Download or read book Understanding Alan Sillitoe written by Gillian Mary Hanson and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Alan Sillitoe offers a lucid appraisal of the life and works of the well-known contemporary British writer hailed by critics as the literary descendent of D.H. Lawrence. Known primarily for his novels Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Sillitoe has written more than 50 books over the last 40 years, including novels, plays, collections of short stories, poems, and travel pieces, as well as more than four hundred essays. In this comprehensive study of the major novels and short stories, Hanson reveals Sillitoe's artistic influences and the dominant thematic concerns of his works.
Download or read book Understanding Alan Bennett written by Peter Wolfe and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the actor, director, playwright and lyricist, Alan Bennett. Peter Wolfe demonstrates that Alan Bennett's success in many spheres was no fluke, and his theatrical eminence has always been accompanied by awards and professional recognition. His play Single Spies won the Oliver Award as England's Best Comedy in 1989. The casts of his plays, starting with Forty Years On in 1968, have included such luminaries as Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Alan Bates and Daniel Day Lewis. His screenwriting earned The Madness of King George a nomination for an Academy Award. This book seeks to illuminate the writer whose instinct for artistic choices has helped him to succeed on his own terms.
Download or read book The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine classic short stories portraying the isolation, criminality, morality, and rebellion of the working class from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The titular story follows the internal decisions and external oppressions of a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center who is known only by his surname, Smith. The wardens have given the boy a light workload because he shows talent as a runner. But if he wins the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, Smith will only vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up. “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” has long been considered a masterpiece on both the page and the silver screen. Adapted for film by Sillitoe himself in 1962, it became an instant classic of British New Wave cinema. In “Uncle Ernest,” a middle-aged furniture upholsterer traumatized in World War II, now leads a lonely life. His wife has left him, his brothers have moved away, and the townsfolk treat him as if he were a ghost. When the old man finally finds companionship with two young girls whom he enjoys buying pastries for at a café, the local authorities find his behavior morally suspect. “Mr. Raynor the School Teacher” delves into a different kind of isolation—that of a voyeuristic teacher who fantasizes constantly about the women who work in a draper’s shop across the street. When his students distract him from his lustful daydreams, Mr. Raynor becomes violent. The six stories that follow in this iconic collection continue to cement Alan Sillitoe’s reputation as one of Britain’s foremost storytellers, and a champion of the condemned, the oppressed, and the overlooked. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.
Download or read book Understanding Beryl Bainbridge written by Brett Josef Grubisic and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this introduction to prolific British novelist Beryl Bainbridge, Brett Josef Grubisic provides a biographical sketch of the writer, discussion of her motivations and techniques, and a detailed survey of her fiction that places the works in the traditions of British black comedy, social novels, and historical fiction. In approaching her works, Grubisic maps Bainbridge's movement from social to historical novels, beginning with the comic historicism of Young Adolf and continuing to her most recent fiction, The Birthday Boys, Every Man for Himself, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney. Grubisic holds that in portraying historical events through a variety of narrative techniques or from oblique vantage points, Bainbridge's latest novels partially ally themselves with the style and ideological concerns of literary postmodernism while still recalling the defining view of hardship established in her youth."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Understanding Will Self written by M. Hunter Hayes and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Will Self introduces readers to the satire and expressive ingenuity of a British writer who has garnered an array of awards since the 1991 publication of his first short story collection, The Quantity Theory of Sanity. In this guide to the well-received but largely unstudied writer, M. Hunter Hayes examines the key themes, narrative strategies, and cultural commentaries that characterize Self's work. Through close textual analyses, Hayes guides readers through the alternative universe of Self's writing and maps the interplay between his forays into journalism and fiction. Marked by their combination of seemingly improbable events and quotidian details, Self's novels, novellas, and short stories examine contemporary English life through a mode of writing that he has aptly termed dirty magical realism. Hayes shows how recurring characters have evolved through successive works and in relation with their environments.
Download or read book Understanding Penelope Fitzgerald written by Peter Wolfe and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Wolfe's study of Penelope Fitzgerald's canon illuminates writings he characterizes as possessing unerring dramatic judgment, a friendly and fluid style, and lyrical and precise descriptive passages. In this survey of Fitzgerald's life and career, Wolfe explains how the British novelist brings resources of talent and craft, thought and feeling, courage and vulnerability, to the biographies and novels that have earned her renown.
Download or read book Understanding Jonathan Coe written by Merritt Moseley and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2016-07-30 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the life, career, and oeuvre of the British novelist and biographer In Understanding Jonathan Coe, the first full-length study of the British novelist, Merritt Moseley surveys a writer whose experimental technique has become increasingly well received and critically admired. Coe is the recipient of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Priz du Meilleur Livre Entranger, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prizes for Fiction, and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. His oeuvre includes eleven novels and three biographies—two of famous Hollywood actors Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart and one of English modernist novelist B. S. Johnson. Following an introductory overview of Coe's life and career, Moseley examines Coe's complex engagement with popular culture, his experimental technique, his political satire, and his broad-canvased depictions of British society. Though his first three books, An Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, and The Dwarves of Death, received little notice upon publication, Moseley shows their strengths as literary works and as precursors. In 1994 Coe gained visibility with What a Carve Up!, which has remained his most admired and discussed novel. He has since published a postmodern take on sleep disorders and university students, The House of Sleep; a two-volume roman-fleuve consisting of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle; a touching account of a lonely woman's life, The Rain before It Falls; a satiric vision of a misguided life, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim; and a domestic comedy thriller set at the 1958 world's fair in Brussels, Expo '58. Moseley explicates these works and discusses the recurring features of Coe's fiction: political consciousness, a deep artistic concern with the form of fiction, and comedy.
Download or read book Understanding Anthony Powell written by Nicholas Birns and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicholas Birns provides a fresh examination of the British writer's career and growing reputation in this introduction to his work. Birns takes a global view of Powell's corpus, situating his works in context and explaining his place among Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Henry Green, in the second generation of British modernists. Birns explains how Powell and his compatriots pioneered a "next wave" modernism in which experimentation and traditional narrative combined in a sustainable mode.
Download or read book Understanding Tim Parks written by Gillian Fenwick and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fenwick reckons with Parks's full literary range, from his novels and nonfiction books to his translations and journalism, and sheds light on the work of a versatile English writer whose international recognition is steadily growing."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Understanding Anita Brookner written by Cheryl Alexander Malcolm and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander (American studies and literature, U. of Gdansk, Poland), who has written about other Jewish authors, explores the bleak worldview of a British novelist from a Polish-Jewish background. She analyzes Brookner's zoom-in portrayal of her protagonists' faith in a better world despite exile, loneliness, and acceptance of authority and a class system, in 19 short novels from The Debut (1981) to Undue Influence (1999). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Understanding Ian McEwan written by David Malcolm and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critically-acclaimed contemporary British writer Ian McEwan's novels and short stories often involve tales of aberrance and obsession. In this guide for students and the interested general reader, Malcolm (English, U. of Gdansk, Poland) discusses themes such as incest, espionage, sexual fixation, and political dysfunction in McEwan's writing. He also analyzes McEwan's portrayal of women; his concern with rationalism; his moral perspective; and the impact of feminism on his fiction. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Understanding Graham Swift written by David Malcolm and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Malcolm discusses the novelist's use of major twentieth-century historical events to shape and deform the lives of his characters; his focus on the distortions and evasions that characterize the discussion of personal, local, and national histories; and his fascination with the complexities, sufferings, and joys that mark individual lives. Malcolm suggests that despite Swift's dark vision of human suffering, he tempers his writing with an intermittent focus on that which can redeem our failures, our losses, and our cruelties."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Understanding Kate Atkinson written by Brian Diemert and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for her Jackson Brodie series of detective novels, which were adapted into the BBC television series Case Histories, Kate Atkinson is the author of eleven novels, two plays, and a collection of short stories. Her literary awards include the 1995 Whitbread Award for a first novel and book of the year for Behind the Scenes at the Museum and the Costa Book Awards for best novel in 2013 and 2015 for Life after Life and A God in Ruins. In this first book-length study of Atkinson's literary career, Brian Diemert examines the evolution of her novels: the playful and self-conscious work of the 1990s, the detective series novels, the books that examine Britain's history and its legacy of conflict and trauma related to World War II, and the most recent return to mystery. Diemert identifies her pattern of weaving multiple narrative strands into intricate plots that create the mystery at the heart of all her tales. He traces her development of narrative technique and thematic preoccupations of women's vulnerability within patriarchy and the complications of absent or disengaged parents. While her fiction is marked by allusiveness and humor, it remains profound and often touching as it explores the myths of British history and, particularly, women's lives.
Download or read book LONG PIECE written by ALAN. SILLITOE and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anti Sport Sentiments in Literature written by John Bale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on literature, specifically on the writings of selected novelists and poets to widen an existing anti-sport discourse to include hitherto excluded voices from the world of literature. The book commences with a review of exiting pro- and anti-sport discourses and then proceeds to examine, in turn, the written works of five eminent authors, excavating from their writings their anti-sports rhetorics. These writers are Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), Charles Hamilton Sorley, Jerome K. Jerome, John Betjeman and Alan Sillitoe. In its conclusion, the book draws together the broad themes discussed in the preceding chapters. Innovative in its approach to sport and literature and remarkable for its not having been previously explored in any depth, this book will be of interest to readers from both social sciences and humanities backgrounds.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the British Novel written by Virginia Brackett and published by Infobase Learning. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 2708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the print edition:" ... comprehensive ... Recommended."
Download or read book New and Collected Stories written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over forty short stories spanning the career of England’s most acclaimed postwar writer—including the iconic “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” This comprehensive collection of short fiction from bestselling British author Alan Sillitoe mixes aggression with humor, and common working-class men with extraordinary twists of fate. It compiles works selected from the master storyteller’s bestselling books, including The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; The Ragman’s Daughter; Guzman, Go Home; Men, Women and Children; and The Second Chance. Several previously unpublished works are also included. In the title story from The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner—which was adapted for film in 1962—a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center must make a difficult life choice. Should he strive to win the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, or should he refuse to vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up? The titular piece from The Ragman’s Daughter is a lively and poignant narrative about an eighteen-year-old thief named Tony and his new girlfriend, Doris, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do scrap dealer. The couple embarks on a wild robbery spree, but after a raid on a shoe shop goes absurdly wrong, Tony ends up behind bars and Doris remains free—but suffers a dark destiny. A standout tale from Guzman, Go Home, “Revenge” details the dangerously tumultuous marriage between factory foreman Richard and his ornery wife, Caroline. “Mimic,” from the previously collected Men, Women and Children, takes place in the mind of a nameless hero who is locked away in an asylum—a man who uses the art of mimicry to escape reality and avoid being himself. And in “No Name in the Street,” from The Second Chance, an ex-miner who ekes out a living collecting social security and hunting for golf balls, moves in with a woman who has indoor plumbing—but his dog refuses to go along with the plan. This essential collection reveals the power and timelessness of Sillitoe’s short fiction. Called “a master of the short story” by the Times, the author portrays the complex ethos and pathos of working-class life.
