essays literature

Hardcover. University Park, Pa., Penn State University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 348 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Baudelaire's illustrations throughout. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean, bright and tight copy.

Softcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 414 pages. A work of literary criticism in which Said differentiates between the concept of "origin" and "beginning", also reflecting reflexively on the role of criticism and of the intellectual within a larger culture. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Saint Paul, Minn., Graywolf Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 245 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1st US, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 248 pages, blue cloth covers with gilt lettering to spine. There are two small puncture holes in cloth spine, corresponding holes to dust jacket. Otherwise a very good copy with age-toning to edges and spine of dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard , 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 244 pages. Notable collection of writings about children's books by such contributors as Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Paula Fox, Arnold Lobel, etc. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 176 pages. In the 1980s, London-based Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans, born in 1958, worked as an assistant to filmmaker Derek Jarman, soon gaining a reputation for his own experimental shorts and his collaborations with the dancer Michael Clark. Since the 1990s, Wyn Evans has also been creating installations, often inspired by cinema history or literature, that incorporate elements like philosophical texts, mirrors, neon lights, fireworks, plants and Morse code to form a constellation of meanings that unravel into myriad poetic associations. Evans' desire to animate knowledge and reconceive the materials of the past make him analogous to Marcel Broodthaers, his erstwhile mentor Derek Jarman or even William Blake. This publication includes essays that delve into the artist's use of language and his experiments with time and perception. On the subject of Evans' purposeful inscrutability, critic Jens Asthoff has written, "Evans wants to go beyond that which we describe as understanding, to reach the untranslatable elements hidden in all experience. 'I hate the idea of being accessible,' he says." This volume includes nearly 200 images of the artist's installations, films, wall texts and sound works.

Softcover. San Jose CA, Permanent Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, glossy green paper wrappers, 272 pages plus ads in rear. Wilson and Michael Shea published a quarterly journal in the late eighties called TRAJECTORIES. It was a "newsletter of mind-blowing iconoclasm." This is a collection of the best articles from the first few issues. Contributors include Arlen Wilson, Scott Apel, Timothy Leary, Linus Pauling, George Carlin and Ed McMahon. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly rubbed dust jacket, 290 pages. These brief essays appeared in a regular column that Rexroth did for The Saturday Review of Literature. The subjects include many of the standard classic texts from world literature, i.e., Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Gibbon, Whitman, Tolstoy, etc. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lincoln MA, Penmaen Press, 1st Ltd Ed., 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 103 pages. Introduction by Walter Harding. Actor/author Christopher Childs compiled these excerpts and performed them as a stage monologue in order to convey the essence and personality of Henry David Thoreau. The first performance took place on July 6, 1975, in Concord, Mass. This book appeared three years later. Here the selections are organized into fourteen chapters that address a variety of topics, such as Gods, On Being a Writer, Friendship and Singularity, and John Brown. Source footnotes appear in an appendix. The book begins with an introduction by Thoreau Society secretary Walter Harding. Selected wood engravings by Michael McCurdy supplement the text. A publication note on the final page indicates that only 2,000 copies of this book were printed. Short tear to dj repaired on the reverse side. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st US, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket, 492 pages. Includes his renowned essays on Churchill, Hobsbawn, Max Eastman, De Gaulle, and Simone Weil. No markings.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 472 pages. The prose writings of Charles Olson (1910-1970) have had a far-reaching and continuing impact on post-World War II American poetics. Olson's theories, which made explicit the principles of his own poetics and those of the Black Mountain poets, were instrumental in defining the sense of the postmodern in poetry and form the basis of most postwar free verse. The Collected Prose brings together in one volume the works published for the most part between 1946 and 1969, many of which are now out of print. A valuable companion to editions of Olson's poetry, the book backgrounds the poetics, preoccupations, and fascinations that underpin his great poems. Included are Call Me Ishmael, a classic of American literary criticism; the influential essays "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe"; and essays, book reviews, and Olson's notes on his studies. In these pieces one can trace the development of his new science of man, called "muthologos," a radical mix of myth and phenomenology that Olson offered in opposition to the mechanistic discourse and rationalizing policy he associated with America's recent wars in Europe and Asia. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York City, Blue Faun Publications, 1st, 1929, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 203 pages. Hardcover. Illustrated pastedown on front cover designed by Mahlon Blaine. Illustrated endpapers by Heinrich Vogeler. "The entire edition of Colours is limited to 1950 copies; 1900 copies numbered and registered, for sale; and 50 copies, lettered A to XX, for review only. Type has been distributed, and Colours will not be reprinted. This copy is No. 386". Some foxing to front cover pastedown, and narrow chip missing from spine label. Spine slightly cocked. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1st Edition, 1920, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 370 pages. Hardcover. Green cloth covers with gilt titles to cover & spine. Fraying, scuffing to edges. Light sunfade to spine. As is, with light pencil marking throughout. Cracked rear hinge.

Hardcover. NY, Museum of Modern Art, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled, edgeworn dust jacket with $4.95 on flap, 135 pages. Translated into 16 languages, this remarkable book has become an essential document of architectural literature. A "gentle manifesto for a nonstraightforward architecture," Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture expresses in the most compelling and original terms the postmodern rebellion against the purism of modernism. Three hundred and fifty architectural illustrations serve as historical comparisons and illuminate the author's ideas on creating and experiencing architecture. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture was the winner of the Classic Book Award at the AIA's Seventh Annual International Architecture Book Awards. Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925-September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped shape the way that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the built environment. Foreword by Arthur Drexler. Introduction by Vincent Scully. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, price-clipped dust jacket with short closed tears. 14 original and thoughtful interviews - Burroughs discusses Paris in the 50s, the Olympia Press and the issue of obscenity, Norman Mailer on the Jack Abbott issue, Paul Theroux on Americans abroad, Scott Spencer on the experience of having a movie made from his book 'Endless Love' and more. Biographical information and photographs of each author. 324 pages. Clean copy.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Still in shrink-wrap. Spine faded. Else very good. As the acclaimed author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) has been publishing stories and novels for more than sixty years. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana have made him one of the most respected and beloved living American writers. Ernest J. Gaines: Conversations brings together the author's own thoughts and words in interviews that range from 1994 to 2017, discussing his life, his work, and his literary legacy. The interviews cover all of Gaines's works, including his two latest books, Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005) and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (2017). The book provides a retrospective of his work from the viewpoint of a senior writer, now eighty-five years old, and gives an important international perspective on Gaines and his work.

Hardcover. Jackson MS, University of Mississippi, 1st, 1987, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 178 pages. Gathers interviews with the Tennessee short story writer in which he discusses his career, writing, character development themes, settings, and growing older. Clean copy.

Softcover. University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 320 pages. Here is a collection of interviews that cover the period from 1967 through 1993. Many are translations of interviews that originally appeared in French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, or Swedish periodicals. Several are published here for the first time in any language. Giving attention to Sontag's education and the development of her aesthetic and moral temperament, they cover Sontag's rich career as a distinguished writer, filmmaker, dramatist, and cultural critic. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Bros., 1st US, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Black & white photos by Bryan & Norman Westwood. Previous owner's signature on front end paper.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1st, 1920, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 302 pages. Previous owner's signature on front endpaper. Light pencil marginalia to last page. Browning to front endpapers. Red cloth binding with black lettering.

Hardcover. Minneapolis MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that has a closed tear to the front panel. 523 pages with index. A collection of significant critical pieces about Kenneth Burke's work. 67 selections by 56 contributors arranged chronologically. Among the selections are reviews, essay-reviews, essays, excerpts from books, and some previously unpublished material. Collectively, they chart Burke's development and assess his achievements as a contemporary American man of letters. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Horn Book, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 359 pages. Using as a framework his two essays "Out on a Limb with the Critics" and "Coming to Terms with Criticism," Paul Heins has selected contributions which expand and elucidate "the invariable questions that beset the criticism of children's books: the classification, defense, and evaluation of children's literature." Included is the controversial exchange between Eleanor Cameron and Roald Dahl on the validity of the child as critic; Jane Langton's perceptive and original discussion of the fine distinction between fantasy and reality in literature; Alvin Schwartz's remarks on folklore and humor; Mary Orvig's consideration of Swedish books in translation; and treatments of individual titles such as Watership Down, Tom Sawyer, and A Wizard of Earthsea. Name and stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 672 pages. Pointing to a glaring blind spot in the basic premises of the study of American culture, leading critics and theorists in cultural studies, history, anthropology, and literature reveal the "denial of empire" at the heart of American Studies. Challenging traditional definitions and periodizations of imperialism, this volume shows how international relations reciprocally shape a dominant imperial culture at home and how imperial relations are enacted and contested within the United States.Drawing on a broad range of interpretive practices, these essays range across American history, from European representations of the New World to the mass media spectacle of the Persian Gulf War. The volume breaks down the boundary between the study of foreign relations and American culture to examine imperialism as an internal process of cultural appropriation and as an external struggle over international power. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages. Cultures of United States Imperialism represents a major paradigm shift that will remap the field of American Studies. Pointing to a glaring blind spot in the basic premises of the study of American culture, leading critics and theorists in cultural studies, history, anthropology, and literature reveal the "denial of empire" at the heart of American Studies. Challenging traditional definitions and periodizations of imperialism, this volume shows how international relations reciprocally shape a dominant imperial culture at home and how imperial relations are enacted and contested within the United States. Light shelf wear.