by George Wylie Henderson (1935)
"Ollie Miss is a character you don't forget... this book is part of American as well as Black American literature." -- Academic Library Book Review Men are paralyzed in the presence of Ollie Miss, stunned by her vivid sensuality. Combining beauty, strength, composure, and self-sufficiency, she emerges from nowhere to take an all-black backwoods settlement in Macon Country, Georgia, by storm. Despite her poverty and her lack of education, Ollie Miss is determined to make a life for herself as she struggles to find independence, romance, and fulfillment. One of the key novels of the 1930s Harlem Renaissance, Ollie Miss was published to widespread critical acclaim. A major contribution to the rich legacy of African-American literature, the evocative tale unfolds in the early decades of the twentieth century. Set amid a community of sharecroppers in the deep South, the story provides an atmospheric record of the period of social change that culminated in the civil rights movement"--
Harold L. Davis
H. L. Davis' earthy and humerous look at a young man learning self-reliance in the Oregon wilderness after family complications and problems from a jailhouse delivery push him out on his own among horse traders, jail breakers, fortune hunters, suspected murderers, and wide-eyed innocents. His tale of regional history is the story of our American culture.
George Santayana
"Published in 1935, George Santayana's The Last Puritan was the American philosopher's only novel and it became an instant best seller, immediately linked in its painful voyage of self-discovery to The Education of Henry Adams. It is essentially a novel of ideas expressed in the birth, life, and early death of Oliver Alden. Oliver escapes puritanical self-destruction, the inability to celebrate life, through a form of self-knowledge that Santayana endorses throughout his moral philosophy." "The Last Puritan is volume four in a new critical edition of The Works of George Santayana that restores Santayana's original text and provides important new scholarly information. Books in this series - the first complete publication of Santayana's works - include an editorial apparatus with notes to the text (identifying persons, places, and ideas), textual commentary (including a description of the composition and publication history, along with a discussion of editorial methods and decisions), lists of variants and emendations, and line-end hyphenations." "This edition of The Last Puritan was originally based on the typescript for the first part of the novel. The exciting discovery of the second half of the typescript in the fall of 1992 has resulted in a consistent copy-text throughout, making its text more firmly based on Santayana's intentions." "Irving Singer's introduction highlights Santayana's philosophical and artistic concerns and addresses issues of homosexuality raised by the depiction of the novel's two protagonists, Oliver and Mario, and of the relationship between Oliver and the rogue character Jim Darnley. Finding the term "homosexual novel" too reductionist and imprecise, Singer brings to light the author's festive celebration of reality, including ideal friendship, and his success in illuminating the pervasive moral dilemmas that people face throughout their existence." "The Santayana Edition was initiated by members of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Comite Conjunto Hispano - Norteamericano para la Cooperacion Cultural y Educativa. This volume has been awarded the "Approved Edition" emblem of the Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions. Editors of The Works of George Santayana include: Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., General Editor, Department of Philosophy and Humanites at Texas A&M University; William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor, Department of English at Bucknell University; and Donna Hanna-Calvert, Associate Editor at Texas A&M University. Irving Singer is Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Meaning in Life: The Creation of Value."--BOOK JACKET.
Betty Smith
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.
James Thurber
In *Fables of Our Time* Thurber the Moralist is in the ascendancy. Here are a score or more lessons-in-prose dedicated to conventional sinners and proving-what you will. The fables are imperishably illustrated and are supplemented by Mr. Thurber's own pictorial interpretations of famous poems in a wonderful and joyous assemblage.