Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977

Amazon.com

If Vladimir Nabokov's fiction merits any criticism, it is for its iciness. The master himself declared in a 1977 BBC interview, "My characters cringe as I come near them with my whip. I have seen a whole avenue of imagined trees losing their leaves at the threat of my passage." Nabokov's correspondence, however, reveals a far warmer individual, though one ever-ready with a verbal shiv. This volume begins with a 1923 letter to his mother, written while he was a farmhand in the French Alps, and ends with a 1977 letter sent to his wife, Vera, for Mother's Day: "My dearest, your roses, your fragrant rubies, glow red against a background of spring rain..."

Nabokov's son, Dmitri, and Matthew Bruccoli have created the fullest, and by far the most amusing, portrait of the serious artist as trickster. There's the famous letter to Burma-Vita, in which Nabokov offers the company an advertising jingle (alas, they turned him down). There's the best, and most amusing, account of "l'affaire Lolita." Here is his response to his New Yorker editor, Katharine White: "Let me thank you very warmly for your frank and charming letter about LOLITA. But after all how many are the memorable literary characters whom we would like our teen-age daughters to meet? Would you like our Patricia to go on a date with Othello? Would we like our Mary to read the New Testament temple against temple with Raskolnikov? Would we like our sons to marry Emma Rouault, Becky Sharp or La belle dame sans merci?"

In another letter, however, he takes care to thank White for a "chubby check." (One wishes this phrase had gained greater circulation.) Nabokov again and again comes off as a difficult author, challenging his publishers left, right, and center over issues large (and there were many) and as well as those that were niggling. Calling the British paperback cover of Laughter in the Dark "atrocious, disgusting, and badly drawn besides having nothing to do whatever with the contents of the book," he tells his U.K. publisher, "I would appreciate if you would use your influence and have them substitute a pretty dark-haired girl, or a palmtree, or a winding road, or anything else for this tasteless abomination." Still, one is most often convinced that he's right, even when he makes the large claim that the French film Les Nymphettes infringes on his rights, "since this term was invented by me for the main character in my novel Lolita."

Not only is this volume endlessly quotable, it also reads like a great epistolary novel--fraught with high thought, high drama, and the delightfully unexpected. Who would have guessed that Nabokov would ask Hugh Hefner, "Have you ever noticed how the head and ears of your Bunny resemble a butterfly in shape, with an eyespot on one hindwing?"

Book Description

Over four hundred letters chronicle the author's career, recording his struggles in the publishing world, the battles over "Lolita," and his relationship with his wife.

Ulysses S. Grant : Memoirs and Selected Letters : Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant / Selected Letters, 1839-1865 (Library of America)

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U.S. Grant in his own words...
Review of Memoirs of US Grant
A Masterpiece
A History Buff's Wet Dream...
essential

Ulysses S. Grant : Memoirs and Selected Letters : Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant / Selected Letters, 1839-1865 (Library of America)
Ulysses S. Grant
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Memoirs (Penguin Classics)
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Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (The American Civil War)
The Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (Civil War Library)

ASIN: 0940450585

Book Description

Grant wrote his "Personal Memoirs" to secure his family's future. In doing so, the Civil War's greatest general won himself a unique place in American letters. His character, sense of purpose, and simple compassion are evident throughout this deeply moving account, as well as in the letters to his wife, Julia, included here.

Customer Reviews:

U.S. Grant in his own words..........2007-06-26

U.S. Grant is often said to have been a failure at everything in his life except his marriage, war, and his memoirs. The latter, written as he was dying of throat cancer in 1884-1885, provide a straightforward account of his years in uniform during the Civil War.

Grant passes quickly over his Ohio boyhood and time at the United States Military Academy. His service in the Mexican War and his financial misfortunes out of uniform between the wars get only slightly more coverage. His story really begins with his return to uniform in 1861 as a commander of Illinois volunteers. The narrative follows Grant's campaigns in Missouri, Tennessee, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, his elevation to supreme command of the Union Armies, and the final grinding agony of the war in Virgina. The account ends with the cessation of hostilies in 1865.

Grant's memoirs are remarkable reading for a number of reasons. First, they provide insight into the first-rate military mind of a consistantly successful general. Grant's ability to determine the essentials of a situation and remain focused on them are evident. Second, the memoirs are a classic example of clear, simple, English narrative. Third, they display the considerable modesty of a naturally reserved man, a departure from the egotism often found in the personal memoirs of famous men. Grant himself continues to be something of a mystery to historians; these memoirs do not really lift the veil of his sense of privacy.

The Union Army of the Civil War had more than its fair share of politicians in uniform and politically-minded generals. Grant was not immune to spinning history his way; careful-eyed scholars have found more than a few instances where Grant remembered only part of the story or settled a few scores with old opponents. Nevertheless, Grant's memoirs are a valuable resource for understanding the conduct of the Civil War, not least because Grant became such a key figure in the winning of it.

Grant's memoirs are highly recommended to students of the Civil War, and to scholars seeking to understand the art of war in the midst of rebellion.

Review of Memoirs of US Grant.......2006-07-10

General Grant's use of the English language is very interesting and informative. Absolutely a pleasure to read.

A Masterpiece.......2006-02-22

This book is a must-read for any Civil War or American history buff. Grant's writing is consistently clear, elegant, beautiful. He gives an engaging account of his wartime experiences that are accurate to the best of his ability, and he writes with introspection and humility. The personal letters at the end of the volume reveal much about this fascinating man, and are a welcome addition. Please read this one! Another wonderful book in this series is the volume containing Frederick Douglass's autobiographical works.

A History Buff's Wet Dream..........2006-01-17

This is certainly a great book, and in parts, it is a good book. Grant has a very terse, matter-of-fact style, which makes for easy reading. The bulk of the book is devoted to the Civil War, and there are dry patches, and multitudes of "We went to the ridge, and then to the river, and moved our artillery up to the picket" and such-like. But that is what happened, and so you can't fault Grant for his meticulous detailing of troop movements, correspondence with fellow officers, etc. As I said, the great majority of the book is devoted to the Civil War, and there is not a word about Grant's tenure in the White House. Personally, of all topics covered by Grant, I find him to be most fascinating on the subject of the Mexican-American War of 1847. This is not something commonly focused on in history classes, but Grant's account is riveting. Additionally, Grant's remembrances of Lincoln are very interesting, as is his almost awed reverence for the military abilities of Sherman. The book is long, but it doesn't seem long, and if you have a love of history, this is indispensable stuff.

essential.......2005-10-04

A unique chronicle of one who saved the Union. Lucid, entertaining, and expansive. A rare view of one of the most important lives in the 19C. Highly recommended

Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback /Double Indemnity / Selected Essays and Letters (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

Outstanding in so many ways
Writing at its best - and it happens to be in detective noir
The best of Raymond Chandler
Classic American, cynical detective stories.
Priceless Solely for The Simple Art of Murder

Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback /Double Indemnity / Selected Essays and Letters (Library of America)
Raymond Chandler
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories / The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The High Window (Library of America)
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Crime Stories and Other Writings (Library of America)
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / Nightmare ... / I Married a Dead Man (Library of America)
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s: The Killer Inside Me / The Talented Mr. Ripley / Pick-up / Down There / The Real Cool Killers (Library of America)

ASIN: 1883011086

Amazon.com

Raymond Chandler is arguably the best American pulp novelist. His prose is so acutely visual, his characters so raw and intense that it is small wonder that all but one of his books have been made into movies. And his hero Philip Marlowe has graduated into American legend. Together with its companion volume (Stories and Early Novels), Later Novels and Other Writings forms the most complete Chandler collection in print. In addition to his later novels, this collection contains selected essays and letters, biographical information, and textual as well as explanatory notes. As an added bonus, the editor has included Chandler's screenplay to Double Indemnity, the classic Billy Wilder film adapted from James M. Cain's novel. You're able to compare the script to the finished movie and have the rare opportunity to see how one major crime novelist altered and interpreted another.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding in so many ways.......2007-02-24

First, let me say that there's a separate volume of Chandler's early novels. As much as I liked this volume, I actually enjoyed the earlier novels just a little bit more and suggest starting there. I started reading one story and wound up going through all of them in both volumes in the space of a few months. I also wound up reading and enjoying all the Dashiell Hammett stories, but I give Chandler a slight edge.

I won't try to list all the ways these novels are great and entertaining, but here's one thought that hasn't been mentioned in other reviews. Chandler is excellent at presenting a hero-character who has to worry about money and making a living. Indeed, Chandler makes this issue integral to the character's persona and to the plot line. Yes, the books are escapist in so many ways. Yet, in this respect at least, they are far more realistic than almost all of the fiction, and much of the non-fiction, these days.

Writing at its best - and it happens to be in detective noir.......2006-06-20

C-L-A-S-S-I=C HIGH/low notes. These stories are like a deck cards, all aces...... but there are way too few left. I finished "Little Sisters" (GREAT), "Farewell, My Lovely"- is recommended in the other half (earlier edition). The hook is Marlow. In times where many take the easy/cheap way out, I ride hard with Marlow. Marlow does it with style, humor, wit, grit, and nothing less than an all american: get the job done. But in a way that is the opposite his nemesis: the monopolies of power & money. Of course they admire and hate him. But it just doesn't get any better than Chandler. Need an excuse? Then read it for the wrting alone. The best!

The best of Raymond Chandler.......2005-12-05

This book, contaning Chandlers later works, is perhaps the best collection of Chandler you can find. Sure, does not contain the better-known novels - The Big Sleep and Farewell my Lovely - but it does contain The Long Goodbye, which is not only Chandler's finest, but a great novel by any measure.

Chandler lived a tough, hard-drinking life, and these later works came out of his mind with difficulty. But the quality of The Lady in the Lake and The Long Goodbye (The Little Sister is less memorable) make this collection essential.

In addition, the book contains some essays and letters, including Chandler's writing on the mystery genre, which will interest any budding suspense author.

In short, read this book! Read The Long Goodbye, then read it again. This is not just a great mystery, but it is also great literature.

Classic American, cynical detective stories........2005-05-12

Chandler is arguably the best detective story writer out there. If you expand this genre to all mystery writers, he would still be one of the best.

Detective stories aren't as common as they once were, but if you look at the offspring of the Pulp magazine once so popular, television, they are still as popular as ever. Chandler was one author who defined what a detective story was. This book contains four novels:The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, and Playback. These are wonderfully entertaining stories that contain the archetypical hard-bitten detective, Philip Marlowe. After reading these stories you will forever see Marlowe in every detective story you see or read, from Magnum to the latest TV cop. How can you not love an author who sums up Modern American Capitalism with lines like these? "We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." Or an author who in the early 50's, (50 years before the current 'Queers Dress Up' shows) so presciently wrote, "The queer is the artistic arbiter of our age, chum." Or his comment on a speech by a politician, "He did not bore us with any facts."
These books are not just riveting, fun reading, but full of thoughtful quotes like the above.

Chandler also is must-reading for his understanding of criminality, venality, human nature, Southern California, Movies, American culture and American relationship dynamics. I hate to use the word "classic" to describe stories that are just so plain fun to read, but I find it hard not to.

This volume also contains a screenplay, Double Indemnity, and a few essays and letters. The essays "The Simple Art of Murder", and "Writers in Hollywood" should be required reading for anyone interested in 20th century culture, movies, and literature. Just a few tidbits more. Chandler on English Mystery Writers - "The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers." Chandler on boredom - "There are no dull subjects, only dull minds." Chandler on critics - "The average critic never recognizes an achievement when it happens. He explains it after it has become respectable."

My only criticism is that the plots are contrived and sometimes complicated. But such criticism is like complaining that the Mona Lisa would be a fine painting if only it were of a different size.

Chandler is simply wonderful, funny, cynical, and yes, - respectable.

Priceless Solely for The Simple Art of Murder.......2005-01-18

While Hammett may very well have carried the modern hard-boiled mystery forward into the light, Chandler defined it. Of the two, I think I prefer Chandler most. Chandler better than anyone else set the standard for the genre, and laid down the rules to which all the great mystery writers of today rigorously adhere. Here, in brief, is the mystery writer's credo:

'But down these mean streets must a man go who himself is neither tarnished nor afraid.'

As Chandler remarked in his classic essay, The Simple Art of Murder, Hammett rightly deserves the title of Founder of the modern mystery because he succeeded in giving murder back to the kind of people who commit it. So what kind of person goes up against the kind of people who committ murder? Chandler responds with Exhibit A: Philip Marlowe.

Chandler's Marlowe resonates in my favorite mystery romps, the Spenser series, and the archetype also finds its way into more than a few 'Good Cop' dramas.

I enjoy the escapades of Philip Marlowe simply because the wry cynicism, coupled with the tough moral fibre to get to the bottom of any affair and see justice (or at least some sort of closure) served, makes for truly fascinating escapist reading. Each of the books in this collection, as in the collection preceding it, amply deliver on this score.

If you happen to acquire this masterpiece, never let it go. These are classic books, and will never become dated. I personally prefer The Long Goodbye to The Big Sleep, and found the former a longer and more satisfying read. In every story of both collections, there is to be found a depraved tapestry of gilded greater Los Angeles society, quite literally ripped from the headline news of the day. Most mystery fans will love the idea of an honest man in a thoroughly dishonest world, on a righteous quest for justice.

Once you get this triumph of American literature in your hands, mix your favorite drink, disappear to a quiet place with a comfortable chair (with good lighting), and enjoy the Great Master at work. If only more writers could write like this, then I would not need cable TV...

Poems and Selected Letters (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)

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Dangerously addictive poetry.
interesting and informative
Untitled
Sweet Fruit of Poetry
Delightful reading

Poems and Selected Letters (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)
Veronica Franco
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Women in Culture and Society Series)
Dangerous Beauty
The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues
The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)
Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans

ASIN: 0226259870

Book Description

Veronica Franco (whose life is featured in the motion picture Dangerous Beauty) was a sixteenth-century Venetian beauty, poet, and protofeminist. This collection captures the frank eroticism and impressive eloquence that set her apart from the chaste, silent woman prescribed by Renaissance gender ideology.

As an "honored courtesan", Franco made her living by arranging to have sexual relations, for a high fee, with the elite of Venice and the many travelers—merchants, ambassadors, even kings—who passed through the city. Courtesans needed to be beautiful, sophisticated in their dress and manners, and elegant, cultivated conversationalists. Exempt from many of the social and educational restrictions placed on women of the Venetian patrician class, Franco used her position to recast "virtue" as "intellectual integrity," offering wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life.

Franco became a writer by allying herself with distinguished men at the center of her city's culture, particularly in the informal meetings of a literary salon at the home of Domenico Venier, the oldest member of a noble family and a former Venetian senator. Through Venier's protection and her own determination, Franco published work in which she defended her fellow courtesans, speaking out against their mistreatment by men and criticizing the subordination of women in general. Venier also provided literary counsel when she responded to insulting attacks written by the male Venetian poet Maffio Venier.

Franco's insight into the power conflicts between men and women and her awareness of the threat she posed to her male contemporaries make her life and work pertinent today.

Customer Reviews:

Dangerously addictive poetry........2007-04-03

I had wanted to get my hands on a book of Veronica Franco's poetry ever since I read THE HONEST COURTESAN. When I discovered that this was available, I snapped it up in a heartbeat. The poetry itself is a decadent pleasure, much like eating cheesecake in a bubble bath, but what makes it even better is the layout. One page has the poem in the original Italian, with the translation on the page opposite. This makes it very easy to compare and study them. The writings provide an interesting look into the mind and personality of the woman who inspired DANGEROUS BEAUTY.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in poetry, 16th century Venice, or just wants a fun book to pass back and forth with friends while waiting for the feast to be served.

interesting and informative.......2005-09-01

It's like a very good college textbook. But it isn't boring

Untitled.......2000-12-14

Though some of the letters included in this book are quite hard to get through without having a coffee break, the poems are absolutely fascinating. They are filled with passion and mystery. The majority of poems to or from lovers of Veronica Franco in this book are unknown, which leaves the beauty of being able to make up your own mind. This title doesn't focus so much on her life so if your after history of Veronica then another title might be more suitable. Otherwise this is well worth the buy.

Sweet Fruit of Poetry.......2000-02-29

Veronica Franco had an unbelieveable ability to write-beautifully translated and expressed in Poems and Selected Letters (Other Voice in Early Modern Europe). Margaret F. Rosenthal put this book together with careful thinking, allowing it's readers to skip to different poems and letters easily. I am not reviewing Ms. Rosenthal as much as I am Veronica Franco in her writing. The poetry is revolved around her daily events, none out of the ordinary. My particular favorite being Capitulo 13-A Challenge To A Lover Who Has Offended Her. Excellent for those interested in this portion of history, a Courtesan's life, and one who loves poetry. Very beautiful! I rated it 4 out of 5 stars-it only lacks the one star because it take a working brain to relate the poetry to what it actually means. But once done, it is well worth the time. :)

Delightful reading.......1999-10-04

The book is romantic and charming. I enjoyed it because it was written by a prostitute and she explained her life as a human being. Whereas most books treat prostitutes as abtract objects being studied by an out of touch intellectual. I was delighted at the content and found it to be enjoyable reading. However, the interpretation of the poetry to English forces it to loose its rhyme and the poems seem weak on depth. If you are reading it for quality poetry, you would be best off reading other classics. The poems simply give a window into this facisnating woman's life. They are not artfully written poems, they are just amazing because they were written in a time period when women were not supposed to be educated.

Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

I didn't have time to make it shorter
A brilliant lyric poet who died far too young
A Poetry of Vision -- A Life of Excess

Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Library of America)
Hart Crane
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Captain John Smith: Writings with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the First English Settlement of America

ASIN: 1931082995
Release Date: 2006-09-21

Book Description

No American poet has so swiftly and decisively transformed the course of poetry as Hart Crane. In his haunted, brief life, Crane fashioned a distinctively modern idiom that fused the ornate rhetoric of the Elizabethans, the ecstatic enigmas of Rimbaud, and the prophetic utterances and cosmic sympathy of Whitman, in a quest for wholeness and healing in what he called "the broken world." White Buildings, perhaps the greatest debut volume in American poetry since Leaves of Grass, is but an exquisite prelude to Crane's masterpiece The Bridge, his magnificent evocation of America from Columbus to the Jazz Age that countered the pessimism of Eliot's The Waste Land and became a crucial influence on poets whose impact continues to this day.

This edition is the largest collection of Crane's writings ever published. Gathered here are the complete poems and published prose, along with a generous selection of Crane's letters, several of which have never before been published. In his letters Crane elucidates his aims as an artist and provides fascinating glosses on his poetry. His voluminous correspondence also offers an intriguing glimpse into his complicated personality, as well as his tempestuous relationships with family, lovers, and writers such as Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters, Jean Toomer, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and Katherine Anne Porter. Several letters included here are published for the first time.

This landmark 850-page volume features a detailed and freshly-researched chronology of Crane's life by editor Langdon Hammer, chair of the English Department at Yale University and a biographer of Crane, as well as extensive explanatory notes, and over fifty biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents.

Customer Reviews:

I didn't have time to make it shorter.......2006-11-29

As an American boy growing up in Normandy, I would sit for hours, homesick, on the cliffs overlooking the Channel, thinking that if the fog ever lifted I could see Manhattan. And I would recite from WHITE BUILDINGS for hours, crying out to the fates that had separated me from my homeland, as Hart Crane had bubbled his way to the bottom of a purple sea some miles away I assumed. "As bells off San Salvador/ Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,/ In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--/ Adagios of islands, O my prodigal,/ Complete the dark confession her veins spell." I hardly knew what I was saying, but some charms really do work and it wasn't long before I was repatriated, mouth first. I hope it's not heretical to suggest that Hart Crane's letters, while never less than interesting and often amusing, aren't that superb, and the book seems padded out in consequence to fit the desired "heft" of Library of America volumes. The Board might as well get used to the notion that not all poets have written thousands of pages, and for every Whitman you get a Hart Crane, who just didn't write very much. Does he deserve a place on the shelf with his 144 pages of poetry? Maybe there are some packing issues I don't understand, but otherwise, sure, throw in four hundred pages of Crane's letters.

Though nothing could really top the exquisite if critical presentation that the late Thomas Parkinson gave to his edition of the Crane-Yvor Winters correspondence, Langdon Hammer is able, through the sheer gift of size, to expand upon what we've had and complicate our hitherto too perfect picture of Crane. Crane's letters to Slater Brown and Wilbur Underwood are the liveliest, perhaps, but women also animate him and a recent biography that excoriated Crane for his misogyny seems sadly off the mark. However some biographers will do anything to create a scandal. One might profitably read through these letters to find out what Crane recommends in the way of early American modernism, his peers, because in general his taste is pretty good (and his dismissals of overrated trash are classics of vinegary invective). Of course he can sometimes gild the lily when praising, say, Harry Crosby's poems in a letter to his putative patron.

The index may be the single most useful feature of the poems + letters arrangement, for the index will help us find what Crane had to say about X or Y of his poems as he was writing them. He wrote, for example, a wonderfully impassioned letter to Otto Kahn, the industrial magnate who financed the writing of THE BRIDGE, outlining the different sections he had already finished and those still in the pipeline. Kahn also helped to finance the Metropolitan Opera, and Crane asks Kahn's help in finding employment there as a copywriter. He had the personality of a basso profundo; I wonder if the opera world would have changed if Hart Crane had been more in it.

A brilliant lyric poet who died far too young.......2006-10-20

Hart Crane is one of those powerful poetic voices that is its own style and immensely attractive. As others have noted, he was modern for his time, clearly American, and yet full of the great poetic traditions of the English language. His influences are identified directly in his works. He talks to Walt Whitman and discusses Emily Dickinson, Chaplin, Poe, and others. His early death was a great loss to English letters and the American voice in the 20th Century.

This wonderful volume from the Library of America (remember to thank them with your purchases and donations - they are non-profit after all) is more than eight-hundred pages, but only a few more than one-hundred of them contain all of Crane's poetry (including fragments). A few more have some essays and prose. The rest are filled with more than four hundred letters that Crane wrote to his parents, his friends, his literary associates, and others. The letters help us put Crane's work into a richer context, allow us to see some of the published works in earlier states, and make us ache and wonder what might have been if he hadn't jumped off the deck of the "Orizaba" into the Caribbean in 1932.

To provide just one tiny sample that amazed me from "Cape Hatteras" in "The Bridge" (Crane's great work) [the ellipsis in the second line is in the poem]:

Stars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas,
The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space . . .
O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind's withers!
There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk
Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;
Warping the gale, the Wright windwrestlers veered
Capeward, then blading the wind's flank, banked and spun
What ciphers risen from prophetic script,
What marathons new-set between the stars!
The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches
Already knows the closer clasp of Mars, --
New latitudes, unknotting, soon give place
To what fierce schedules, rife of doom apace!

We can hear his lyric voice, see his fresh images, and his ability to form the words into powerful energy. This is the result of great talent married to hard work and a special sensitivity to the language. Harold Bloom call's Crane "our Pindar". Now, I think there is more to this image than the linking of two lyric poets. Most of Pindar's poetry is lost to us. One set of odes is complete, and the others survive as fragments. Even though Pindar died old and Crane died young, we wonder about what we might have had from both if Pindar's work had found a way to survive and Crane had found a way to live.

Some say that it was the oppression society put on Crane because of his homosexuality (bi-sexuality?). However, almost all the homosexuals in Crane's time did not commit suicide, and a fair percentage of the people that did commit suicide were heterosexual. The poet grew up in a chaotic family. Yes, his father became a successful businessman with his syrup factory (he also invented and sold the rights to Life Saver candies for a pittance), but Crane's mother and father fought constantly and melodramatically. So much so that Crane dropped out before finishing high school and moved away to New York. The poet's own emotional life was harsh and prone to self-destructive behavior including alcoholism. After 1927 his drinking became much worse. When you combine the home life that formed his emotional responses with his parents divorcing, his father dying suddenly, his mother's neediness, his failure to produce much work during his year in Mexico on a Guggenheim fellowship, the affair with Peggy Baird Cowley (the soon to be ex-wife of a friend), his discovery that the inheritance from his maternal grandmother that had been held in trust for him was gone because of a loan his father guaranteed with it, along with being beaten up aboard ship for making a pass at one of the crew and then getting seriously drunk, well, stepping off the boat into the sea in front of witnesses while exclaiming, "Good-bye, everybody!" isn't as big a leap as one might at first suppose.

But what a loss to us all.

This is a fine volume. The editor has provided biographical material for the people mentioned in the letters, notes on sources, notes for the text (including a fine foreword), and an especially helpful chronology of Crane's too brief life.

Hart Crane is a poet I did not know anything about until I had read Harold Bloom's introduction to his "American Religious Poems". Then I knew I had to get this volume and learn more about this important and brilliant poet. You might want to get to know his work and his life, as well.

A Poetry of Vision -- A Life of Excess.......2006-10-17

"Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age,
must lay his heart out for my bed and board."

In a short, tumultous life, Hart Crane (1899 -- 1932) wrote two of the greatest books of 20th Century American poetry: White Buildings (1926) and the Bridge (1930) as well as some splendid individual poems. His poetry is collected in this outstanding volume of the Library of America, edited by Langdon Hammer of Yale University.

Of the 850 pages of this book, only 144 are devoted to Crane's poetry. Most of the remainder of the text consists of 14 short essays by Crane and of 412 letters from his extensive correspondence written between 1910 and his suicide in 1932. These letters, together with Professor Hammer's notes and biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents, offer the reader a good portrait of Crane's troubled life, and they read with more immediacy and poignancy than any biography.

Crane dropped out of high school and left an unhappy home in Cleveland at the age of 17 to try to make his way as a poet in New York. Many of the letters in this collection detail Crane's stormy relationship with his parents, his father Clarence ("C.A.") Crane, a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, and his mother Grace Hart Crane. Crane was also close to his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Belden Hart. In the "Quaker Hill" section of The Bridge, Crane said that the he had to "Shoulder the curse of sundered parentage". His difficult, shifting relationship with his family is amply chronicled in these letters.

But this collection includes much more than correspondence with a broken family. They offer insight into Crane's poetic ambitions and into the composition of The Bridge and of the shorter poems. They offer a view of New York City, seen through Crane's eyes, and of his literary friends and contemporaries, including Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters, Malcolm Cowley, Peggy Cowley, Crane's patron Otto Kahn, and many others. The letters give the reader a portrait of a complex, troubled person who from late adolescence lived life hard and on the edge. Crane was promiscuous with a lengthy series of mostly homosexual affairs together with longer-term relationships with men and women. Crane's most intense male relationship was with a sailor named Emil Opffer (none of his letters to Opffer survive) and, just before his death, he had a passionate heterosexual relationship in Mexico with Peggy Cowley, as she was divorcing Malcolm Cowley. From his mid-20s Crane had deep problems with alcoholism which greatly hindered his ability to write. He was perpetually short of money and cadged and borrowed extensively from his friends and family. He fought constantly and was jailed several times. In a fit of depression -- when his life superficially seemed to be looking up he committed suicide by jumping off a ship, the Orizaba, en route from Cuba to New York City.

Read as a whole, this collection of Crane's correspondence and poetry raises difficult and probably unanswerable questions about the relationship between Crane's life and his work. Crane's excesses and passions in fact are an important component of his poetry. But while the life was a failure, Crane was a poet of romantic vision. Crane struggled for years to complete "The Bridge", a work which remains controversial and not unqualifiedly successful. In this poem, Crane took the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol and tried to create a myth, in the machine age, that would unite America's past with its future and also give meaning to his own life. (Much of The Bride is autobiographical.) The Bridge is a work of difficult optimism as Crane traces America back to the voyages of Columbus and the days of Pocahontas with Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe as guides. The poems ends on a note of affirmation and hope, as The Bridge becomes a path to transcendence and to the overcoming of materialism and lifeless routine through love and brotherhood.

Crane's short poems are higly concentrated and difficult. The poems I find most rewarding in "White Buildings" include "Voyages" a six-poem sequence detailing an intense love affair and "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen" which is a predecessor of "The Bridge." The shorter poems include "At Mellvile's Tomb", the subject of an exchange with Harriet Monroe included in this collection, and "Chaplinesque."

One of Crane's masterpieces is his final poem "The Broken Tower" which describes how "I entered the broken world/To trace the visionary company of love, its voice/An instant in the wind." The Broken Tower ends on a note on the redemptive power of love while, soon after completing the poem, Hart Crane would commit suicide.

This is a volume that will bring Hart Crane to his readers. The letters chronicle a sad life cut short by excess. But Hart Crane's poetry, brief in amount though it is, has stayed with and inspired me for many years. Hart Crane holds a high place in America's literary heritage. He deserves his place in the Library of America.

The quotation at the beginning of this review is from Robert Lowell's sonnet "Words for Hart Crane" in his collection "Life Studies".

Robin Friedman

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Hammett's Interests & Values in His Own Words. An Excellent Supplement to a Biography.
Looking over the Thin Man's Shoulder

Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett , Richard Layman , and Josephine Hammett Marshall
Manufacturer: Counterpoint Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers
Lost Stories (The Ace Performer Collection series)
Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett
Hardboiled Mystery Writers: Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, Ross Macdonald: A Literary Reference
Crime Stories and Other Writings (Library of America)

ASIN: 1582430810

Amazon.com

Penzler Pick, April 2001: What seems a long overdue volume is finally making its appearance. (After all, The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler was published 20 years ago.) Here, in more than 600 pages crammed with important as well as intimate letters, is a view into the mind of the most important American mystery writer of the 20th century. While I don't believe Hammett could carry Chandler's pen when it came to literary excellence, it's fair to say that Chandler couldn't have published much had Hammett not made the private eye novel both popular and acceptable in the world of American letters.

While I don't recommend starting at the beginning and reading straight through to the end, you can dip into virtually any letter and find an interesting sentence, a fresh way of looking at something seemingly familiar, or learn something you didn't know about Hammett and the people he knew. Take, for example, this brief note to his publisher, Alfred Knopf, in October 1934. The Thin Man had been published in January of that year and was by far Hammett's most successful book. Knopf wanted to capitalize on that success and attempted to get a sixth novel out of his author. Hammett wrote back: "Dear Alfred--So I'm a bum--so what's done of the book looks terrible--so I'm out here (Beverly Hills) drowning my shame in M-G-M money for 10 weeks."

And isn't this interesting? Hammett was stationed in Alaska during World War II and had an active correspondence with Lillian Hellman but also with Prudence Whitfield, the wife of Raoul Whitfield, a fellow Black Mask writer and one of Hammett's closest friends. So Hammett writes to Hellman on May 6, then again on June 3, saying "I know I'm a lowdown bastard not to have written you in all this time..." Well, he was probably right. In the interim, he'd written to Prudence, signing off with "Good night, darling, and much love..." Is there anyone out there who doesn't believe there may have been a bit of hanky-panky with his best friend's wife while darling Lillie remained sublimely unaware?

There's so much more here I could quote for pages. Nice letters to his daughters, Josephine (who wrote an introduction to this book) and Mary; correspondence with other famous writers, his publisher, the editor of Black Mask, etc. There is also a splendid editing job by Richard Layman, probably the country's leading authority on Hammett. His expertise as Hammett's biographer and bibliographer has made his footnotes useful in putting into context the references that may be obscure to some readers.

Here is a book worthy to stand right next to The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, Red Harvest,The Dain Curse, and The Thin Man on your bookshelf. --Otto Penzler

Book Description

A literary event: the letters, both private and professional, of Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade and father of the hardboiled crime novel.

In his five great crime novels, all of them written in a magnificent burst of creativity between 1927 and 1935, Dashiell Hammett gave America a cast of immortal characters-Sam Spade, the Continental Op, and Nick and Nora Charles, mold-breaking, red-blooded alternatives to Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. In the words of Raymond Chandler, Hammett "gave murder back to the kind of people who commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought dueling pistols." A popular writer from the start, he aspired to a higher goal. As he was working on his classic The Maltese Falcon, he wrote a letter to his publisher about the potential of the detective-story form: "Someday somebody's going to make 'literature' out of it...and I'm selfish enough to have my hopes."

Though Hammett's work is admired by millions, the man himself has always been an enigma. Now, at last, comes a volume of his letters, revealing not only the private man but also the hard-working-and hard-living-professional. Yes, he was part cynical tough guy, like Sam Spade; he was part sophisticated inebriate, like Nick Charles. But the character of Dashiell Hammett was too complex to be easily categorized. His letters to his family, lovers, and colleagues show his personal warmth, his political commitment, his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. With wit, intelligence, and style, these letters further confirm Hammett's extraordinary talent as writer and observer.

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Hammett's Interests & Values in His Own Words. An Excellent Supplement to a Biography........2006-08-22

"Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett" includes 950 letters that Dashiell Hammett wrote between 1921 and 1960, spanning most of his adult life, from before his marriage to Josephine Dolan to just months before his death in 1961 -though the meaty correspondence stops a few years before that. Daughter Josephine Hammett Marshall started the project, and she nicely summarizes what these letters say about her father in the book's foreword. Editor (and Hammett biographer) Richard Layman discusses the sources in the preface. The letters were addressed to at least 17 different people plus some miscellaneous correspondence, but the most frequent recipients, in descending order, are: Hammett's friend and companion, the playwright Lillian Hellman; daughter Mary Hammett; daughter Josephine Hammett; wife Josephine Dolan Hammett; girlfriend Pru Whitfield; and Hellman's secretary Nancy Bragdon. End notes identify people and other references in each letter where needed.

The letters are organized chronologically into 5 sections, each introduced by an explanation of the circumstances of Hammett's life during the relevant time period. Part 1 (1921-1930), entitled "Writer", spans Hammett's married life, often strained by his tuberculosis and efforts to make ends meet, and the bulk of his literary achievement, beginning with early Black Mask magazine correspondence and ending with editing frustrations at Knopf. Part 2 (1931-1942), entitled "Celebrity", introduces paramour Lillian Hellman, to whom Hammett wrote longer, more formal letters than he did to his wife, discussing literature, career, and mutual friends. Teenaged daughter Mary engaged her father by asking him about the Spanish Civil War and emerging Nazi power, subjects for which he held passionate opinions, so Hammett's letters to Mary reveal his politics and values.

Part 3 (1942-1945), entitled "Soldier", is the longest section but spans the shortest period of time. Dashiell Hammett enlisted in the Army at the age of 48, eager to serve his country in its fight against fascism. He was stationed in the Aleutian islands, where he edited "The Adakian", a camp newspaper with distribution of 3,000-5,000. Perhaps due to Army discipline or the scarcity of alcohol, Hammett was a prolific correspondent during this time. He writes mostly of daily camp life and most frequently to Lillian Hellman, whose secretary provided Hammett with material for his newspaper. Part 4 (1945-1951), entitled "Activist", finds Hammett with a new sense of purpose after the War. He taught mystery writing at the Jefferson School for Social Science in Manhattan, campaigned for civil rights, and became active in communist organizations. Daughter Josephine Marshall was married by this time and a frequent correspondent -also during the 5 months Hammett spent in jail for contempt of court in connection with the Civil Rights Congress bail fund.

Part 5 (1952-1960), entitled "Survivor", is a miscellany of letters that reveal a man with diminishing vigor. He seems to have little strength left for discussions or details but always a warm, supportive word for his family. In the back of the book, there is a list of the books to which Hammett refers and an index (mostly people and titles). I have read 2 Dashiell Hammett biographies. These letters don't change my impression of Hammett, but reinforce it. They flesh out his personality a good deal. He was a talented writer, a loving but absent father, a man of strong convictions (some naive), who never complained through his share of hardships. Constant financial difficulties and frequent talk of writing projects that never materialize may seem pitiful. But they are reminders of Hammett's nagging faults, the sort that every life has.

Looking over the Thin Man's Shoulder.......2001-08-27

Reading this collection of letters by the author of "The Maltese Falcon" and other great mystery novels provides a revealing insight to the thoughts and feelings of this intensely private man. Peppered with delightful sides of humor it is easily readable. One can dip into one or another of the phases of his life: the early short story years, his service in World War I, fame and fortune in books, radio, and film; marriage, fatherhood, divorce, romances, chiefly with Lillian Hellman, service in Alaska in WWII, his jailing for defying the anti-communism of the 50's, his final illness, poverty, and death. In letters to Hellman, and his own daughters, Mary and Josephine he comments with a a few words on hundreds of books he read. A compendium of the books fills five and one-half pages at the end of the book. There is no explicit explanation of why his voice fell silent after his brilliant novels, but the perceptive reader is given clues in the man's own words, written with no intention to have them preserved for history but fortunately available to us now.

Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz: With Selected Prose

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Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz: With Selected Prose
Bruno Schulz , and Jerzy Ficowski
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060158964

Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961

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A writer's writer
A look behind the curtain!
As fascinating as any novel or story he wrote...

Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961
Ernest Hemingway , and Carlos Baker
Manufacturer: Macmillan Pub Co
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Binding: Hardcover

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By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
Hemingway
Hemingway: A Biography
Hemingway: The Final Years
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition

ASIN: 0684169614

Book Description

The death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961 ended one of the most original and influential careers in American literature. His works have been translated into every major language, and the Nobel Prize awarded to him in 1954 recognized his impact on contemporary writing.

While many people are familiar with the public image of Hemingway and the legendary accounts of his life, few knew him as an intimate. With this collection of letters, presented for the first time as a Scribner Classic, a new Hemingway emerges. Ranging from 1917 to 1961, this generous selection of nearly six hundred letters is, in effect, both a self-portrait and an autobiography. In his own words, Hemingway candidly reveals himself to a wide variety of people: family, friends, enemies, editors, translators, and almost all the prominent writers of his day. In so doing he proves to be one of the most entertaining letter writers of all time.

Carlos Baker has chosen letters that not only represent major turning points in Hemingway's career but also exhibit character, wit, and the writer's typical enthusiasm for hunting, fishing, drinking, and eating. A few are ingratiating, some downright truculent. Others present his views on writing and reading, criticize books by friend or foe, and discuss women, soldiers, politicians, and prizefighters. Perhaps more than anything, these letters show Hemingway's irrepressible humor, given far freer rein in his correspondence than in his books. An informal biography in letters, the product of forty-five years' living and writing, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters leaves an indelible impression of an extraordinary man.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899. At seventeen he left home to join the Kansas City Star as a reporter, then volunteered to serve in the Red Cross during World War I. He was severely wounded at the Italian front and was awarded the Croce di Guerra. He moved to Paris in 1921, where he devoted himself to writing fiction, and where he fell in with the expatriate circle that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ford Madox Ford. His novels include The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961.

Customer Reviews:

A writer's writer.......2004-12-09

Two authors of the 20th century whose letters go beyond fascination are James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. This volume is an excellent example of just how committed Hemingway was not only to writing, but to getting as close to the action of his writing. Once the reader emerses themselves into his letters, one sees the true Hemingway, not the mythological one created by critics (mostly those who were not fans of the writer).

It is almost unimaginable that someone in his time or any other could be so well connected and intimate with other artist: Joyce, Pound, McLeish, Fitzgerald, Picaso, and so on. If you're a writer this collection is wonderful. It shows the day to day dealings with drafting, editing, publishing, and the intimate relationships between writer and publisher, though this relationship is almost non-existent today.

I found Hemingway through his letters to be someone who is passionate about life and equally compassionate about friends. He tells it the way it is, not the way politically correct messengers do. It is an education in itself to read this collection.

A look behind the curtain!.......2004-12-05

I miss old fashioned letters, now that we live in the age of email. Frotunately, I still have 'real' letters saved that have now collected dust from my parent's generation, and from a time gone by.

Occasionally I stumble over published letters of famous writers in antique bookstores: Last time, it was a 800 page volume of some of Ernest Hemingway's personal letters; the first edition of this Amazon edition. They were published posthumeously, and not intended by EH for publication.
We get a peek behind the curtain, and learn among other things that Ernest Hemingway was addicted to letters, wrote lots and lots, starting in his teens; and that he was really depressed when he didn't receive replies; or when there were days when the postman brought no letters. Waiting for transatlantic mail added to his sense of loneliness. Letters were a lifelong passion of his, continuing up to the day when he took his own life. These private letters weren't meant to be published, and they are raw, but very honest.
When you read them, you are in no doubt that the writer is a true artist, and an original!
They stretch over the span of his productive life, and they are varied: addressed to family (his parents, his children), his ex, to friends, including famous contemporaries, such as Marlene Dietrich (just one of them), his agent(s), his publishers, and many more.

I have a hunch EH must have been hard to keep up with, but his letters are fun to read; even though, in my view, his novels are mixed: Some great, and some I don't care for.

Guess, EH's life was bizare too. The private letters are consistent with that. And yet, they exude a special warmth; both gentelness and passion.
Reviewed by Palle Jorgensen. December 2004.

As fascinating as any novel or story he wrote..........2003-06-03

This collection of letters serves as the closest thing to a Hemingway autobiography we have. It is certainly must reading for the student or researcher, and I would highly recommend it for even the casual Hemingway fan.

Hemingway often wrote letters to either warm up for a day of writing or cool off afterward, and in these letters you see him at his unguarded, intellectual, humorous best. The style of his letter writing is often much freer than the tightly crafted prose style of his fiction...it's almost like watching a classical musician break into some improvisational jazz.

Book Description

A revolutionary figure in the literary avant-garde of his time, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) is now seen to be central to the development of post-modernism. His writings comprise verse, prose poems, film scenarios, a historical novel, plays, essays on film, theater, art, and literature, and many letters. Susan Sontag's selection conveys the genius of this singular writer.

Customer Reviews:

Tome essential to all theatre artists.......2001-06-26

Studying Artaud is one way of taking a deep dive off into the realm of the unknown. His struggle to fully comprehend and describe lucidly his thought process and the clockwork of his soul; his obsessive desire and drive to break beyond the mundane level of median psycological theatre to rediscover the fiery roots and potent magic of the theatre event; and his visionary words---all of these combine to give us a man who was deep, profound and troubled---hence, utterly human, and truly inspirational to any theatre artist or artist in general. This translation of some of his most essential writings is essential to anyone who wishes to study the avant garde theatre. His influence is at times lucid and clearly defined; at other times, one sees that the myth of Artaud has distorted what the actual man wanted and worked for. In dealing with any artist who has created such a controversy (in his own time as well as in our time), one has to approach his work with the discipline of a tightrope walker. And Sontag's work provides the researcher with a straight, keen and powerful translation. Among the other translations of Artaud, this one is the best anthology available for the experienced researcher and the burning initiate. Read it as an athlete of the heart.

The theatre, life and writings of a brilliant lunatic.......2001-05-27

This isn't a book that you read from cover to cover. Find a subject that interests you. Then another. And then another. Soon you'll find yourself caught in his web of genius. His madness came from his endless spring of sanity that could no longer hold up under the insanity of the world he lived in. Genius suffers. He suffered too much. Years ago I saw a one man play "Artaud's Project" in Chicago. Best piece of theatre I've ever seen. This was my introduction to Artaud. This book captures this brilliant lunatic's crystal clear vision and pain. His letters are prehaps the highlight of this collection. This book is not for the masses, though, I wish it were. So much insanity and ignorance could be wiped out in a single stroke if people understood this man. Of course the sane appear to be insane in an insane world. If any of what I've said makes the least bit of sense to you this book is for you!

Artaud: what and where and how were you thinking?.......2000-06-30

Selected Writings isn't an easy read. I jumped around a lot. This stuff is the most intense stuff I've ever come across. Artaud is one of the most important writers to rationalise beyond logic. His ideas on Van Gogh prove, beyond doubt, that his sense of aesthetics was far more acute than his contemporaries. They always said weird stuff about Neitszche, how he was more 'in touch with himself' than other writers or, indeed, society at large. But Artaud explodes that idea, since he continually toys with his own sense of himself to the extreme. Reading Artaud for prolonged periods is like going beyond this (his) sense of self to another place, something completely new and agonizing. His ideas abouty the theatre are quite well established but there is other stuff here. The poems, monologues and just the sheer variety of 'inner scenarios' at play here really astounds you. 'To have done with the judgement of God' must be the most extreme form of self expressed mental torture around! (incidentally, am I correct in thinking there is a recording of this piece knockin' around?) Anyways, please take a slice of the insanity, you never know where it will lead you...

Full of Sympathy for Van Gogh.......2000-05-24

This book offers selections on a much broader range of interests than my own. Understanding the nature of deep empathy seems easiest to me in the 1947 work, "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society" on pages 481 to 512. Artaud only lived from 1896 to 1948, but he seemed to be strangely affected by the coronation of Heliogabalus which began in the year 217. Artaud was not reading the history of events lightly when he reported "that the historians begin to go mad with rage." (p.317) Artaud was on the side of the emperor who picked his victims from among the aristocrats in "a kind of superior anarchy" which "runs from jewel to jewel, from outburst to outburst, from form to form, and from flame to flame, as if he were running from soul to soul in a mysterious interior odyssey which no one after him ever repeated." (p. 329) Strangely enough, this seems very modern to me, approaching what is now considered the height of entertainment.

Essential!.......1999-12-22

Artaud is more pertinant to today's world and the battle for sanity in an insane world than any other writer save William Burroughs. As Poe, Rimbaud,Lautreamont and De Nerval were influentual to generations of writers decades after their work; so does Artaud promise to be the next great muse of the new. This book is for anyone who is interested in the most intrigueing of experimental literature.

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Selected Letters of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner , Stewart Spencer , and Barry Millington
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
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Binding: Hardcover

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Aspects of Wagner (Oxford Paperbacks)

ASIN: 0393025004

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