Absurdist Angles on History

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Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1418427543
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (184 download)

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Book Synopsis Absurdist Angles on History by : Merritt Abrash

Download or read book Absurdist Angles on History written by Merritt Abrash and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2004-09-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The plays in Absurdist Angles on History: Three Plays look at absurdities of modern history from three different angles. How World War I Happened applies absurdist dramatic treatment to the outbreak of the war, an episode largely absurd to start with. The wishful thinking and frivolous motivations of the main actors are more effectively highlighted by absurdist exaggeration than by customary historical analysis. How Karl Got Over His Bad Dream applies an absurdist twist to the origins of Marx and Freuds key theories an angle offering insights into the theories themselves at the same time as extracting maximum humor from farcical interpretations. How it All Might Have Ended, which has been professionally produced, posits a post nuclear war world with few survivors a situation acknowledged during the cold war to be an actual possibility. The dramatic treatment in this case is not absurdist, since the human race placing itself at such risk is a fact absurd enough not to need enhancement. Although this play, in common with How World War I Happened, is for the most part comedic, both conclude in despair at Western civilizations self inflicted damage from chronic shortsightedness and perilous priorities.

Fourteen Fraught Fables and One Debatable Day

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Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1456743368
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (567 download)

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Book Synopsis Fourteen Fraught Fables and One Debatable Day by : Merritt Abrash

Download or read book Fourteen Fraught Fables and One Debatable Day written by Merritt Abrash and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As suggested by the title Fourteen Fraught Fables and One Debatable Day, this book is composed of two independent parts. The fourteen fables are brief subjective tales, some which might be called surreal, others simply fantastic, but all of them bizarre products of a rare imagination. They take place in a world which seems at first very like our own, but which by the end of each has altered into something disconcertingly unexpected. A characteristic example: through sheer will power, the narrator rides his exercise bicycle off its stand and into realms he had never dreamt of. The longer work, One Debatable Day, tells of the humorously narrated quest by Valentinevery much of an Everyman in his virtues and shortcomingsto find out what the particular day of the story should be about. This proves more difficult than he (or the reader) might have thought, since Valentines commitment to simple honesty and his respect for sincerity in relationships are shared by few of the wide range of people he encounters. Not until he has shaken himself free from exaggerated aestheticism, political hypocrisy and self-serving religious formulations does he finally gain insight into what the day should be about, aided by a presumed guardian angel and a movie-buff cavalry horse. His search is fulfilled in extended episodes of original humor, both high and low, playing out against the background of the desire of every human being to understand how each of ones days ought to be lived.

The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 100008177X
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd by : Mark Leffert

Download or read book The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd written by Mark Leffert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-07 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd offers an interdisciplinary study of Existentialism and Phenomenology and their importance to the clinical work of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. The concept of Absurdity, developed by Camus, has never been applied to the therapeutic situation or directly contrasted with its antithesis; the search for personal meaning. The book begins with narrative accounts of the historical development of Psychoanalysis, Existentialism and Phenomenology in 20th century Europe. The focus here is on fin de siècle Vienna and Paris between the Wars as the principal incubators of the two disciplines. Accompanied by composite case illustrations, Leffert then explores his own development of the Psychoanalysis of the Absurd, drawing on the work of Camus, Heidegger and Sartre. Absurdity is first discussed in relation to the Bio-Psycho-Social Self and Dasein is posited as a bridge concept, with personal meaning as the antithesis to Absurdity, before being discussed in relation to the world and how it impinges on self. A final chapter attempts to tie together particular issues raised by the book: Subjective well-being, Meaning, thrownness, Absurdity, Death and Death Anxiety and how we have become technologically enhanced human beings. Existential psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have, until now, largely gone their own way: the goal of this book is to fold them back into Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Establishing that the concept of Absurdity is of singular clinical importance to both diagnosis and therapeutic action, this book will be of great interest to clinicians, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scientists.

Dying Every Day

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0385351720
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (853 download)

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Book Synopsis Dying Every Day by : James Romm

Download or read book Dying Every Day written by James Romm and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed classical historian, author of Ghost on the Throne (“Gripping . . . the narrative verve of a born writer and the erudition of a scholar” —Daniel Mendelsohn) and editor of The Landmark Arrian:The Campaign of Alexander (“Thrilling” —The New York Times Book Review), a high-stakes drama full of murder, madness, tyranny, perversion, with the sweep of history on the grand scale. At the center, the tumultuous life of Seneca, ancient Rome’s preeminent writer and philosopher, beginning with banishment in his fifties and subsequent appointment as tutor to twelve-year-old Nero, future emperor of Rome. Controlling them both, Nero’s mother, Julia Agrippina the Younger, Roman empress, great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus, sister of the Emperor Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Emperor Claudius. James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman. Romm writes that Seneca watched over Nero as teacher, moral guide, and surrogate father, and, at seventeen, when Nero abruptly ascended to become emperor of Rome, Seneca, a man never avid for political power became, with Nero, the ruler of the Roman Empire. We see how Seneca was able to control his young student, how, under Seneca’s influence, Nero ruled with intelligence and moderation, banned capital punishment, reduced taxes, gave slaves the right to file complaints against their owners, pardoned prisoners arrested for sedition. But with time, as Nero grew vain and disillusioned, Seneca was unable to hold sway over the emperor, and between Nero’s mother, Agrippina—thought to have poisoned her second husband, and her third, who was her uncle (Claudius), and rumored to have entered into an incestuous relationship with her son—and Nero’s father, described by Suetonius as a murderer and cheat charged with treason, adultery, and incest, how long could the young Nero have been contained? Dying Every Day is a portrait of Seneca’s moral struggle in the midst of madness and excess. In his treatises, Seneca preached a rigorous ethical creed, exalting heroes who defied danger to do what was right or embrace a noble death. As Nero’s adviser, Seneca was presented with a more complex set of choices, as the only man capable of summoning the better aspect of Nero’s nature, yet, remaining at Nero’s side and colluding in the evil regime he created. Dying Every Day is the first book to tell the compelling and nightmarish story of the philosopher-poet who was almost a king, tied to a tyrant—as Seneca, the paragon of reason, watched his student spiral into madness and whose descent saw five family murders, the Fire of Rome, and a savage purge that destroyed the supreme minds of the Senate’s golden age.

The Greatest Empire

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199392889
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis The Greatest Empire by : Emily Wilson

Download or read book The Greatest Empire written by Emily Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By any measure, Seneca (?4-65AD) is one of the most significant figures in both Roman literature and ancient philosophy. His writings are voluminous and diverse, ranging from satire to disturbing, violent tragedies, from metaphysical theory to moral and political discussions of virtue and anger. Seneca found himself at the turbulent center of Roman imperial power, making him thus an important witness to the Empire's first dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. Exiled by the emperor Claudius in the wake of a sex scandal, he was eventually brought back to Rome to become tutor and, later, speech-writer and advisor to Nero. Seneca was suspected of plotting against Nero, condemned to die, and ultimately took his own life-an act that is one of the most iconic suicides in Western history. The life and works of Seneca pose a number of fascinating challenges. How can we reconcile the bloody tragedies with the prose works advocating a life of Stoic tranquility? How are we to balance Seneca the man of principle, who counseled a life of calm and simplicity, with Seneca the man of the moment, who amassed a vast personal fortune in the service of an emperor seen by many, at the time and afterwards, as an insane tyrant? In this definitive and moving biography, Emily Wilson presents Seneca as a man under enormous pressure, struggling for compromise in a world of absolutism. The Greatest Empire offers us the portrait of a life lived perilously in the gap between political realities and philosophical ideals, between what we aspire to be and what we are.

The United States of Absurdity

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Publisher : Ten Speed Press
ISBN 13 : 0399578765
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The United States of Absurdity by : Dave Anthony

Download or read book The United States of Absurdity written by Dave Anthony and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The creators of the podcast The Dollop present illustrated profiles of the weird, outrageous, NSFW, and downright absurd tales from American history that you weren't taught in school. The United States of Absurdity presents short, informative, and hilarious stories of the most outlandish (but true) people, events, and more from United States history. Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds cover the weird stories you didn't learn in history class, such as 10-Cent Beer Night, the Jackson Cheese, and the Kentucky Meat Shower, accompanied by full-page illustrations that bring each historical "milestone" to life in full-color.

Courage Under Fire

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Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 : 0817936939
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis Courage Under Fire by : James B. Stockdale

Download or read book Courage Under Fire written by James B. Stockdale and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When physical disability from combat wounds brought about Jim Stockdale's early retirement from military life, he had the distinction of being the only three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor. His writings have been many and varied, but all converge on the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity.

Looking for The Stranger

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022624167X
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Looking for The Stranger by : Alice Kaplan

Download or read book Looking for The Stranger written by Alice Kaplan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A National Book Award-finalist biographer tells the story of how a young man in his 20s who had never written a novel turned out a masterpiece that still grips readers more than 70 years later and is considered a rite of passage for readers around the world, "--NoveList.

Film editing - history, theory and practice

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Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526141388
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Film editing - history, theory and practice by : Don Fairservice

Download or read book Film editing - history, theory and practice written by Don Fairservice and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first-ever comprehensive examination of the film editor's craft from the beginning of cinema to the present day. Of all the film-making crafts, editing is the least understood. Using examples drawn from classic film texts, this book clarifies the editor's role and explains how the editing process maximises the effectiveness of the filmed material. Traces the development of editing from the primitive forms of early cinema through the upheavals caused by the advent of sound, to explore the challenges to convention that began in the 1960s and which continue into the twenty-first century. New digital technologies and the dominance of the moving image as an increasingly central part of everyday life have produced a radical rewriting of the rules of audio-visual address. It is not a technical treatise; instructive and accessible, this historically-based insight into filmmaking practice will prove invaluable to students of film and also appeal to a much wider readership.

Albert Camus

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801462371
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Albert Camus by : Robert D. Zaretsky

Download or read book Albert Camus written by Robert D. Zaretsky and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like many others of my generation, I first read Camus in high school. I carried him in my backpack while traveling across Europe, I carried him into (and out of) relationships, and I carried him into (and out of) difficult periods of my life. More recently, I have carried him into university classes that I have taught, coming out of them with a renewed appreciation of his art. To be sure, my idea of Camus thirty years ago scarcely resembles my idea of him today. While my admiration and attachment to his writings remain as great as they were long ago, the reasons are more complicated and critical.—Robert Zaretsky On October 16, 1957, Albert Camus was dining in a small restaurant on Paris's Left Bank when a waiter approached him with news: the radio had just announced that Camus had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Camus insisted that a mistake had been made and that others were far more deserving of the honor than he. Yet Camus was already recognized around the world as the voice of a generation—a status he had achieved with dizzying speed. He published his first novel, The Stranger, in 1942 and emerged from the war as the spokesperson for the Resistance and, although he consistently rejected the label, for existentialism. Subsequent works of fiction (including the novels The Plague and The Fall), philosophy (notably, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel), drama, and social criticism secured his literary and intellectual reputation. And then on January 4, 1960, three years after accepting the Nobel Prize, he was killed in a car accident. In a book distinguished by clarity and passion, Robert Zaretsky considers why Albert Camus mattered in his own lifetime and continues to matter today, focusing on key moments that shaped Camus's development as a writer, a public intellectual, and a man. Each chapter is devoted to a specific event: Camus's visit to Kabylia in 1939 to report on the conditions of the local Berber tribes; his decision in 1945 to sign a petition to commute the death sentence of collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach; his famous quarrel with Jean-Paul Sartre in 1952 over the nature of communism; and his silence about the war in Algeria in 1956. Both engaged and engaging, Albert Camus: Elements of a Life is a searching companion to a profoundly moral and lucid writer whose works provide a guide for those perplexed by the absurdity of the human condition and the world's resistance to meaning.

Hollywood and Israel

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231544928
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Hollywood and Israel by : Tony Shaw

Download or read book Hollywood and Israel written by Tony Shaw and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2023 Shapiro Best Book Award, Association for Israel Studies From Frank Sinatra’s early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg’s present-day peacemaking, Hollywood has long enjoyed a “special relationship” with Israel. This book offers a groundbreaking account of this relationship, both on and off the screen. Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman investigate the many ways in which Hollywood’s moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades. They explore the complex story of Israel’s relationship with American Jewry and illuminate how media and soft power have shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shaw and Goodman draw on a vast range of archival sources to demonstrate how show business has played a pivotal role in crafting the U.S.-Israel alliance. They probe the influence of Israeli diplomacy on Hollywood’s output and lobbying activities, but also highlight the limits of ideological devotion in high-risk entertainment industries. The book details the political involvement with Israel—and Palestine—of household names such as Eddie Cantor, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Vanessa Redgrave, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro, and Natalie Portman. It also spotlights the role of key behind-the-scenes players like Dore Schary, Arthur Krim, Arnon Milchan, and Haim Saban. Bringing the story up to the moment, Shaw and Goodman contend that the Hollywood-Israel relationship might now be at a turning point. Shedding new light on the political power that images and celebrity can wield, Hollywood and Israel shows the world’s entertainment capital to be an important player in international affairs.

The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307827828
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays by : Albert Camus

Download or read book The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays written by Albert Camus and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.

American Film History

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1118475178
Total Pages : 568 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (184 download)

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Book Synopsis American Film History by : Cynthia Lucia

Download or read book American Film History written by Cynthia Lucia and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-06-25 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative collection of introductory and specialized readings explores the rich and innovative history of this period in American cinema. Spanning an essential range of subjects from the early 1900s Nickelodeon to the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, it combines a broad historical context with careful readings of individual films. Charts the rise of film in early twentieth-century America from its origins to 1960, exploring mainstream trends and developments, along with topics often relegated to the margins of standard film histories Covers diverse issues ranging from silent film and its iconic figures such as Charlie Chaplin, to the coming of sound and the rise of film genres, studio moguls, and, later, the Production Code and Cold War Blacklist Designed with both students and scholars in mind: each section opens with an historical overview and includes chapters that provide close, careful readings of individual films clustered around specific topics Accessibly structured by historical period, offering valuable cultural, social, and political contexts Contains careful, close analysis of key filmmakers and films from the era including D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, Cecil B. DeMille, Don Juan, The Jazz Singer, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Scarface, Red Dust, Glorifying the American Girl, Meet Me in St. Louis, Citizen Kane, Bambi, Frank Capra's Why We Fightseries, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Rebel Without a Cause, Force of Evil, and selected American avant-garde and underground films, among many others. Additional online resources such as sample syllabi, which include suggested readings and filmographies for both general specialized courses, will be available online. May be used alongside American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present, to provide an authoritative study of American cinema through the new millennium

So Far From God

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Publisher : WW Norton
ISBN 13 : 0393326934
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (933 download)

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Book Synopsis So Far From God by : Ana Castillo

Download or read book So Far From God written by Ana Castillo and published by WW Norton. This book was released on 2005-06-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A delightful novel...impossible to resist." —Barbara Kingsolver, Los Angeles Times Book Review Sofia and her fated daughters, Fe, Esperanza, Caridad, and la Loca, endure hardship and enjoy love in the sleepy New Mexico hamlet of Tome, a town teeming with marvels where the comic and the horrific, the real and the supernatural, reside.

Monsieur Pain

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811218899
Total Pages : 135 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Monsieur Pain by : Roberto Bolaño

Download or read book Monsieur Pain written by Roberto Bolaño and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roberto Bolano takes us into an odd, dark, but comic underworld in this strangely tender noir novel. A Bolano classic. The Peruvian poet César Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness and unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow him and bribe him not to treat Vallejo. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, Pain does not intend to abandon his new patient, but his access to the hospital is barred and Madame Reynaud mysteriously leaves Paris. Another practitioner of the occult sciences enters the story (working for Generalissimo Franco, using his mesmeric expertise to interrogate prisoners) — as do Mme. Curie, tarot cards, an assassination, and nightmares. Meanwhile, a haunted Monsieur Pain wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . .

Wide Angle

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 622 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Wide Angle by :

Download or read book Wide Angle written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quarterly journal of film history, theory, criticism, and practice.

The Sellout

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374712247
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sellout by : Paul Beatty

Download or read book The Sellout written by Paul Beatty and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Man Booker Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature New York Times Bestseller Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, The Denver Post, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly Named a "Must-Read" by Flavorwire and New York Magazine's "Vulture" Blog A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant. Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral. Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.