Download or read book Conversations with John Fowles written by Dianne L. Vipond and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1999 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although best known for his novels The Collector, The Magus, and The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles is also a short story writer, a poet, a respected translator, and a prolific essayist. In his long literary career, he has managed the feats of welding stunning innovation to tradition, pushing the formal boundaries of literary fiction, and still capturing critical acclaim, popular success, and a worldwide readership. In Conversations with John Fowles, the first book of interviews devoted to the English writer, Dianne L. Vipond gathers over twenty of the most revealing interviews Fowles has granted in the last forty years. With critics, scholars, and journalists, he discusses his life, his art, his distinctive world view, and his special relationship with nature. Throughout his interviews, Fowles's remarkable consistency of thought is illuminated as he covers the meaning and genesis of his work. His uncompromising honesty and refreshing lack of guardedness are evident when he compares the naturalness of writing with eating or making love. From the 1960s through the 1990s, this master chronicler of the late half of the twentieth century reveals his serious engagement with social, political, and philosophical issues. He identifies himself with feminism, socialism, humanism, and the environmental movement, and he explores his recurring theme of personal, artistic, and socio-political freedom. His books, he says, "are about the difficulty of attaining personal freedom, especially in terms of discovering what one is." Any reader who has been intrigued, challenged, and entertained by his work in the past is sure to find these conversations spanning the writer's career to be stimulating and revealing. Dianne L. Vipond is a professor of English at California State University, Long Beach. A co- editor of the book Literacy, Language, and Power, she has published articles in English Journal, Short Story, Twentieth Century Literature, and the Los Angeles Times.
Download or read book Daniel Martin written by John Fowles and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new trade paperback edition of "a masterpiece of symbolically charged realism....Fowles is the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge, and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James" (John Gardner, Saturday Review). The eponymous hero of John Fowles's largest and richest novel is an English playwright turned Hollywood screenwriter who has begun to question his own values. Summoned home to England to visit an ailing friend, Daniel Martin finds himself back in the company of people who once knew him well, forced to confront his buried past, and propelled toward a journey of self-discovery through which he ultimately creates for himself a more satisfying existence. A brilliantly imagined novel infused with a profound understanding of human nature, Daniel Martin is John Fowles at the height of his literary powers.
Download or read book A Maggot written by John Fowles and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1736 four men and one woman, all traveling under assumed names, are crossing the Devonshire countryside en route to a mysterious rendezvous. Before their journey ends, one of them will be hanged, one will vanish, and the others will face a murder trial. Out of the truths and lies that envelop these events, John Fowles has created a novel that is at once a tale of erotic obsession, an exploration of the conflict between reason and superstition, an astonishing act of literary legerdemain, and the story of the birth of a new faith.
Download or read book The Journals written by John Fowles and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1963, John Fowles won international recognition with The Collector, his first published novel. In the years following—with the publication of The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Ebony Tower, and his other critically acclaimed works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—Fowles took his place among the most innovative and important English novelists of our time. Now, with this first volume of his journals, which covers the years from 1949 to 1965, we see revealed not only the creative development of a great writer but also the deep connection between Fowles’s autobiographical experience and his literary inspiration. Commencing in Fowles’s final year at Oxford, the journals in this volume chronicle the years he spent as a university lecturer in France; his experiences teaching school on the Greek island of Spetsai (which would inspire The Magus) and his love affair there with the married woman who would later become his first wife; and his return to England and his ongoing struggle to achieve literary success. It is an account of a life lived in total engagement with the world; although Fowles the novelist takes center stage, we see as well Fowles the nascent poet and critic, ornithologist and gardener, passionate naturalist and traveler, cinephile and collector of old books. Soon after he fell in love with his first wife, Elizabeth, Fowles wrote in his journal, “She has asked me not to write about her in here. But I could not not write, loving her as I do. . . . What else I betrayed, I could not betray this diary.” It is that determined, unsparing honesty and forthrightness that imbues these journals with all the emotional power and narrative complexity of his novels. They are a revelation of both the man and the artist.
Download or read book The Tree written by John Fowles and published by Random House. This book was released on 2000 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of recollections that concern both the childhood and work of the writer John Fowles. For him, the tree is the best analogue of prose fiction, symbolising the wild side of our psyche, and he stresses the importance in art of the unpredictable, the unaccountable and the intuitive.
Download or read book The Wolfen written by Whitley Strieber and published by Crossroad Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the dark, they are watching... They are waiting for you. No one has ever lived to tell the horrifying truth about them. Yet even now the Wolfen are gathered in the night-dark alleys ... unseen, poised ... ready to destroy their helpless human prey. Only one man and one woman, trained cops, willing to risk their lives, stand in the way.
Download or read book Room written by Emma Donoghue and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-07 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kidnapped as a teenage girl, Ma has been locked inside a purpose built room in her captor's garden for seven years. Her five year old son, Jack, has no concept of the world outside and happily exists inside Room with the help of Ma's games and his vivid imagination where objects like Rug, Lamp and TV are his only friends. But for Ma the time has come to escape and face their biggest challenge to date: the world outside Room.
Download or read book The Book of Ebenezer le Page written by G.B. Edwards and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-03-07 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island. G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.
Download or read book Mantissa written by John Fowles and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mantissa (1982), a novelist awakes in the hospital with amnesia -- and comes to believe that a beautiful female doctor is, in fact, his muse.
Download or read book Conversations with John Gardner written by John Gardner and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1990 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection, selected from more than 140 interviews Gardner granted, presents a wealth of information on the life and art of one of America's foremost novelists. These interviews show him as a novelist, a charismatic teacher of creative writing, and a widely published scholar who has vast knowledge and who generated much literary information in his lectures and interviews. After the publication of such popular and critical successes as Grendel (1971) and The Sunlight Dialogues (1972), this philosophical writer with an enviable talent for storytelling was regarded as ""a major contemporary writer."" After Gardner had demonstrated that he was one of America's most prolific, versatile, and imaginative authors, he became one of its most controversial when he attacked the literary establishment in his book On Moral Fiction and in his interviews. These candid conversations reveal a man of contrasts and contradictions, a writer who, as one of his interviewers remarks, ""brought to everything he did a passion that at times bordered on madness.
Download or read book The Ebony Tower written by John Fowles and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary work of fiction, from one of the world's most exceptional writers. A journalist visits an elderly painter and becomes intrigued by his young female companions. Four years' worth of book research is set on fire in front of a writer. A successful MP disappears without a trace. Written with stylistic innovation, this sequence of novellas exploring the nature of art echoes the themes and preoccupations of Fowles' earlier work and cements his position as a master storyteller. 'Pick up any of these stories and you won't, as they say, be able to put it down' Financial Times
Download or read book Darke Matter written by Rick Gekoski and published by Constable. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Its snarky hero is a joy', a Times and Sunday Times Novel of the Year, 2020 'Clever, witty and perceptive . . . Gekoski writes movingly about love, loss and grief, while handling the difficult issue of assisted dying with considerable balance and finesse. Beautifully written, engrossing and heartbreakingly funny' Mail on Sunday 'Stylish, funny and daring . . . the clarity and energy of Darke Matter fill you with light' The Times (best summer books) 'Harrowing, funny, tender and nearly always beautifully written' Sunday Times James Darke is dreading the first family Christmas without his wife Suzy. Engulfed by grief, his grudging preparations are interrupted by a persistent knock at the door. Questions about the circumstances of his wife's death force him to confront the outside world and what really happened to her. Isolated, angry and diminished, James soon faces a crisis both legal and psychological. It will test his resolve and threaten his freedom. Darke Matter is a brilliant, mordant examination of the nature and obligations of love. Both immensely sad and extremely funny, the story wrestles with one of the great moral issues of our time. The surprising sequel to Darke . . . Praise for Darke: 'An original and bleakly funny portrait of grief' Economist 'Surprising . . . with a warmth that is genuinely and unexpectedly moving' Guardian 'A wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante' Sebastian Barry 'Makes for dark, thrilling reading . . . In James Darke, Gekoski has created a powerful, raging voice' Spectator 'I was beguiled and charmed by the vivid personality being revealed. By that, and by the fact that I couldn't stop reading. Gekoski puts words together with a sure touch and deep craftsmanship' Philip Pullman 'Rick Gekoski's impressive debut novel . . . Darke is both a tender and hard-hitting examination of grief and the slow, singular healing process . . . A brilliantly vivid creation . . . life-affirming and life-shattering' The Herald 'Staggeringly accomplished. Heartbreakingly true. A shockingly monumental first novel' John Niven 'Stuffed with more wisdom, bile, wit and tenderness than many writers create in a lifetime. In James Darke we have a hero as troubled and eternal as King Lear . . . And in Rick Gekoski we have a late-flowering genius of a novelist who proves it's never too late to start a glittering career in fiction' The Times 'An immensely enjoyable elegy . . . done with precision and patience' The Scotsman 'Debut delight . . . Just how this gleefully conjured misanthrope came to wall himself off from the world is the mystery at the heart of a singular first novel that evolves into a moving meditation on loss and redemption' Mail on Sunday
Download or read book The Art of Fiction written by David Lodge and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.
Download or read book John Fowles written by James Acheson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vibrant collection of original essays sheds new light on all of Fowles' writings, with a special focus on The French Lieutenant's Woman as the most widely studied of Fowles' works. The impressive cast of contributors offers an outstanding range of expertise on Fowles, providing fresh reassessments and new perspectives.
Download or read book I Had a Brother Once written by Adam Mansbach and published by One World. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, genre-defying work—both memoir and epic poem—about the struggle for wisdom, grace, and ritual in the face of unspeakable loss “A bruised and brave love letter from a brother right here to a brother now gone . . . a soaring, unblinking gaze into the meaning of life itself.”—Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf my father said david has taken his own life Adam is in the middle of his own busy life, and approaching a career high in the form of a #1 New York Times bestselling book—when these words from his father open a chasm beneath his feet. I Had a Brother Once is the story of everything that comes after. In the shadow of David’s inexplicable death, Adam is forced to re-remember a brother he thought he knew and to reckon with a ghost, confronting his unsettled family history, his distant relationship with tradition and faith, and his desperate need to understand an event that always slides just out of his grasp. This is an expansive and deeply thoughtful poetic meditation on loss and a raw, darkly funny, human story of trying to create a ritual—of remembrance, mourning, forgiveness, and acceptance—where once there was a life.
Download or read book The Book of Two Ways written by Jodi Picoult and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made. After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious destination is to fly home, but she could take another path: return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife. As the story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices . . . or do our choices make us? And who would you be if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now?
Download or read book Filming John Fowles written by James Aubrey and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-07-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Fowles wrote five compelling stories later made into motion pictures. This book examines for the first time the film and video adaptations of these stories, as well as Fowles's role in adapting his literary genius to visual media. Besides his authorship of the screenplay for The Magus (1968), Fowles was an uncredited contributor to The Collector (1965) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1971), and to the British television adaptations The Ebony Tower and The Enigma. His unpublished short story "The Last Chapter" was adapted as a theatrical short film satirizing the James Bond novels. Few are aware that the 1997 thriller The Game was a brilliant adaptation of The Magus, or that Fowles himself acted out scenes from that novel for a Greek television documentary. This book gives deserved recognition to John Fowles as a contributor to cinema, a medium he both loved and distrusted, where his stories acquired vivid alternative lives.
