A Brief History of Portable Literature

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Author :
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811223388
Total Pages : 66 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis A Brief History of Portable Literature by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book A Brief History of Portable Literature written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reader’s fictional tour of the art and lives of some of the great 20th-century Surrealists An author (a version of Vila-Matas himself) presents a short “history” of a secret society, the Shandies, who are obsessed with the concept of “portable literature.” The society is entirely imagined, but in this rollicking, intellectually playful book, its members include writers and artists like Marcel Duchamp, Aleister Crowley, Witold Gombrowicz, Federico García Lorca, Man Ray, and Georgia O’Keefe. The Shandies meet secretly in apartments, hotels, and cafes all over Europe to discuss what great literature really is: brief, not too serious, penetrating the depths of the mysterious. We witness the Shandies having adventures in stationary submarines, underground caverns, African backwaters, and the cultural capitals of Europe.

The Illogic of Kassel

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Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1846558786
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (465 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illogic of Kassel by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book The Illogic of Kassel written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A puzzling phone call shatters a writer's routine. An enigmatic female voice extends an invitation to take part in Documenta, the legendary contemporary art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany. The writer's mission will be to transform himself into a living art installation, by sitting down to write every morning in a Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town. Once in Kassel, the writer is surprised to find himself overcome by good cheer as he strolls through the city, spurred on by his spontaneous, quirky response to art. With humour, profundity and a sharp eye, Enrique Vila-Matas tells the story of a solitary man roaming the streets amid oddities and wonder.

Dublinesque

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811220222
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Dublinesque by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book Dublinesque written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this novel, Enrique Vila-Matas traces a journey connecting the worlds of Joyce and Beckett, and all they symbolize. One night, a renowned and now retired literary publisher has a vivid dream that takes place in Dublin, a city he’s never visited. The central scene of the dream is a funeral in the era of Ulysses. The publisher would give anything to know if an unidentified character in his dream is the great author he always wanted to meet, or the ghostly angel who abandoned him during childhood. As the days go by, he will come to understand that his vision of the end of an era was prophetic. Enrique Vila-Matas traces a journey that connects the worlds of Joyce and Beckett, revealing the difficulties faced by literary authors, publishers, and good readers in a society where literature is losing influence. A robust work, Dublinesque is a masterwork of irony, humor, and erudition by one of Spain’s most celebrated living authors.

Montanao's Malady

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811225291
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Montanao's Malady by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book Montanao's Malady written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quirky, cosmopolitan novel about life and literature by the prize-winning Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas, author of Bartleby & Co. The narrator of Montano’s Malady is a writer named Jose who is so obsessed with literature that he finds it impossible to distinguish between real life and fictional reality. Part picaresque novel, part intimate diary, part memoir and philosophical musings, Enrique Vila-Matas has created a labyrinth in which writers as various as Cervantes, Sterne, Kafka, Musil, Bolano, Coetzee, and Sebald cross endlessly surprising paths. Trying to piece together his life of loss and pain, Jose leads the reader on an unsettling journey from European cities such as Nantes, Barcelona, Lisbon, Prague and Budapest to the Azores and the Chilean port of Valparaiso. Exquisitely witty and erudite, it confirms the opinion of Bernardo Axtaga that Vila-Matas is "the most important living Spanish writer."

Because She Never Asked (New Directions Pearls)

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811225704
Total Pages : 50 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Because She Never Asked (New Directions Pearls) by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book Because She Never Asked (New Directions Pearls) written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novella—half joke and half nightmare— by "Spain's most significant contemporary literary figure" (The New Yorker) Because She Never Asked is a story reminiscent of that reached by the travelers in Patricia Highsmith's Stranger on a Train. The author first writes a piece for the artist Sophie Calle to live out: a young, aspiring, French artist travels to Lisbon and the Azores in pursuit of an older artist whose work she’s in love with. The second part of the story tells what happens between the author and Calle. She eludes, him; he becomes blocked, and suffers physical collapse. “Something strange happened along the way,” Vila-Matas wrote. “Normally, writers try to pass a work of fiction off as being real. But in Because She Never Asked, the opposite occurred: in order to give meaning to the story of my life, I found that I needed to present it as fiction.”

Inventing English

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231541244
Total Pages : 527 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Inventing English by : Seth Lerer

Download or read book Inventing English written by Seth Lerer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of English from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem, “written with real authority, enthusiasm and love for our unruly and exquisite language” (The Washington Post). Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Seth Lerer situates these developments within the larger history of English, America, and literature. This edition of his “remarkable linguistic investigation” (Booklist) features a new chapter on the influence of biblical translation and an epilogue on the relationship of English speech to writing. A unique blend of historical and personal narrative, both “erudite and accessible” (The Globe and Mail), Inventing English is the surprising tale of a language that is as dynamic as the people to whom it belongs. “Lerer is not just a scholar; he's also a fan of English—his passion is evident on every page of this examination of how our language came to sound—and look—as it does and how words came to have their current meanings…the book percolates with creative energy and will please anyone intrigued by how our richly variegated language came to be.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Portable Bunyan

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691116563
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis The Portable Bunyan by : Isabel Hofmeyr

Download or read book The Portable Bunyan written by Isabel Hofmeyr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a book become an international bestseller? What happens to it as it is translated into different languages, contexts, and societies? How is it changed by the intellectual environments it encounters? What does the transnational circulation mean for its reception back home? Exploring the international life of a particularly long-lived and widely traveled book, Isabel Hofmeyr follows The Pilgrim's Progress as it circulates through multiple contexts--and into some 200 languages--focusing on Africa, where 80 of the translations occurred. This feat of literary history is based on intensive research that criss-crossed among London, Georgia, Kingston, Bedford (John Bunyan's hometown), and much of sub-Saharan Africa. Finely written and unusually wide-ranging, it accounts for how The Pilgrim's Progress traveled abroad with the Protestant mission movement, was adapted and reworked by the societies into which it traveled, and, finally, how its circulation throughout the empire affected Bunyan's standing back in England. The result is a new intellectual approach to Bunyan--one that weaves together British, African, and Caribbean history with literary and translation studies and debates over African Christianity and mission. Even more important, this book is a rare example of a truly worldly study of "world literature"--and of the critical importance of translation, both linguistic and cultural.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Voice for Equality!

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1684125464
Total Pages : 98 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Martin Luther King Jr.: Voice for Equality! by : James Buckley

Download or read book Martin Luther King Jr.: Voice for Equality! written by James Buckley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A graphic biography of civil rights leader and American icon Martin Luther King Jr. This graphical biography tells the story of the most prominent leader of the American civil rights movement. With full-color illustrations and a historically accurate narrative, Martin Luther King Jr.: Voice for Equality! will inform and entertain readers of all ages. From his childhood in Atlanta to his rise as an international icon of human rights and a fiery orator who refused to back down in the face of adversity, King’s life story serves as an ongoing source of inspiration.

The Writer's Portable Mentor

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Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 13 : 082636005X
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis The Writer's Portable Mentor by : Priscilla Long

Download or read book The Writer's Portable Mentor written by Priscilla Long and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed to mentor writers at all levels, from beginning to quite advanced, The Writer's Portable Mentor offers a wealth of insight and crafting models from the author's twenty-plus years of teaching and creative thought. The book provides tools for structuring a book, story, or essay. It trains writers in observation and in developing a poet's ear for sound in prose. It scrutinizes the sentence strategies of the masters and offers advice on how to publish. This second edition is updated to account for changes in the publishing industry and provides hundreds of new craft models to inspire, guide, and develop every writer's work.

Mac's Problem

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811227332
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Mac's Problem by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book Mac's Problem written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enrique Vila-Matas’s new novel is perhaps his greatest: “playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists” (Colm Tóibín) Mac is currently unemployed and lives on his wife’s earnings. An avid reader, he decides at the age of sixty to keep a diary. Mac’s wife, a dyslexic, thinks he is simply wasting his time and risking sliding further into depression—but Mac persists, and is determined that this diary won't turn into a novel. However, one day, he has a chance encounter with a neighbor, a successful author of a collection of enigmatic, willfully obscure stories. Mac decides that he will read, revise, and improve his neighbor’s stories, which are mostly narrated by a ventriloquist who has lost the ability to speak in different voices. As Mac embarks on this task, he finds that the stories have a strange way of imitating life. Or is life imitating the stories? As the novel progresses, Mac becomes more adrift from reality, and both he and we become ever more immersed in literature: a literature haunted by death, but alive with the sheer pleasure of writing.

Portable Magic

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Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 1524749109
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis Portable Magic by : Emma Smith

Download or read book Portable Magic written by Emma Smith and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of one of humankind’s most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium—the book. Revelatory and entertaining in equal measure, Portable Magic will charm and challenge literature lovers of all kinds as it illuminates the transformative power and eternal appeal of the written word. Stephen King once said that books are “a uniquely portable magic.” Here, Emma Smith takes readers on a literary adventure that spans centuries and circles the globe to uncover the reasons behind our obsession with this captivating object. From disrupting the Western myth that the Gutenberg Press was the original printing project, to the decorative gift books that radicalized women to join the anti-slavery movement, to paperbacks being weaponized during World War II, to a book made entirely of plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese, Portable Magic explores how, when, and why books became so iconic. It’s not just the content within a book that compels; it’s the physical material itself, what Smith calls “bookhood”: the smell, the feel of the pages, the margins to scribble in, the illustrations on the jacket, its solid heft. Every book is designed to influence our reading experience—to enchant, enrage, delight, and disturb us—and our longstanding love affair with books in turn has had direct, momentous consequences across time.

On Paper

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307279642
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (72 download)

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Book Synopsis On Paper by : Nicholas A. Basbanes

Download or read book On Paper written by Nicholas A. Basbanes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of the Year: Mother Jones • Bloomberg News • National Post • Kirkus In these pages, Nicholas Basbanes—the consummate bibliophile’s bibliophile—shows how paper has been civilization’s constant companion. It preserves our history and gives record to our very finest literary, cultural, and scientific accomplishments. Since its invention in China nearly two millennia ago, the technology of paper has spread throughout the inhabited world. With deep knowledge and care, Basbanes traces paper’s trail from the earliest handmade sheets to the modern-day mills. Paper, yoked to politics, has played a crucial role in the unfolding of landmark events, from the American Revolution to Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers to the aftermath of 9/11. Without paper, modern hygienic practice would be unimaginable; as currency, people will do almost anything to possess it; and, as a tool of expression, it is inextricable from human culture. Lavishly researched, compellingly written, this masterful guide illuminates paper’s endless possibilities.

The Portable Faulkner

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780142437285
Total Pages : 696 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (372 download)

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Book Synopsis The Portable Faulkner by : William Faulkner

Download or read book The Portable Faulkner written by William Faulkner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-02-25 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A real contribution to the study of Faulkner’s work.” —Edmund Wilson A Penguin Classic In prose of biblical grandeur and feverish intensity, William Faulkner reconstructed the history of the American South as a tragic legend of courage and cruelty, gallantry and greed, futile nobility and obscene crimes. He set this legend in a small, minutely realized parallel universe that he called Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. No single volume better conveys the scope of Faulkner’s vision than The Portable Faulkner. The book includes self-contained episodes from the novels The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Sanctuary; the stories “The Bear,” “Spotted Horses,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “Old Man,” among others; a map of Yoknapatawpha County and a chronology of the Compson family created by Faulkner especially for this edition; and the complete text of Faulkner’s 1950 address upon receiving the Nobel Prize in literature. Malcolm Cowley’s critical introduction was praised as “splendid” by Faulkner himself. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143130676
Total Pages : 673 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers by : Hollis Robbins

Download or read book The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers written by Hollis Robbins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark collection documenting the social, political, and artistic lives of African American women throughout the tumultuous nineteenth century. Named one of NPR's Best Books of 2017. The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women’s suffrage, temperance, and civil rights, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of African American women writers be read, remembered, and addressed. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Vampire in Love

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811223477
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Vampire in Love by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book Vampire in Love written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure” (Joanna Kavenna, The New Yorker) Gathered for the first time in English, and spanning his entire career, Vampire in Love offers a selection of the Spanish master Enrique Vila-Matas’s finest short stories. An effeminate, hunchbacked barber on the verge of death falls in love with a choirboy. A fledgling writer on barbiturates visits Marguerite Duras’s Paris apartment and watches his dinner companion slip into the abyss. An unsuspecting man receives a mysterious phone call from a lonely ophthalmologist, visits his abandoned villa, and is privy to a secret. The stories in Vampire in Love, selected and brilliantly translated by the renowned translator Margaret Jull Costa, are all told with Vila-Matas’s signature erudition and wit and his provocative questioning of the interrelation of art and life.

The Book

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262535416
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Book by : Amaranth Borsuk

Download or read book The Book written by Amaranth Borsuk and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book as object, as content, as idea, as interface. What is the book in a digital age? Is it a physical object containing pages encased in covers? Is it a portable device that gives us access to entire libraries? The codex, the book as bound paper sheets, emerged around 150 CE. It was preceded by clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. Are those books? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive. Despite nostalgic paeans to the codex and its printed pages, Borsuk reminds us, the term “book” commonly refers to both medium and content. And the medium has proved to be malleable. Rather than pinning our notion of the book to a single form, Borsuk argues, we should remember its long history of transformation. Considering the book as object, content, idea, and interface, she shows that the physical form of the book has always been the site of experimentation and play. Rather than creating a false dichotomy between print and digital media, we should appreciate their continuities.

Bartleby & Co

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Author :
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780811216982
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (169 download)

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Book Synopsis Bartleby & Co by : Enrique Vila-Matas

Download or read book Bartleby & Co written by Enrique Vila-Matas and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of a hunchback who is a failed writer that has no luck with women. He is a self-described "Bartleby", named after the Herman Melville character; someone who, when asked to reveal information about themselves, will respond that they "would prefer not to."