Download or read book Western Avenue and Other Fictions written by Fred Arroyo and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short stories by Fred Arroyo.
Download or read book America and Other Fictions written by Ed Simon and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the need for an Augustinian left, legacies of American violence, speaking in tongues, the humanities facing climate change, the maturity of realizing that you will die, how to sail towards Utopia, and witches.
Download or read book The Religious and Other Fictions written by Christina Milletti and published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut collection of short stories by Christina Milletti.
Download or read book Fiction and the Weave of Life written by John Gibson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers have struggled to explain how literary fiction can be such an important source of insight into the human condition. John Gibson offers a novel and intriguing account of the relationship between literature and everyday life, and shows how literature can give us an understanding of our world without literally being about our world.
Download or read book Azadi written by Arundhati Roy and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.
Download or read book Real Life and Other Fictions written by Susan Coll and published by Harper Muse. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ***"If you're fascinated by unexplained phenomena, hop in a beat-up Audi with the kooky and supersmart Cassie Klein and her dog Luna for a voyage of discovery involving a giant moth, a West Virginia bridge collapse and a hot cryptozoologist. The droll Ms. Coll strikes again!"--People Magazine*** Cassie Klein has always used stories to help her fly, but now her plot points aren't lining up. In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she's an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true. She stood by her once-doting husband when his meteorology career took a nosedive, and now she has learned that the man who became an internet meme has been cheating on her. She's had enough. She scoops up a teething puppy and embarks on a road trip that's heavy on impulse and light on planning. She's not sure where she's going, but she knows she might as well start at the beginning. What really happened to her parents all those years ago? In this comically surreal, warmhearted journey, she encounters people she never knew existed--chief among them, an enigmatic cryptozoologist, who helps her in the quest to discover her past. And along the way, she looks for answers regarding curious sightings of a creature known as the Mothman in the months before her parents died. As the line between real life and fiction blurs, Cassie finds herself grappling with the nature of stories, myths, and who gets to write the endings.
Download or read book Four for a Quarter written by Michael Martone and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2011-09-05 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four is the magic number in Michael Martone’s Four for a Quarter. In subject—four fifth Beatles, four tie knots, four retellings of the first Xerox, even the sex lives of the Fantastic Four—and in structure—the book is separated into four sections, with each section further divided into four chapterettes—Four for a Quarter returns again and again to its originating number, making chaos comprehensible and mystery out of the most ordinary.
Download or read book Miami written by Joan Didion and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing account of Cuban exiles, CIA informants, and cocaine traffickers in Florida by the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West. In Miami, the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking looks beyond postcard images of fluorescent waters, backlit islands, and pastel architecture to explore the murkier waters of a city on the edge. From Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination to Oliver North and the Iran–Contra affair, Joan Didion uncovers political intrigues and shadowy underworld connections, and documents the US government’s “seduction and betrayal” of the Cuban exile community in Dade County. She writes of hotels that offer “guerrilla discounts,” gun shops that advertise Father’s Day deals, and a real-estate market where “Unusual Security and Ready Access to the Ocean” are perks for wealthy homeowners looking to make a quick escape. With a booming drug trade, staggering racial and class inequities, and skyrocketing murder rates, Miami in the 1980s felt more like a Third World capital than a modern American city. Didion describes the violence, passion, and paranoia of these troubled times in arresting detail and “beautifully evocative prose” (The New York Times Book Review). A vital report on an immigrant community traumatized by broken dreams and the cynicism of US foreign policy, Miami is a masterwork of literary journalism whose insights are timelier and more important than ever.
Download or read book Adulthood and Other Fictions written by Sari Edelstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the field of childhood studies has blossomed in recent years, few scholars have taken up the question of age more broadly as a lens for reading American literature. Adulthood and Other Fictions shows how a diverse array of nineteenth-century writers, thinkers, and artists responded to the rise of chronological age in social and political life. Over the course of the century, age was added to the census; schools were organized around age groups; birthday cards were mass-produced; geriatrics became a medical specialty. Adulthood and Other Fictions reads American literature as a rich, critical account of this modern culture of age, and it examines how our most well-known writers registered—and often resisted—age expectations, particularly as they applied to women and people of color. More than simply adding age to the list of identity categories that have become de rigueur sites of scholarly attention, Adulthood and Other Fictions argues that these other measures of social location (race, gender, sexuality, class) are largely legible through the seemingly more natural and essential identity defined by age. That is, longstanding cultural ideals about maturity and development anchor ideologies of heterosexuality, race, nationalism, and capitalism, and in this sense, age rhetoric serves as one of our most pervasive disciplinary discourses. Writers including Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and Henry James anticipated the ageism of our moment, but they also recognized how age norms both structure and limit the lives of individuals at all points on the age continuum. Ultimately, the volume argues for an intersectional understanding of age that challenges the celebration of independence and autonomy imbricated in US fantasies of adulthood and in American identity itself.
Download or read book Rockville Pike written by Susan Coll and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jane Kramer never imagined a life selling discount furniture and commuting between grocery stores and soccer fields via minivan. But when her father-in-law has a heart attack, she and her husband, Leon, trade in their glamorous New York life for a stint running the family business on Rockville Pike, a tributary of the suburban sprawl line extending outward from Washington, D.C. Kramer's Discount Furniture Depot sits away from several lanes of traffic, near the tombstone of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is here that Jane escapes each day at lunchtime to ponder her confusing turn in life. At age forty-one, she has a teenage Goth son, her husband is increasingly overweight and quick-tempered, and their business is in a state of crisis, both financially and legally. Jane finds herself wishing for something more. First, add to the mix Delia, a mysterious and strangely predatory patio-furniture saleswoman who seems to have her sights set on Leon, and then an attack on the store expansion plans by historic preservationists. When potentially disturbing findings about Delia's past come to light, Jane finds herself learning that, despite life's reversals, it is possible to reinvent herself by tapping into talents and desires she didn't realize she still had. Rockville Pike is a smart, witty, and funny read that revels in the joy of discovering what life has in store.
Download or read book The Complete History of New Mexico written by Kevin McIlvoy and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Compelling and complex . . . Strange and wonderful." —The New York Times Book Review, in praise of McIlvoy's previous fiction I am going to write about the state of New Mexico and put in some maps and stuff from the encyclopedia. My theme is the Don Juan Onate trail and the Jornada Del Muerto. But I might write some other important things which as it turns out my stepmother got angry about and said she wouldn't type this until my Dad said "Dammit now it is history" and told her maybe there weren't commas in those days. "The Complete History of New Mexico" is no ordinary research paper, and this is no ordinary collection of short stories. Eleven-year-old Chum's "history" unfolds over three distinctive and increasingly disturbing sections. He writes that "Coronado explored around and found Santa Fe in 1610"; that "William Becknell was tracking wagons over everyplace in 1821"; and that every day his best friend, Daniel, is afraid to go home. Kevin McIlvoy intersperses the title novella with equally distinctive stories set in New Mexico. Laura, a plain, overweight nurse, encounters a terrified young man on his way to the Vietnam War and takes matters into her own hands. Zach spends time with his "white-trash" relatives and finds love's terrible and true face. The Complete History of New Mexico is a stunningly original collection that will further McIlvoy's growing reputation.
Download or read book The Atomic Times My H Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground written by Michael Harris and published by Word International. This book was released on 2019-05-05 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catch-22 with radiation. Area 51 meets Dr. Strangelove. Except it really happened. The Atomic Times is the absolutely insane, incredibly f*cked-up, but true, eyewitness story of what happened in 1956 on a tiny island in the South Pacific when over 1600 young soldiers (including me) were turned into atomic guinea pigs by the US Army. We were sent there to “observe” this nuclear test series, called Operation Redwing. Wearing only T-shirts and shorts and without any other protective gear while Army brass and nuclear scientists wore Hazmat suits, we were exposed to radiation and fallout. Operation Redwing, the biggest and baddest of America's atmospheric nuclear weapons test series, mixed saber rattling with mad science, while overlooking the cataclysmic human, geopolitical and ecological effects. But mostly, it just messed with guys' heads. Major Maxwell, who put Safety First, Second and Third. Except when he didn't. Berko, the wise-cracking Brooklyn Dodgers fan forced to cope with the H-bomb and his mother's cookies. Tony, who thought military spit and polish plus uncompromising willpower made him an exception. Carl Duncan, who clung to his girlfriend's photos and a dangerous secret. Major Vanish, who did just that. In THE ATOMIC TIMES, Michael Harris welcomes readers into the U.S. Army's nuclear family where the F-words were Fallout and Fireball. In a distinctive narrative voice, Harris describes his H-bomb year with unforgettable imagery and insight into the ways isolation and isotopes change men for better—and for worse. A New York Times bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, THE ATOMIC TIMES was originally published in hardcover by Random House. "A gripping memoir leavened by humor, loyalty and pride of accomplishment. A tribute to the resilience, courage and patriotism of the American soldier." —Henry Kissinger "Harris' frank and disturbing descriptions of the criminally irresponsible proceedings on Eniwetok, and the physical and mental pain he and others endured, constitute shocking additions to atomic history. Amazingly enough, given his ordeal, Harris remains healthy." --Booklist "An entertaining read in the bloodline of Catch-22, Harris achieves the oddest of victories: a funny, optimistic story about the H-bomb. Harris uses a chatty, dead-pan voice that highlights the horrifying absurdity of life on the island: the use of Geiger counters to monitor scrambled eggs' radiation level, three-eyed fish swimming in the lagoon, corroded, permanently open windows that fail to keep out the radioactive fall-out and men whose toenails glow in the dark." --Publisher's Weekly From the author: Three-eyed fish swimming in the lagoon. Men whose toenails glow in the dark. Operation Redwing where the F words were Fallout and Fireball. In 1956, I was an army draftee sent to the Marshall Islands to watch 17 H-bomb tests. An "observer," the Army called it. In plain English: a human guinea pig. I knew at the time that the experience could make a fascinating book, and I wrote a novel based on it while I was still there. The problem was that Eniwetok was a security post. There were signs everywhere impressing on us that the work going on (I mopped floors, typed, filed requisitions and wrote movie reviews for the island newspaper “All the news that fits we print”) was Top Secret. “What you do here, what you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here leave it here.” I was afraid they would confiscate the manuscript if they found it but a buddy who left Eniwetok before I did concealed the pages in his luggage. When he got back to the States, he mailed those pages to my father so I had what turned out to be a very rough draft. What was wrong with the book? Let me count the ways. I didn’t know how to write action, plot and character. I did know how to leave out everything interesting that was happening around me. Back in the States after my discharge, I thought about writing Version #2 but for ten years, I had nightmares about the H-bomb almost every night. I survived the radiation (unlike some of my friends), but the memories were also a formidable foe. I tried to forget and more or less succeeded. My perspective gradually changed over the years and I began to remember what I had tried to forget: We were told we had to wear high density goggles during the tests to avoid losing our sight but the shipment of goggles never arrived—the requisition was cancelled to make room for new furniture for the colonel's house. We were told we had to stand with our backs to the blast—again to prevent blindness. But the first H-bomb ever dropped from a plane missed its target, and the detonation took place in front of us and our unprotected eyes. Servicemen were sent to Ground Zero wearing only shorts and sneakers and worked side by side with scientists dressed in RadSafe suits. The exposed military men developed severe radiation burns and many died. The big breakthrough came when enough years had passed and I had overcome the anger and the self-pity resulting from the knowledge that I and the men who served with me had been used as guinea pigs in a recklessly dangerous and potentially deadly experiment. At last I had the perspective to understand my nuclear year in its many dimensions and capture the tragedy and the black humor that came along with 17 H-bomb explosions. In addition, certain significant external realities had changed. Top Secret documents about Operation Redwing had been declassified. I learned new details about the test known as Tewa: the fallout lasted for three days and the radiation levels exceeded 3.9 Roentgens, the MPE (Maximum Permissible Exposure). Three ships were rushed to Eniwetok to evacuate personnel but were ordered back after the military raised the MPE to 7. That, they reasoned, ensured everyone's safety. I made contact with other atomic veterans who told me about their own experiences and in some cases sent me copies of letters written to their families during the tests. As we talked, we also laughed: about officers who claimed Eniwetok was a one year paid vacation; about the officer who guarded the political purity of the daily island newspaper by deleting "pinko propaganda," including a speech by President Eisenhower. By now, Ruth knew the material almost as well as I did and provided crucial perspective and detailed editing expertise. At last, I was able to pull all the strands together. After 50 years, I was able write the book I had wanted to in the beginning. Having struggled to write a memoir for so long and having been asked for advice by others contemplating writing a memoir, I can pass along a bit of what I learned along the way. Make sure you have enough distance from the experience to have perspective on what happened. Exposure to radiation and the resulting reactions—anger, terror, incredulity—produce powerful emotions that take time to process. Figure out how to use (or keep away) from your own intense feelings. In the case of the H-Bomb tests, anger and self-pity were emotions to stay away from. So was the hope of somehow getting “revenge.” Sometimes the unexpected works. For me, finding humor in a tragic situation— the abject military incompetence in planning and executing the H-Bomb tests—freed my memory and allowed me to write about horrific experiences. Figure out (most likely by trial and error) how much or how little of yourself you want to reveal. Keywords: memoir, veterans, H-bomb, US Army, black humor, dark humor, military memoir, nuclear bombs, radiation, fission, fusion, fallout, danger, suspense, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, H-bomb, South Pacific, Eniwetok, Marshall Islands
Download or read book Fictions of Collective Life written by David Chaney and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-03 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1993, Fictions of Collective Life argues that the distinctive forms of modern popular culture can only be understood through the ways we dramatize public life, and that in the dramatic ‘fiction’ of collective experience we represent the terms of social order. The argument is richly illustrated with chapters on the theoretical character of performance in modernity; photography as the first means of mass representation; the nature of public discourse in mass democracy; and the elaboration of space for theatrical performance; and the marketing of culture and communication through mass systems of distribution. The book aims to provide a framework within which any of the popular cultural forms of modernity can be understood. Drawing upon and adapting the extensive literature of cultural studies, the author offers a distinctive and original sociological perspective on the relationship between individual and community in popular culture. The author also sets out the distinctive features of change in late-modern and postmodern culture. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, cultural studies, and related fields.
Download or read book The Middle Ages in 50 Objects written by Elina Gertsman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary array of images included in this volume reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Ages. Exploring material objects from the European, Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the book casts a new light on the cultures that formed them, each culture illuminated by its treasures. The objects are divided among four topics: The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and Its Fictions, and Death and Its Aftermath. Each section is organized chronologically, and every object is accompanied by a penetrating essay that focuses on its visual and cultural significance within the wider context in which the object was made and used. Spot maps add yet another way to visualize and consider the significance of the objects and the history that they reveal. Lavishly illustrated, this is an appealing and original guide to the cultural history of the Middle Ages.
Download or read book Adulthood and Other Fictions written by Sari Edelstein and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the idea of age in American literature over the course of the nineteenth century and examines how writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and Henry James used literature as a space to imagine alternative ideas about aging and to challenge conventional definitions of adulthood.
Download or read book Fictions Lies and the Authority of Law written by Steven D. Smith and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law discusses legal, political, and cultural difficulties that arise from the crisis of authority in the modern world. Is there any connection linking some of the maladies of modern life—“cancel culture,” the climate of mendacity in public and academic life, fierce conflicts over the Constitution, disputes over presidential authority? Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law argues that these diverse problems are all a consequence of what Hannah Arendt described as the disappearance of authority in the modern world. In this perceptive study, Steven D. Smith offers a diagnosis explaining how authority today is based in pervasive fictions and how this situation can amount to, as Arendt put it, “the loss of the groundwork of the world.” Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law considers a variety of problems posed by the paradoxical ubiquity and absence of authority in the modern world. Some of these problems are jurisprudential or philosophical in character; others are more practical and lawyerly—problems of presidential powers and statutory and constitutional interpretation; still others might be called existential. Smith’s use of fictions as his purchase for thinking about authority has the potential to bring together the descriptive and the normative and to think about authority as a useful hypothesis that helps us to make sense of the empirical world. This strikingly original book shows that theoretical issues of authority have important practical implications for the kinds of everyday issues confronted by judges, lawyers, and other members of society. The book is aimed at scholars and students of law, political science, and philosophy, but many of the topics it addresses will be of interest to politically engaged citizens.
Download or read book Just Breathe Normally written by Peggy Shumaker and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just Breathe Normally opens with a traumatic accident. Shattered perceptions and shards of narrative recount the events, from wreck through recovery and beyond. In lyric prose, the stories spiral back through generations to touch on questions of mortality and family, immigration and migration, legacies intended or inflicted. ø In the wake of her near-fatal cycling collision, Peggy Shumaker searches for meaning within extremity. Through a long convalescence, she reevaluates her family?s past, treating us to a meditation on the meaning of justice and the role of love in the grueling process of healing. Her book, a moving memoir of childhood and family, testifies to the power of collective empathy in the transformations that make and remake us throughout our lives. ø We all live with injury and loss. This book transforms injury, transforms loss. Shumaker crafts language unlike anyone else, language at once poetic and profound. Her memoir enacts our human desire to understand the fragmented self. We see in practice the power of words to restore what medical science cannot: the fragile human psyche and its immense capacity for forgiveness.
