Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is anageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living aplacid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with hisfriend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to finedining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and adedication to the collection of antiques. When these relativesbecome aware of the true value of his art collection, however,their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls awayas they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man'sinheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion toCousin Bette, the darkly humorous "Cousin Pons" is among of thelast and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urbansociety: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing considerationof human nature.
A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting,Death in the Afternoon is also a deeper contemplation on the natureof cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivenedthroughout by Hemingway's pungent commentary on life andliterature. Seen through his eyes, bullfighting becomes an art, arichly choreographed ballet, with performers who range from awkwardamateurs to masters of great grace and cunning.
In the "brilliant novel" ("The New York Times") V.S. Naipaultakes us deeply into the life of one man--an Indian who, uprootedby the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in anisolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independentAfrican nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbingvision yet of what happens in a place caught between thedangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past andtraditions.
This new collection of Sandburgs finest and most representativepoetry draws on all of his previous volumes and includes fourunpublished poems about Lincoln. The Hendricks comprehensiveintroduction discusses how Sandburgs life and beliefs colored hiswork and why it continues to resonate so deeply with americanstoday. Edited and with an Introduction by George and WilleneHendrick.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" revealed George Orwell as one of thetwentieth century's greatest mythmakers. While the totalitariansystem that provoked him into writing it has since passed intooblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in apolitical nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance andpower to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade. InWinston Smith's desperate struggle to free himself from anall-encompassing, malevolent state, Orwell zeroed in on tendenciesapparent in every modern society, and made vivid the universalpredicament of the individual.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is abitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England betweenthe wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritationof his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothiccountry house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affairwith the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, shesets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waughat his most scathing. The action is set in the brittle social worldrecognizable from Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, darkened anddeepened by Waugh's own experience of sexual betrayal. As Tony isdriven by the urbane savagery of this world to seek solace in thewilds of the Brazilian jungle, "A Handful of Dust " demonstratesthe incomparably brilliant and wicked wit of one of the twentiethcentury's most accomplished novelists.
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, is part of the Barnes Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordableprices to the student and the general reader, including newscholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully craftedextras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers andscholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporaryhistorical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes andendnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired bythe work Comments by other famous authors Study questions tochallenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographiesfor further reading Indices Glossaries, when appropriateAlleditions are beautifully designed and are printed to superiorspecifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.Barnes Noble Classics pulls together a constellation ofinfluences—bi
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his nativeRussian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literarycareer. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the worksof Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: thestory of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished e migre poetliving in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--abook very much like The Gift itself.
Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.
Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survivedalone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coastof Chile, "The Mysterious Island" is considered by many to be JulesVerne's masterpiece. "Wide-eyed mid-nineteenth-century humanisticoptimism in a breezy, blissfully readable translation by Stump"("Kirkus Reviews"), here is the enthralling tale of five men and adog who land in a balloon on a faraway, fantastic island ofbewildering goings-on and their struggle to survive as they uncoverthe island's secret.
Here are the best of Hawthorne's short stories. There aretwenty-four of them -- not only the most familiar, but also manythat are virtually unknown to the average reader. The selection wasmade by Professor Newton Arvin of Smith College, a recognizedauthority on Hawthorne and a distinguished literary critic as well.His fine introduction admirably interprets Hawthorne's mind andart.
Since its publication in 1911, The Secret GaMen has delighted generations of readers with its timeless appeal. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has been reworked into plays and films. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on the first edition and is accompanied by explanatoU annotations. Frances Hodgson Burnett published more than fifty novels (most for adults, but also Little LorJ Faetlero)') and thirteen plays. She was the highest-paid and most famous woman writer of her time; from the age of eighteen, she never experienced rejection of her work by a publisher. Born and raised in England and transplanted to the United States as a teenager during the waning days of the Civil War, Burnett made her home in both countries today both countries claim her as their own. "Backgrounds and Contexts" and "Letters" inform readers about various aspects of Burnett's life and work and include her own writings on gardens and their spiritual healing. Four illustrations suggest her p
To Have and Have Not is the dramatic, brutal story ofHarry Morgan, an honest boat owner who is forced into runningcontraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping hiscrumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him intothe world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who swarm theregion, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair. In this harshly realistic, yet oddly tender and wise novel,Hemingway perceptively delineates the personal struggles of boththe "haves" and the "have nots" and creates one of the most subtleand moving portraits of a love affair in his oeuvre. In turn funnyand tragic, lively and poetic, remarkable in its emotional impact, To Have and Have Not takes literary high adventure to a newlevel. As the Times Literary Supplement observed,"Hemingway's gift for dialogue, for effective understatement, andfor communicating such emotions the tough allow themselves, hasnever been more conspicuous."
Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him.
Laurence is a young ex-sailor who can't resist the lure of the good life, and when he finds a job as chauffeur to the wealthy Mr and Mrs Bannister, his occasional work leaves him free to indulge. Bannister himself is bitter - his twisted leg keeps him on the sidelines while his ravishingly beautiful wife endures his moods with saintly patience. Or does she? It's the Bannisters' closest friend, Grisby, who starts stirring, getting Laurence to agree to a crazy plot. It will net him thousands, no strings attached. But is it all too easy?
Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. Spanning from the Great Depressionto the turbulent Vietnam War era, "Wonderland" is the epic accountof Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with hislife spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned after watching hisfather murder his entire family, Jesse embarks on a personalodyssey that takes him from a Dickensian foster home to college andgraduate school to the pinnacle of the medical profession. As anadult, Jesse must summon the strength to reach across the"generation gap" and rescue his endangered teenaged daughter, whohas fallen into the drug-infused 1960s counterculture. Hailed byLibrary Journal as "the greatest of Oates's novels," "Wonderland"is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plungesbeneath the glossy surface of American life. "Wonderland" is thefinal novel in Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet. The booksthat co
Written with burning intensity in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life, "2666" has been greeted across the world as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing everything in imagination, beauty and scope. It is a novel on an astonishing scale from a passionate visionary. 'The best book of 2008 ...A masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year' - "Time". 'Readers who have snacked on Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano'- "Sunday Times". 'Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' - "Guardian".
This is the story of an artist as an aging man, strugglingthrough the wreckage of Japan's World War II experience. Ishiguro'sfirst novel.
This Norton Critical Edition of Twain's classic tale is based on the 1876 first American edition,widely recognized as the most authoritative text published in the author's lifetime. The novel is accompanied by a preface, original illustrations, explanatory annotations, "A Note on the Text," and a list of textual variants. "Backgrounds and Sources" includes both standard materials and lesser-known works--together they provide a rich context for The Adveutures of Tom Sawyer. Materials are organized the-matically and center on biographical backgrounds, nineteenth-century education, nineteenth-century medicine, social and regional contexts, literary contexts, and the composition of the novel. Especially noteworthy are Twain's "Miss Clapp's School,"his seldom-seen satiric piece on school exercises that fore-shadows a similarly satiric scene in the novel, and K. Patrick Ober's "Fire in a Liquid Form," a discussion of the popular Perry Davis's Pain Killer and other nineteenth-century nostrums. "Criticism"
With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poetMary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter andrhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems fromRobert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts anextraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space."Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.
High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.
High school senior Tyler Miller used to be the kind of guy who faded into the background—average student, average looks, average dysfunctional family. But since he got busted for doing graffiti on the school, and spent the summer doing outdoor work to pay for it, he stands out like you wouldn’t believe. His new physique attracts the attention of queen bee Bethany Milbury, who just so happens to be his father’s boss’s daughter, the sister of his biggest enemy—and Tyler’s secret crush. And that sets off a string of events and changes that have Tyler questioning his place in the school, in his family, and in the world. In Twisted, the acclaimed Laurie Halse Anderson tackles a very controversial subject: what it means to be a man today. Fans and new readers alike will be captured by Tyler’s pitchperfect, funny voice, the surprising narrative arc, and the thoughtful moral dilemmas that are at the heart of all of the author’s award-winning, widely read work.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Virginia Woolf said of EmilyBronte that her writing could "make the wind blow and the thunderroar," and so it does in Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw,Heathcliff, and the windswept moors that are the setting of theirmythic love are as immediately stirring to the reader of today asthey have been for every generation of readers since the novel wasfirst published in 1847. With an introduction by KatherineFrank.
For many people watching football is mere entertainment；to Some it’S more like a ritual：but to others，its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. For Nick Hornby his devotion to the game has provided one of the few constants in a life where the meaningful things-like growing up，Leaving home and forming relationships．both parental and romantic-have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal．
