New York Observed: Artists and Writers Look at the City, 1650 to the Present
Added by: miaow | Karma: 8463.40 | Other | 13 August 2015
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In this illustrated collection of New York City lore, excerpts from the works of Truman Capote and A. J. Liebling stand side by side with selections from Washington Irving and Charles Dickens. In all, some 150 writers and artists are represented, including Thomas Wolfe, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Piri Thomas, O. Henry and F. Scott Fitzgerald, although some of the selections are too brief to be fully appreciated. Among the lesser-known material are an excerpt from W. Parker Chase's marvelous New York, The Wonder City, as well as a 19th century complaint about gridlock and an 1839 guide to New York brothels (thinly disguised as A Moral Reform Directory.
The third book in the Above the Line series follows filmmakers Chase Ryan and Keith Ellison as they celebrate their first successful movie. But in the midst of family relationships, broken budgets, and conflicting dreams, Chase and Keith must find their way through the maze of pain and questions that comes with everything they thought they wanted.
Much has been written about Murakami and "Wild Sheep Chase", including that this work is a shining example of the postmodern novel. While this may be the case, potential readers shouldn't shy away from this book simply because they may not know a fig about postmodernism. Unlike other "postmodern novels", which are often thickets of high rhetoric and voluminous nonsense, "Wild Sheep Chase" can be read on a multitude of levels: both as lit crit and as pure, enjoyable fiction. To read it strictly as one or the other is to do a great injustice to this work.
"Get A Load of This" A collection of short stories, written by Chase, while he was still in the Royal Air Force, was first published in early autumn 1941, and subsequently reprinted in 1988. None of the stories had the characteristic Chase touch, although all were violent, and could be classified as tragedies.
Do you think you could be a pirate? Read this book to find out how and why people turn to piracy. Discover what life was really like on board a pirate ship. Could you kill someone for a bag of gold? Would you risk death every day to chase dreams on the open sea? And finally, if you really had to . . . would you eat rats?
