One climbed to the very top of the social ladder, the otherchose to live among tramps. One was a celebrity at twenty-three,the other virtually unknown until his dying days. One wasright-wing and religious, the other a socialist and an atheist.Yet, as this ingenious and important new book reveals, at the heartof their lives and writing, Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell wereessentially the same man. Orwell is best known for "Animal Farm"and "1984," Waugh for "Brideshead Revisited" and comic novels like"Scoop" and "Vile Bodies." How ever different they may seem, thesetwo towering figures of twentieth-century literature are linked forthe first time in this engaging and unconventional biography, whichgoes beyond the story of their amazing lives to reach the core oftheir beliefs-a shared vision that was startlingly prescient aboutour own troubled times. Both Waugh and Orwell were born in 1903,into the same comfortable stratum of England's class-obsessedsociety. But at first glance they seem to have lived
One of America’s finest historians shows us how Bob Dylan, oneof the country’s greatest and most enduring artists, stillsurprises and moves us after all these years. Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov??ered themusic of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a centurylater, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminentAmerican historian as well as the passion of a fan. Drawn in partfrom Wilentz’s essays as “historian in residence” of Dylan’sofficial website, Bob Dylan in America is a unique blend of fact,interpretation, and affinity—a book that, much like its subject,shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants. Beginning with his explosion onto the scene in 1961, this bookfollows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical andliterary work unique in our cultural history. Wilentz’s approachplaces Dylan’s music in the context of its time, including theearly influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, andoffers a larger critica
From Hermione Lee, the internationally acclaimed, award-winningbiographer of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather , comesa superb reexamination of one of the most famous American women ofletters. Delving into heretofore untapped sources, Lee does away with theimage of the snobbish bluestocking and gives us a new EdithWharton-tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as herfiction. Born into a wealthy family, Wharton left America as anadult and eventually chose to create a life in France. Her renownednovels and stories have become classics of American literature, butas Lee shows, Wharton's own life, filled with success and scandal,was as intriguing as those of her heroines. Bridging two centuriesand two very different sensibilities, Wharton here comes to life inthe skillful hands of one of the great literary biographers of ourtime.
