by John Updike (2011)
A collection of the eloquent, insightful, and beautifully written prose works that Updike was compiling when he died in January 2009, this book opens with a self-portrait of the writer in winter--a Prospero who, though he fears his most dazzling performances are behind him, reveals himself in every sentence to be in deep conversation with the sources of his magic.
Derek Mahon
Derek Mahon, best known as a poet, worked as a freelance journalist for many years, and his first prose book brings together a selection of his feature articles, lectures and book reviews. Some of these, like the essays on MacNeice and Beckett, Brian Moore and J.G. Farrell, are seriously 'literary' in nature; while others, like the reports from Coleraine, Rome and Los Angeles, are more discursive and relaxed, if not downright mischievous.
Steven Watson
From New York to San Francisco, Texas, Mexico, and beyond, the fascinating group of maverick poets and writers known as the Beats lived a life of wild experimentation, rebelling against the buttoned-up conformity of the 1950s. With text accompanied by more than one hundred photographs, The Birth of the Beat Generation brings their rebellion into sharp focus, tracing the connections between such figures as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Herbert Huncke to reveal the legend that would make them into cultural icons.
Lilian R. Furst
"While Countless Memoirs have been written about depression and therapy, no one has examined how the "talking cure" of psychotherapy is presented in novels and other works of literature. Beginning with an overview of the principles of psychotherapy and its growing use as a treatment for mental and emotional disorders, Lilian R. Furst addresses the patient's view of the value of talk."--BOOK JACKET. "Furst examines such well-known works as Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, Plath's The Bell Jar, and Lodge's Therapy, as well as lesser-known novels, to discuss how patients react to psychotherapy as a cure for mental and emotional disorders."--BOOK JACKET.
James Fenton
"Why should a poet feel the need to be original? How does genius apprentice itself? What connections exist between bad thinking and bad verse, or good verse and bad politics? In these sharp-eyed critiques and appreciations of the essential poets of our time, Whitbread Prize-winner James Fenton examines some of the most intriguing questions behind the making of poetry - questions of creativity and the "earning" of success, of judgment, tutorage, rivalry, and ambition." "In these lectures, many of which appeared in The New York Review of Books, Fenton makes sense of the last century in poetry, and he explores its antecedents and legacies with the lucidity, wit, and gusto that have made him famous."--BOOK JACKET.