Download or read book Why Melville Matters written by Andrew Crichton and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Initially in this book, I wanted to explore two things: the connection between Herman Melville and the artist Joseph Mallord William Turner; then Herman Melville's sub-text in the novel. The art trail led me to Frank Stella, who on his own aesthetic path, had discovered how Moby-Dick would expand his art. On the second point, it seems that Moby-Dick makes special demands on the reader to be open to hints and able to work through details to a satisfying conclusion. This process with Melville's help will sort through details to a final conclusion in the best rational sense. It became clear that Melville sometimes mixed his voice with the narrative voice of Ishmael. This led to the possibility that Ishmael's friendship with Queequeg allowed Melville to link his experience on South Sea islands to Queequeg's own. It opened up all the evidence of Melville's ethnology, both in Moby-Dick and in his other works. My study relied on the state-of-the-art in the sciences of biology, geology, geography, spherical geometry and circumnavigation. Some of the most pressing social concerns of colonial expansionism and slavery in the United States are also coming to a boil both on land and on the Pequod.
Download or read book Why Read Moby Dick written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant and provocative” (The New Yorker) celebration of Melville’s masterpiece—from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick’s enlightening and entertaining tour through Melville’s classic. As he did in his National Book Award–winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick brings a sailor’s eye and an adventurer’s passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey. He skillfully navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable characters—finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. An ideal match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that this classic tale waits to be discovered anew. “Gracefully written [with an] infectious enthusiasm…”—New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War written by Herman Melville and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1866 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) is the first book of poetry published by American author Herman Melville. The volume is dedicated "To the Memory of the Three Hundred Thousand Who in the War For the Maintenance of the Union Fell Devotedly Under the Flag of Their Country" and its 72 poems deal with the battles and personalities of the American Civil War and their aftermath. Critics at the time were at best respectful and often sharply critical of Melville's unorthodox style. The book had sold only 486 copies by 1868 and recovered barely half of its publications costs.[1] Not until the latter half of the twentieth century did Battle-Pieces become regarded as one of the most important group of poems on the American Civil War.
Download or read book Israel Potter His Fifty Years Of Exile written by Herman Melville and published by Jazzybee Verlag. This book was released on 2012 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the extended and annotated edition including an extensive biographical annotation about the author and his life. When Israel Potter leaves his plough to fight in the American Revolution, he's immediately thrown into the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he receives multiple wounds. However, this does not deter him, and after hearing a rousing speech by General George Washington, he volunteers for further duty, this time at sea, where more ill fortune awaits him. Israel is captured by the British Navy and taken to England. Yet, he makes his escape, and this triggers a series of extraordinary events and meetings with remarkable people. Along the way, Israel encounters King George III, who takes a liking to the Yankee rebel and shelters him in Kew Gardens; Benjamin Franklin, who presses Israel into service as a spy; John Paul Jones, who invites Israel to join his crew aboard The Ranger; and Ethan Allen, whom Israel attempts to free from a British prison. (from wikipedia.com)
Download or read book Melville A Novel written by Jean Giono and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published to promote his French translation of Moby-Dick, Jean Giono's Melville: A Novel is an astonishing literary compound of fiction, biography, personal essay, and criticism. In the fall of 1849, Herman Melville traveled to London to deliver his novel White-Jacket to his publisher. On his return to America, Melville would write Moby-Dick. Melville: A Novel imagines what happened in between: the adventurous writer fleeing London for the country, wrestling with an angel, falling in love with an Irish nationalist, and, finally, meeting the angel’s challenge—to express man’s fate by writing the novel that would become his masterpiece. Eighty years after it appeared in English, Moby-Dick was translated into French for the first time by the Provençal novelist Jean Giono and his friend Lucien Jacques. The publisher persuaded Giono to write a preface, granting him unusual latitude. The result was this literary essay, Melville: A Novel—part biography, part philosophical rumination, part romance, part unfettered fantasy. Paul Eprile’s expressive translation of this intimate homage brings the exchange full circle. Paul Eprile was a co-winner of the French-American Foundation's 2018 Translation Prize for his translation of Melville.
Download or read book The Value of Herman Melville written by Geoffrey Sanborn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the writings of Herman Melville across his career and examines the distinctive qualities of his style.
Download or read book Dark Victory written by Ed Sikov and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Bette Davis, focusing on her acting career, drawing from interviews with friends, directors, and admirers, archival research, and a new look at her films to provide insights into her personal and professional life.
Download or read book Why Kerouac Matters written by John Leland and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legions of youthful Americans have taken On the Road as a manifesto for rebellion and an inspiration to hit the road. But there is much more to the book than that. In Why Kerouac Matters, John Leland embarks on a wry, insightful, and playful discussion of the novel, arguing that it still matters because it lays out an alternative road map to growing up. Along the way, Leland overturns many misconceptions about On the Road as he examines the lessons that Kerouac's alter ego, Sal Paradise, absorbs and dispenses on his novelistic journey to manhood, and how those lessons-about work and money, love and sex, art and holiness - still reverberate today.
Download or read book Last Letter to a Reader written by Gerald Murnane and published by Giramondo Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Final work by internationally acclaimed Australian author Gerald Murnane, reflecting on his career as a writer, and the fifteen books which have led critics to praise him as ‘a genius on the level of Beckett’. A book which will appeal equally to Murnane’s legion of fans, and to those new to his work, attracted by his reputation as a truly original Australian writer. In the first days of spring in his eighty-second year, Gerald Murnane began a project which would round off his career as a writer – he would read all of his books in turn and prepare a report on each. His original intention was to lodge the reports in two of his legendary archives, the Chronological Archive, which documents his life as a whole, and the Literary Archive, which is devoted to everything he has written. But as the reports grew, they themselves took on the form of a book, Last Letter to a Reader. The essays on each of his works travel through the capacious territory Murnane refers to as his mind: they dwell on the circumstances which gave rise to the writing, images, associations, reflections on the theory of fiction, and memories of a deeply personal kind. The final essay is on Last Letter to a Reader itself: it considers the elation and exhilaration which accompany the act of writing, and offers a moving ending to what must surely be his last work as death approaches. ‘Help me, dear one, to endure patiently my going back to my own sort of heaven.’ ‘No living Australian writer, not even Les Murray, has higher claims to permanence or a richer sense of distinction’ — Sydney Morning Herald ‘The emotional conviction...is so intense, the somber lyricism so moving, the intelligence behind the chiseled sentences so undeniable, that we suspend all disbelief.’ — J.M. Coetzee
Download or read book What We Didn t Expect written by Melody Schreiber and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, 400,000 families in the United States welcome premature babies ... Ten percent of babies born in the U.S. are preemies. But that one word, "preemie," encompasses a range of medical and cultural experiences. There are textbooks, medical-ish guidebooks, and the occasional memoir to turn to ... but no book that collects personal experiences from the many people who have parented, cared for, or been preemies themselves. Until now. In What We Didn't Expect, journalist Melody Schreiber brings together a chorus of acclaimed writers and thinkers to share their diverse stories of having or being premature babies. The stories here cover everything from life-changing tests of faith to navigating the red tape of healthcare bureuacracy; from overcoming unimaginable grief to surviving and thriving against all odds. The result is a moving, heartfelt book, and a crucial and informative resource for anyone who has, or is about to have, the experience of dealing with a premature birth.
Download or read book Mocha Dick written by Jeremiah N. Reynolds and published by Sicpress.com. This book was released on 2013-04-06 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeremiah N. Reynolds (1799-1858), an American newspaper editor, lecturer, explorer and author who became an influential advocate for scientific expeditions. Reynolds gathered first-hand observations of Mocha Dick, an albino sperm whale off Chile who bedeviled a generation of whalers for thirty years before succumbing to one. Mocha Dick survived many skirmishes (by some accounts at least 100) with whalers before he was eventually killed. In May 1839, The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine published Reynolds' "Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific," the inspiration for Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. In Reynolds' account, Mocha Dick was killed in 1838, after he appeared to come to the aid of a distraught cow whose calf had just been slain by the whalers. His body was 70 feet long and yielded 100 barrels of oil, along with some ambergris. He also had several harpoons in his body.
Download or read book Why Kierkegaard Matters written by Marc Alan Jolley and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monographs on philosophers multiply daily but on occasion the question of why a particular philosopher matters. If we stop thinking about them by asking why, then will they cease to exist? When Mercer University Press opened its doors more than thirty years ago, it committed itself to religious studies in general, and to several thinkers. One of those was Soslash;ren Kierkegaard. Now, as the Press concludes a major publishing event with the completion of the International Kierkegaard Commentary, it seeks to honor the only series editor it has known: Robert Perkins. The method of this honor is by asking Why Kierkegaard Matters. The leading Kierkegaard scholars have contributed essays that range from the very personal and memoir-esque to the academic and analytical. As a result, this festshcrift is not only a book to honor an extraordinary editor, but is in it's own right a major contribution to the assessment of the importance of Kierkegaard. Written with the general reader in mind, this collection will prove useful by both scholar and student, and will lead the general reader to encounter one of the most original Christian philosophers in the history of the world.
Download or read book Hold Fast Your Crown written by Yannick Haenel and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A story of madness, art, alcohol and creativity…elegantly translated…vivid.”New York Times An exasperated writer obsessed with American cinema embarks on an increasingly bizarre journey in this heady, engrossing novel. A man writes an enormous screenplay on the life of Herman Melville. Not a single producer is interested in it. One day, someone gives him the phone number of the great American filmmaker Michael Cimino, legendary director of The Deer Hunterand Heaven's Gate. A meeting is arranged in New York, and Cimino reads the manuscript. What follows is a series of crazy adventures through Ellis Island, the Musée de la Chasse in Paris, a lake in Italy. We run into Isabelle Huppert, Diana the hunting goddess, a Dalmatian named Sabbat, a diabolical neighbor, and two shady characters with conspicuous mustaches. There's also a pretty PhD student, an unpleasant concierge, and an aggressive maître d' who looks like Emmanuel Macron... This improbable, insightful tale bridges the divide between cinema and literature in unexpected ways that are at once gratifying and profound.
Download or read book Reading Melville s Pierre Or The Ambiguities written by Brian Higgins and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2007-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging new study uses biographical evidence to explore Pierre, the puzzling novel that Herman Melville wrote immediately after the publication of Moby-Dick. Parker and Higgins reveal that Melville drastically altered the end of the novel after a troubling meeting with his publisher and editor about the perceived failure of Moby-Dick. Melville re-wrote Pierre's protagonist as a writer and used the novel to attack the publishing industry. Parker and Higgins' exploration into Pierre shows that this is a deeply flawed novel, but an intriguing and revealing glimpse into the mind of an American literary giant.
Download or read book Melville s Marginalia written by Herman Melville and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Sunset Boulevard written by Ed Sikov and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Sunset Boulevard, originally published in 1998, describes the life of acclaimed filmmaker Billy Wilder (1906-2002), director of such classics as Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend, The Seven Year Itch, and Sabrina. This definitive biography takes the reader on a fast-paced journey from Billy Wilder's birth outside of Krakow in 1906 to Vienna, where he grew up, to Berlin, where he moved as a young man while establishing himself as a journalist and screenwriter, and triumphantly to Hollywood, where he became as successful a director as there ever was. Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment"Wilder's cinematic legacy is unparalleled. Not only did he direct these classics and twenty-one other films, he co-wrote all of his own screenplays. Volatile, cynical, hilarious, and driven, Wilder arrived in Hollywood an all-but-penniless refugee who spoke no English. Ten years later he was calling his own shots, and he stayed on top of the game for the next three decades. Wilder battled with Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, and Peter Sellers; kept close friendships with William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau; amassed a personal fortune by way of blockbuster films and shrewd investments in art (including Picassos, Klees, and Mir's); and won Oscars--yet Wilder, ever conscious of his thick accent, always felt the sting of being an outsider. On Sunset Boulevard traces the course of a turbulent but fabulous life, both behind the scenes and on the scene, from Viennese cafes and Berlin dance halls in the twenties to the Hollywood soundstages of the forties and the on-location shoots of the fifties and sixties. Crammed with Wilder's own caustic wit, On Sunset Boulevard reels out the story of one of cinema's most brilliant and prolific talents.
Download or read book Why Football Matters written by Mark Edmundson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority. The athlete is a noble figure with a proud lineage. The jock is America at its worst. When Mark Edmundson’s son began to play organized football, and proved to be very good at it, Edmundson had to come to terms with just what he thought about the game. Doing so took him back to his own childhood, when as a shy, soft boy growing up in a blue-collar Boston suburb in the sixties, he went out for the high school football team. Why Football Matters is the story of what happened to Edmundson when he tried to make himself into a football player. What does it mean to be a football player? At first Edmundson was hapless on the field. He was an inept player and a bad teammate. But over time, he got over his fears and he got tougher. He learned to be a better player and came to feel a part of the team, during games but also on all sorts of escapades, not all of them savory. By playing football, Edmundson became what he and his father hoped he’d be, a tougher, stronger young man, better prepared for life. But is football-instilled toughness always a good thing? Do the character, courage, and loyalty football instills have a dark side? Football, Edmundson found, can be full of bounties. But it can also lead you into brutality and thoughtlessness. So how do you get what’s best from the game and leave the worst behind? Why Football Matters is moving, funny, vivid, and filled with the authentic anxiety and exhilaration of youth. Edmundson doesn’t regret playing football for a minute, and cherishes the experience. His triumph is to be able to see it in full, as something to celebrate, but also something to handle with care. For anyone who has ever played on a football team, is the parent of a player, or simply is reflective about its outsized influence on America, Why Football Matters is both a mirror and a lamp.
