human experiences. Captures the spirit of American corporate life and invests it with a passion and sympathy that is entirely unexpected. The Seattle Times A constant delight . . . among the years best. The Boston Globe Baker writes with appealing charm . . . [He] clowns and shows off . . . rambles and pounces hard; he says acute things, extravagant things, terribly funny things. Los Angeles Times Book Review [via]
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Nightwoodby Djuna Barnes, Cheryl J. PlumbISBN 1564780805 (1-56478-080-5)
Hardcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nightwood'Book summary:Nightwood is not only a classic of lesbian literature, but was also acknowledged by no less than T. S. Eliot as one of the great novels of the 20th century. Eliot admired Djuna Barnes' rich, evocative language. Lesbian readers will admire the exquisite craftsmanship and Barnes' penetrating insights into obsessive passion. Barnes told a friend that Nightwood was written with her own blood "while it was still running." That flowing wound was the breakup of an eight-year relationship with the lesbian love of her life. [via]
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Norwegian Woodby Haruki MurakamiISBN 1860468004 (1-86046-800-4)
Softcover, Random House
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Norwegian Wood'Book summary:"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me" "Norwegian Wood" (Lennon/McCartney).
With Norwegian Wood Murakami, best known as the author of off-kilter classics such as the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled Wonderland, finally achieved widespread acclaim in his native Japan. The novel sold upwards of 4 million copies and forced the author to retreat to Europe, fearful of the expectations accompanying his new-found cult status.
The novel is atypical for Murakami: seemingly autobiographical, in the tradition of many Japanese "I" novels, Norwegian Wood is a simple coming of age tale set, primarily, in 1969/70, the time of Murakami's own university years. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the backdrop of the novel but the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs and the pain (and pleasure) of growing up with all its attendant losses, (self-)obsessions and crises.
The novel is split into two volumes and beautifully presented here in a "gold" box containing both the green book and the red book. Young Japanese fans became so obsessed with the work that they would dress entirely in one or other colour denoting which volume they most identified with. And the novel is hugely affecting, reading like a cross between Plath's Bell Jar and Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women, if less complex and ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical, work. He captures the huge expectation of youth, and of this particular time in history, for the future and for the place of love in it. He also saturates the work with sadness, an emotion that can cripple a novel but which here underscores the poignancy of the work's rather thin subject matter. --Mark Thwaite [via]
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Number 9 Dreamby David MitchellISBN 0812966929 (0-8129-6692-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia MarquezISBN 081615483X (0-8161-5483-X)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Only an Alligator: Book One of the Accomplice Seriesby Steve AylettISBN 1857989619 (1-85798-961-9)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Only an Alligator: Book One of the Accomplice Series'Book summary:[via]Accomplice is the Wonderland of a sick Alice. In this self-contained, less than comfortable city the surreal and the nightmarish is everyday. And in its midst is the simple Barny Juno, nemesis of a king demon, who must tirelessly ignore the hordes of hell.More editions of Only an Alligator: Book One of the Accomplice Series:
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Pierrot Mon Amiby Raymond Queneau, Hedges, Inez (AFT), Barbara WrightISBN 1564783979 (1-56478-397-9)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pierrot Mon Ami'Book summary:"Pierrot Mon Ami was perhaps Queneau's masterpiece . . . This unlikely guru exerted a major influence on a new avant-garde (notably on Georges Perec, who was devoted to him). But if there was a sage in Queneau he never imparted his wisdom more touchingly than in Pierrot Mon Ami."Times Literary Supplement
Pierrot Mon Ami, considered by many to be one of Raymond Queneau's finest achievements, is a quirky coming-of-age novel concerning a young man's initiation into a world filled with deceit, fraud, and manipulation. From his short-lived job at a Paris amusement park where he helps to raise women's skirts to the delight of an unruly audience, to his frustrated and unsuccessful love of Yvonne, to his failed assignment to care for the tomb of the shadowy Prince Luigi of Poldevia, Pierrot stumbles about, nearly immune to the effects of duplicity.
This "innocent" implies how his story, at almost every turn, undermines, upsets, and plays upon our expectations, leaving us with more questions than answers, and doing so in a gloriously skewed style (admirably re-created by Barbara Wright, Queneau's principle translator). [via] -
The Place of Dead Roads : A Novelby William S. BurroughsISBN 0805039546 (0-8050-3954-6)
Softcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Place of Dead Roads : A Novel'Book summary:A good old-fashioned shoot-out in the American West of the frontier days serves as the springboard for this hyperkinetic adventure in which gunslingers lead by Kim Carson fight for galactic freedom.AUTHORBIO: William S. Burroughs was born in St. Louis in 1914.His many other works include NAKED LUNCH and JUNKY.Described by Norman Mailer as one of Americas few writers genuinely possessed by genius, he died in 1997.
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The Roaches Have No Kingby Daniel Evan WeissISBN 1852427469 (1-85242-746-9)
Softcover, Serpents Tail
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The Satanic Versesby Salman RushdieISBN 0805053093 (0-8050-5309-3)
Softcover, Henry Holt & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Satanic Verses'Book summary:No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta ("for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies") and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner. [via]
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Slaughter House Fiveby Kurt VonnegutISBN 0844663662 (0-8446-6366-2)
Hardcover, Peter Smith Pub Inc
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The Sound and the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, 40 Years of Classic Rock Journalismby Barney HoskinsISBN 1582342822 (1-58234-282-2)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sound and the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, 40 Years of Classic Rock Journalism'Book summary:Longtime music writer and editor Barney Hoskyns decided to build an archive of articles by his favorite rock writers - like Al Aronowitz, Jon Savage, Greil Marcus, Will Self, Lenny Kaye, Mary Harron, and Nick Hornby. Thus was born the website Rock's Backpages (www.rocksbackpages.com), home to thousands of brilliant reviews and rants, interviews and overviews, that helped define music journalism over the last four decades. The Sound and the Fury is the best of this remarkable collection. With contemporary and retrospective articles on the Beatles, Otis Redding, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, ABBA, Madonna, Ice Cube, Nirvana, Morrissey, and many, many more.[via]More editions of The Sound and the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, 40 Years of Classic Rock Journalism:
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South of the Border, West of the Sunby Haruki MurakamiISBN 1860465943 (1-86046-594-3)
Softcover, Harvill Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'South of the Border, West of the Sun'Book summary:In South of the Border, West of the Sun the arc of an average man's life from childhood to middle age with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment becomes the kind of exquisite literary conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school but loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts through high school, college and his 20s before marrying and settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood sweetheart returns weighed down with secrets:
"When I went back into the bar, a glass and ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound".
Murakami eschews the fantastic elements that appear in many of his other novels and stories, and readers hoping for a glimpse of the "Sheep Man" will be disappointed. Yet South of the Border, West of the Sun is as rich and mysterious as anything he has written. It is above all a complex, moving and honest meditation on the nature of love distilled into a work with the crystal clarity of a short story. A Nat King Cole song, a figure on a crowded street, a face pressed against a car window, a handful of ashes drifting down a river to the sea are woven together into a story that refuses to arrive at a simple conclusion. The classic love triangle may seem like a hackneyed theme for a writer as talented as Murakami but in his quietly dazzling way he bends us to his own unique geometry. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com [via]More editions of South of the Border, West of the Sun:
The Steampunk Trilogyby Paul Di FilippoISBN 1568581025 (1-56858-102-5)
Softcover, Thunder's Mouth Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Steampunk Trilogy'Book summary:Queen Victoria as a trollop-in-training whose newt-human clone serves as stand-in during Victoria's trysts? Walt Whitman as lusty seducer of an only partly reticent Emily Dickinson who loses the "Keys to the Inner Chambers of her Heart" to him? This fine and funny madness is "steampunk," a branch of cyberpunk fiction that locates itself in historical venues rather than in the future. Paul Di Filippo has certainly done his homework: the settings as well as the language emulate the times and, in Dickinson's and Whitman's cases, their poetic language, which asserts itself into their conversational dialogue and thoughts at most unusual but appropriate moments. Dickinson's "Universe Entire" is disrupted by a naked Whitman bathing in her rain barrel and singing his "body electric." But will Dickinson's "White Election" remain intact? [via]
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This Is Not a Novelby David MarksonISBN 1582431337 (1-58243-133-7)
Softcover, Counterpoint
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Is Not a Novel'Book summary:"I don't know where to put the man-and for this I am glad.... Magnificent, a compilation that so exceeds the scatter of its parts that one must take some time to ponder why this should be. ... it's almost impossible to stop turning pages ... we realize: This is not a novel. It's a poem. ... When I reached the final pages, I felt, as all too seldom, sectioned off from the daily tyranny, released, as in a happy dream, into a kind of referential fugue-the afterlife of reading." Sven Birkerts, The New York Observer
"A cultural history of the Western world cast as a bricolage of decontextualized anecdotes, quotations, and facts. ... A lifetime's reading boiled down to sentences that have the terse clarity of epitaphs. ... This rigorously experimental work, of the sort that one tends to slog through dutifully, reads as addictively as an airport thriller." James Gibbons, BookForum
"The book does, as Writer hopes, seduce the reader into turning pages. ... Those with investigative proclivities can trace Writer's gloomy preoccupations through the items about how various notables died (and which states of financial destitution). Other items are more enigmatic (why did Henry James hide behind a tree to avoid Ford Madox Ford?), and a handful have an evocative, lovely melancholy: 'When and where did the last person die who still believed in the existence of Zeus?'" Laura Miller, The New York Times Book Review
This Is Not a Novel is a "novel" like none ever written, with the possible exception of David Markson's own Reader's Block (1996), which Ann Beattie has labeled "a work of genius."
This Is Not a Novel is a highly inventive work which drifts "genre-less," somewhere in between fiction, nonfiction, and psychological memoir. In the opening pages of the "novel," a narrator, called only "Writer," announces that he is tired of inventing characters, contemplating plot, setting, theme, and conflict. Yet the writer is determined to seduce the reader into turning pages-and to "get somewhere," nonetheless.
What follows are pages crammed with short lines of astonishingly fascinating literary and artistic anecdotes, quotations, and cultural curiosities. This Is Not a Novel is leavened with Markson's deliciously ironic wit and laughter, so that when the writer does indeed finally get us "somewhere" it's the journey will have mattered as much as the arrival. [via]
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This Shape We're inby Jonathan LethemISBN 0970335520 (0-9703355-2-0)
Hardcover, McSweeneys Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Shape We're in'Book summary:Lethem, author of the bestselling Motherless Brooklyn , returns in concentrated form - packing twice the adventure into one-eighth the pages. This book could be some kind of allegory book, but it might not be an allegory book at all. It involves people and drinking and people looking for a giant eye. It is among the best things Mr. Lethem has written.[via]More editions of This Shape We're in:
Tloothby Harry MathewsISBN 1564781941 (1-56478-194-1)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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Trilogyby Samuel BeckettISBN 1857152360 (1-85715-236-0)
Hardcover, Everyman's Library Ltd
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Vanishing Pointby David MarksonISBN 1593760108 (1-59376-010-8)
Softcover, Shoemaker & Hoard
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vanishing Point'Book summary:In the literary world, there is little that can match the excitement of opening a new book by David Markson. From Wittgensteins Mistress to Readers Block to Springers Progress to This Is Not a Novel, he has delighted and amazed readers for decades. And now comes his latest masterwork, Vanishing Point, wherein an elderly writer (identified only as Author ) sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with notecards into a novel and in so doing will dazzle us with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale. Naturally he will fail to do the latter, frequently managing to stand aside and yet remaining undeniably central throughout until he is swept inevitably into the narratives startling and shattering climax. A novel of death and laughter both and of extraordinary intellectual richness.[via]More editions of Vanishing Point:
VASby Steve Tomasula, Stephen FarrellISBN 1581770944 (1-58177-094-4)
Hardcover, Barrytown/ Station Hill Pr
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Vibrant With Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethellby Peter Whiteford, Ursula BethellISBN 0864735049 (0-86473-504-9)
Softcover, Victoria Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vibrant With Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell'Book summary:Ursula Bethell was a modernist poet who helped shape New Zealand's literary scene between the two world wars. This collection of letters tells the story of her early life of travel and social work in Europe and opens a window on her subsequent writerly life as she describes the origins of many of her poems.[via]More editions of Vibrant With Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell:
Warlockby Oakley Hall, Robert StoneISBN 1590171616 (1-59017-161-6)
Softcover, New York Review of Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Warlock'Book summary:Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.
"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over withthe rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in powerthe collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." Thomas Pynchon [via]
The Wavering Knifeby Brian EvensonISBN 1573661139 (1-57366-113-9)
Softcover, Univ of Alabama Pr
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A Wild Sheep Chaseby Haruki Murakami, Alfred T. BirnbaumISBN 0870119052 (0-87011-905-2)
Hardcover, Kodansha America, Incorporated
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William Faulkner's the Sound and the Furyby William FaulknerISBN 1555460429 (1-55546-042-9)
Hardcover, Facts on File
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› Find signed collectible books: 'William Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury'Book summary:The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner's fourth novel, is his first attempt at a wholly self-conscious style. Faulkner's willingness to experiment affords his readers no stable perspective from which to comprehend the decline of the Compson family.
The title, William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on William Faulkner, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicleby Haruki MurakamiISBN 1860464696 (1-86046-469-6)
Softcover, Harvill Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'Book summary:Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com [via]
Wonderingsby Kenneth PatchenISBN 081120149X (0-8112-0149-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Yellow Back Radio Broke-Downby Ishmael ReedISBN 1564782387 (1-56478-238-7)
Softcover, Dalkey Archive Pr
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You Shall Know Our Velocityby Dave EggersISBN 1400033543 (1-4000-3354-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'You Shall Know Our Velocity'Book summary:In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss.It reminds us once again what an important, necessary talent Dave Eggers is.[via]More editions of You Shall Know Our Velocity:
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