Download or read book My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew written by Robert Benchley and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Robert Benchley died in 1945, his obituaries read like love-letters from the world. Here is a collection of his short, whimsical, hilarious articles which show why. With befuddled and heroic bewilderment Benchley faces his problems. Among others are the mislaid locomotive, a dachshund who sued for libel, and a songbird who was “out to get” Benchley. It ends with five sizzling chapters of his “Untold Story,” starting when, as an innocent young man from the country (Boston), he arrived in the city (New York) looking for pitfalls. (It was a holiday and they were all closed.) “...it is a saga of the gaga, and probably not far from his masterpiece.”—New York Times A rare gem of a book! Illustrated by Gluyas Williams

Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Humorists written by Steven H. Gale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this book contains entries on famous American Humorists. Humor has been present in American literature, from the beginning, and has developed characteristics that reflect the American character, both regional and national. Although American literature was, in the past, treated as inferior to British literature, there has always been a large popular audience for the genre, which this book shows. The figures with entries in this encyclopedia not only amuse in their writing, but also aim to enlighten- setting out to expose the foibles and foolishness of society and the individuals who compose it. It is the manner in which these authors try to accomplish this end that determines whether they appear in the volume. Indeed, the book will demonstrate that the best humor has at its base, a ready understanding of human nature.

Download or read book Robert Benchley written by Gordon E. Ernst and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1995-05-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first full-length annotated bibliography of the works of humorist Robert Benchley. It contains chapters on his books, essays, newspaper writings, dramatic criticism, plus a filmography and a discography. Also included is a chapter on secondary sources about his life. When humorist Robert Benchley died in 1945 at the age of 56, he left behind a large body of little-known material. Some of this material was collected into book form during and after Benchley's lifetime, but much of it remains uncollected. This annotated bibliography brings together in one volume citations to most of Benchley's collected and uncollected works. The volume contains chapters on Benchley's books, essays, newspaper writings, dramatic criticism, secondary sources about him, a filmography, and a discography. The books chapter contains all of Benchley's major books and lists the contents of each. The chapters on his essays and newspaper writings detail his work for such publications as the New Yorker, Life, Liberty, Vanity Fair, the New York Tribune, New York World, and the Chicago Tribune. The dramatic criticism chapter contains all his theater reviews, for Life and the New Yorker, with the titles of the reviewed plays and the authors for each. Entries are numbered, cross-referenced, and indexed to assist the reader.

Download or read book A Good Old fashioned Christmas written by Robert Benchley and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Literature Review written by Bob*Star Publishing and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-01-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entire American lit class in a single volume, covering major writers from our Puritan beginnings through the present day. Includes excerpts and summaries from major works, a discussion of plots, settings and characters, and an overview of important literary movements.

Download or read book The Ink Truck written by William Kennedy and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “wildly funny” novel of a monumentally unsuccessful newspaper strike in 1960s upstate New York from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (People). The newspaper strike has stretched on for more than a year. When it began, the Guild boasted over 250 members. Now, they’re down to eighteen, with only three truly serious about the cause. Their leader, Bailey, is a columnist with an outsize sense of his own importance and a hatred of scabs that borders on fanaticism. Married to a roller derby queen, but smitten with one of his fellow radicals, Bailey is on a path of self-destruction that could take the entire city’s newspaper establishment down along with him. And that’s just what he has in mind. With the cape-wearing old-school Rosenthal at his side, Bailey embarks on a mad mission: hijacking the newspaper’s entire ink shipment and dumping it in the snow. But he’s hardly taken his first step when the scheme spins out of control, trapping him between armies of gypsies, scabs, and the wildest hippies New York has to offer. Set in a city closely resembling his native Albany, the fiction debut of William Kennedy is “a bawdy Celtic romp,” foreshadowing the wit and imagination that marked his literary career (Time).

Download or read book The Complete Idiot s Guide to American Literature written by Laurie Rozakis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-08-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You're no idiot, of course. You know that Samuel Clemens had a better-known pen name, Moby Dick is a famous whale, and the Raven only said,"Nevermore." But when it comes to understanding the great works of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, you'd rather rent the videos than head to your local library. Don't tear up your library card yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide® to American Literature teaches you all about the rich tradition of American prose and poetry, so you can fully appreciate its magnificent diversity.

Download or read book Will Cuppy American Satirist written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in the golden age of humor books (late 1920s-early 1950s), when wits of the pantheon like Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and S.J. Perelman were producing their signature works, there was another singular satirist who more than held his own with such fast company: Will Cuppy (1884-1949). This factual funnyman's metier is dark comedy that flirts with nihilism. His agenda is baldly stated in such classic Cuppy book titles as How to Be a Hermit (1929), How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931), and The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950). This biography doubles as a critical study of a satirist whose shish-kebabing of humanity was often done through the veiled anthropomorphic use of animals. For a biographer, Will Cuppy represents a treasure trove of possibilities. He was a great humorist, and most of his best work is still in print, but until now he has never been the subject of a book-length study. His mesmerizingly complex and eccentric private life almost trumps the comic accomplishments of his public persona.

Download or read book The Benchley Roundup written by Robert C. Benchley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time; his influence—on contemporaries such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor—has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition. The Benchley Roundup collects those pieces, selected by Benchley's son Nathaniel, "which seem to stand up best over the years"-a compendium of the most endearing and enduring work from one of America's funniest and most penetrating wits. "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous." —Robert Benchley

Download or read book The National Union Catalog Pre 1956 Imprints written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Military Law Review written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Charlie Chaplin and A Woman of Paris written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris (1923) was a groundbreaking film which was neither a simple recycling of Peggy Hopkins Joyce's story, nor quickly forgotten. Through heavily-documented "period research," this book lands several bombshells, including Paris is deeply rooted in Chaplin's previous films and his relationship with Edna Purviance, Paris was not rejected by heartland America, Chaplin did "romantic research" (especially with Pola Negri), and Paris' many ongoing influences have never been fully appreciated. These are just a few of the mistakes about Paris.

Download or read book Kinds of American Film Comedy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-02-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking film study begins with a survey of American print humorists from eras leading up to and overlapping the advent of film--including some who worked both on the page and on the screen, like Robert Benchley, Will Rogers, Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields. Six comic film genres are identified as outgrowths of a national tradition of Cracker Barrel philosophers, personality comedy, parody, screwball comedy, romantic comedy and dark comedy. Whether it is Mark Twain or a parody film involving Steve Martin, comedy is most often about blowing "raspberries" at the world, and a reminder you are not alone.

Download or read book Under the Table written by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I love a martini— But two at the most. Three, I’m under the table; Four, I’m under the host." Raise a glass to Dorothy Parker’s wit and wisdom. Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, founder and president of the Dorothy Parker Society, gives us an intoxicating new look at the doyenne of the ripping riposte through the lens she most preferred: the bottom of a glass. A bar book for Parker enthusiasts and literary tipplers alike, Under the Table offers a unique take on Mrs. Parker, the Algonquin Round Table, and the Jazz Age by celebrating the cocktails that she, her bitter friends, and sweetest enemies enjoyed. Each entry of this delicious compendium offers a fascinating and lively history of a period cocktail, a complete recipe, and the characters associated with it. The book also features a special selection of twenty first–century speakeasy-style recipes from the country’s top mixologists. Topping it off are excerpts from Parker’s poems, stories, and other writings that will allow you to enjoy her world from the speakeasies of New York City to the watering holes of Hollywood.

Download or read book Odd Jobs written by John Updike and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 1025 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To complement his work as a fiction writer, John Updike accepted any number of odd jobs—book reviews and introductions, speeches and tributes, a “few paragraphs” on baseball or beauty or Borges—and saw each as “an opportunity to learn something, or to extract from within some unsuspected wisdom.” In this, his largest collection of assorted prose, he brings generosity and insight to the works and lives of William Dean Howells, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and dozens more. Novels from outposts of postmodernism like Turkey, Albania, Israel, and Nigeria are reviewed, as are biographies of Cleopatra and Dorothy Parker. The more than a hundred considerations of books are flanked, on one side, by short stories, a playlet, and personal essays, and, on the other, by essays on his own oeuvre. Updike’s odd jobs would be any other writer’s chief work.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Essay written by Tracy Chevalier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 1032 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking new source of international scope defines the essay as nonfictional prose texts of between one and 50 pages in length. The more than 500 entries by 275 contributors include entries on nationalities, various categories of essays such as generic (such as sermons, aphorisms), individual major works, notable writers, and periodicals that created a market for essays, and particularly famous or significant essays. The preface details the historical development of the essay, and the alphabetically arranged entries usually include biographical sketch, nationality, era, selected writings list, additional readings, and anthologies

Download or read book 1 000 Books to Read Before You Die written by James Mustich and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 961 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The ultimate literary bucket list.” —THE WASHINGTON POST Celebrate the pleasure of reading and the thrill of discovering new titles in an extraordinary book that’s as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus titles it recommends. Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage. Flip it open to any page and be transfixed by a fresh take on a very favorite book. Or come across a title you always meant to read and never got around to. Or, like browsing in the best kind of bookshop, stumble on a completely unknown author and work, and feel that tingle of discovery. There are classics, of course, and unexpected treasures, too. Lists to help pick and choose, like Offbeat Escapes, or A Long Climb, but What a View. And its alphabetical arrangement by author assures that surprises await on almost every turn of the page, with Cormac McCarthy and The Road next to Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings, Alice Walker next to Izaac Walton. There are nuts and bolts, too—best editions to read, other books by the author, “if you like this, you’ll like that” recommendations , and an interesting endnote of adaptations where appropriate. Add it all up, and in fact there are more than six thousand titles by nearly four thousand authors mentioned—a life-changing list for a lifetime of reading. “948 pages later, you still want more!” —THE WASHINGTON POST