Literary Essays

Will Self is one of the most important British novelists of his generation, and he is as acclaimed in the UK for his outstanding, daring journalism as he is for his fiction. Now finally available in America, Junk Mail is an original selection of pieces from Self's nonfiction and journalism that will introduce American listeners to Self as a literary journalist par excellence.

歴史に名を刻む人は、安楽な人生を送れないようになっているのか。 貧しい家に生まれ、両親は離婚、そののち父は自殺、養子に出されるが、画家 を志して決別、生母に巡りあうも拒絶され・・・這い上がるように名を成すも 戦争・敗戦・不遇な日々がーー 運命が人を選ぶのか。 人が運命を選ぶのか。 「人が運命を選ぶのだ。」と魯山人ならいうだろう、と、確信する。 本作品をしれば貴方もそう思われることだろうと思う。 これは単なる料理の書ではない、人生の書である。

明治から昭和初期にかけて活躍した物理学者、随筆家、俳人である寺田寅彦の随筆作品。

初出は「東京帝国大学新聞」［1929（昭和4）年4月］。「日本の名随筆89　数」［作品社、1990（平成2）年］に収録。

それぞれに苦手意識をもつ学生諸君に、数学にも語学にも案外共通項があるということに気づかせ、好きなものに対する方法を利用して嫌いなものを征服する道程を暗示したいと考え、書き綴った作品。

Despite their phenomenal decades-long success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one.

From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays - funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient - which seek answers to burning questions. In over 50 pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic.

In a volume he describes as "a series of covert and not-so-covert autobiographical pieces", Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsession, in his case, with examples as diverse as western films, comic books, the music of Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these "voyages out from himself" have led him home, home to his father's life as a painter, and to the source of his beginnings as a writer.

From Pulitzer Prize - winning book critic Michael Dirda comes a collection of his most personal and engaging essays on the literary life - the perfect companion for any lover of books. Dirda's latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on literary journalism, book collecting, and the writers he loves. Reaching from the classics to the postmoderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson, and David Foster Wallace.

Judith Thurman, a prolific staff writer at The New Yorker for more than two decades, has gathered a selection of her essays and profiles in A Left-Handed Woman. They consider our culture in all its guises: literature, history, politics, gender, fashion, and art, though their paramount subject is the human condition. Thurman is one of the preeminent essayists of our time—"a master of vivisection," as Kathryn Harrison wrote in the New York Times. "When she's done with a subject, it's still living, mystery intact."

Featuring an all-new interview with Professor Piexoto, this exclusive bonus content also includes a brand-new afterword from Margaret Atwood and an essay written by author Valerie Martin.

Which famous author died of caffeine poisoning? Why was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland banned in China? Who was the first British writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? What was Truman Capote superstitious about? Here is a light-hearted book about books and the people who write them for all lovers of literature. A treasure trove of compelling facts, riveting anecdotes, and extraordinary characters, For the Love of Books is a book about books - and the inside stories about the people who write them.

Ghalib's poetic trajectory begins from Urdu, then moves to composing almost entirely in Persian and finally swings back to Urdu. It is nearly as complex as his poetry. However, his poetic output in Persian is far more than what he wrote in Urdu. More important is that he gave precedence to Persian over Urdu. Ghalib's voice presents us with a double bind, a linguistic paradox. Exploring his life, works and philosophy, this authoritative critical biography of Ghalib opens a window to many shades of India and the subcontinent's cultural and literary tradition.

Slide "Further Under the Duvet", get yourself comfortable, and let Marian take you places you've never been before. Places like the Irish air-guitar championships, a shopping trip to Bloomingdales with a difference, and Cannes with a chronic case of Villa-itis. Along the way you'll encounter knicker-politics, fake tans, sticky-out ears and passionate love affairs both with make-up and Toblerones.

Many creatures lurk in the dark, weaving on top of one another, roiling together like waves on the night sea. The darkness forms in layers to encompass the land, fill the corners, and obscure angles. Untold mysteries lie just beyond reach told in many tongues, many inflections, many rhythms. The stories are many. Innumerable. Legion.

As Americans face the ongoing war against terrorists and their state sponsors around the world, Sean Hannity reminds us we must also cope with the continuing scourge of accommodation and cowardice at home. With his trademark blend of passion and hard-hitting commentary, he urges Americans to recognize the dangers of putting our faith in toothless "multilateralism" when the times call for decisive action.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things.

A selection from the John Updike audio collection. These extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful.

Presented here are 3 short works by Virginia Woolf, each a unique consideration of the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The essays included are: The Father: Woolf's ruminations of family and, particularly, the father within the works of Dostoyevsky. More Dostoyevsky: Further thoughts on Dostoyevsky's work, an author of whom she once wrote “It is directly obvious that he is the greatest writer ever born." In Cranford: A comedic exploration of Dostoyevsky's work where Woolf transplants the great master into English provincial life to explore the unique nature of his work and the English nature.

Sir Francis Bacon, sometimes known as the father of empiricism, was one of the major political figures of his day, his career culminating as Lord Chancellor under King James I in 1617. Bacon wrote widely, but it is the Essays (published in its third edition in 1625, the year before his death) for which he is best known. Deftly written and often displaying a cutting wit, they cover a wide range of subjects including death, love, marriage, ambition and atheism.

良寛さんといえば、山寺で子どもと毬をついているイメージ。 が、爺になっても実家のすねかじって女と暮らしていたり、と知ってどうなの！と思ったり･･･「災難に逢う時節には、災難に逢うがよく候。死ぬ時節には、死ぬがよく候。是はこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候。」等の考え方にふれて、やっぱりすごい人だと思ったり･･･ 要するに人間味の強い器のおおきい方だったのでしょう。 そんな良寛禅師の書。上手に見せようとするのではなく、「一つの点を打つ」「一つの棒を引く」筆運びをしてかきあげたという書。 北大路魯山人にいわせると、良寛さんの類まれなる書はその器の大きさである、ということのようだ。太閤秀吉の書をひきあいに出したりしながら展開されるこの作品は、筆者から良寛さんにおくるレブレターである。