Selected Letters of William Faulkner
Title | Selected Letters of William Faulkner PDF eBook |
Author | William Faulkner |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 518 |
Release | 1978 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN |
The Selected Letters of William Faulkner
Title | The Selected Letters of William Faulkner PDF eBook |
Author | Joseph Leo Blotner |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 1976 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The publisher's setting copy has some editorial corrections. The collection also contains a galley proof, a page proof, a set of blue line gatherings, revised repros, a master set repros, and a genealogical chart [6 items].
Briefe, engl. Selected letters of William Faulkner
Title | Briefe, engl. Selected letters of William Faulkner PDF eBook |
Author | William Faulkner |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 1977 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Selected Letters of William Styron
Title | Selected Letters of William Styron PDF eBook |
Author | William Styron |
Publisher | Random House |
Pages | 706 |
Release | 2012-12-04 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 1400068061 |
In 1950, at the age of twenty-four, William Clark Styron, Jr., wrote to his mentor, Professor William Blackburn of Duke University. The young writer was struggling with his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, and he was nervous about whether his “strain and toil” would amount to anything. “When I mature and broaden,” Styron told Blackburn, “I expect to use the language on as exalted and elevated a level as I can sustain. I believe that a writer should accommodate language to his own peculiar personality, and mine wants to use great words, evocative words, when the situation demands them.” In February 1952, Styron was awarded the Prix de Rome of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which crowned him a literary star. In Europe, Styron met and married Rose Burgunder, and found himself immersed in a new generation of expatriate writers. His relationships with George Plimpton and Peter Matthiessen culminated in Styron introducing the debut issue of The Paris Review. Literary critic Alfred Kazin described him as one of the postwar “super-egotists” who helped transform American letters. His controversial The Confessions of Nat Turner won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize, while Sophie’s Choice was awarded the 1980 National Book Award, and Darkness Visible, Styron’s groundbreaking recounting of his ordeal with depression, was not only a literary triumph, but became a landmark in the field. Part and parcel of Styron’s literary ascendance were his friendships with Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, John and Jackie Kennedy, Arthur Miller, James Jones, Carlos Fuentes, Wallace Stegner, Robert Penn Warren, Philip Roth, C. Vann Woodward, and many of the other leading writers and intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. This incredible volume takes readers on an American journey from FDR to George W. Bush through the trenchant observations of one of the country’s greatest writers. Not only will readers take pleasure in William Styron’s correspondence with and commentary about the people and events that made the past century such a momentous and transformative time, they will also share the writer’s private meditations on the very art of writing. Advance praise for Selected Letters of William Styron “I first encountered Bill Styron when, at twenty, I read The Confessions of Nat Turner. Hillary and I became friends with Bill and Rose early in my presidency, but I continued to read him, fascinated by the man and his work, his triumphs and troubles, the brilliant lights and dark corners of his amazing mind. These letters, carefully and lovingly selected by Rose, offer real insight into both the great writer and the good man.”—President Bill Clinton “The Bill Styron revealed in these letters is altogether the Bill Styron who was a dear friend and esteemed colleague to me for close to fifty years. The humor, the generosity, the loyalty, the self-awareness, the commitment to literature, the openness, the candor about matters closest to him—all are on display in this superb selection of his correspondence. The directness in the artful sentences is such that I felt his beguiling presence all the while that I was enjoying one letter after another.”—Philip Roth “Bill Styron’s letters were never envisioned, far less composed, as part of the Styron oeuvre, yet that is what they turn out to be. Brilliant, passionate, eloquent, insightful, moving, dirty-minded, indignant, and hilarious, they accumulate power in the reading, becoming in themselves a work of literature.”—Peter Matthiessen
Far from Home
Title | Far from Home PDF eBook |
Author | Ashby Bland Crowder |
Publisher | LSU Press |
Pages | 278 |
Release | 2008-01-01 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0807132721 |
Often compared to William Faulkner, renowned American writer William Humphrey (1924–1997) sought to shatter myths about the South in such acclaimed novels as Home from the Hill, The Ordways, and Proud Flesh, and in his voluminous short stories, critical essays, and memoirs. This collection of Humphrey’s best letters deserves space on the bookshelf alongside these earlier works. Beginning in the 1940s when, as a true starving artist, he wore borrowed clothes and could afford only one meal a day, the letters move to his time as a goatherd, his stint as a teacher at Bard College, and his middle years in Europe. They continue as he returns to America and teaches at Washington and Lee, MIT, Princeton, and Smith, and decrease in number as his health declines in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Humphrey corresponded with some of the central figures in the literary and intellectual life of the twentieth century, including writers such as Katherine Anne Porter and Leonard Woolf, and the publishers Alfred and Blanche Knopf. These letters present a vivid picture of Humphrey as he provides commentary on his contemporaries through personal observations combined with sharp critical judgments. Humphrey amuses readers with witty anecdotes and charming tales, including a hilarious account of Christmas dinner with Robert Lowell, a story about British intellectual Cyril Connolly’s near arrest in New York City, and a series of enchanting misunderstandings between Humphrey and his French publisher. The letters also provide remarkable insights into Humphrey’s own works, showing him to be a man happiest when he forgot about himself also prone to plunging into despondency. The correspondence unforgettably reveals his troubled soul and his life as a quintessential artist: a man with the unswerving drive to make a lasting contribution to American literature.
Selected Letters of Langston Hughes
Title | Selected Letters of Langston Hughes PDF eBook |
Author | Langston Hughes |
Publisher | Knopf |
Pages | 482 |
Release | 2015-02-10 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 0385353561 |
This is the first comprehensive selection from the correspondence of the iconic and beloved Langston Hughes. It offers a life in letters that showcases his many struggles as well as his memorable achievements. Arranged by decade and linked by expert commentary, the volume guides us through Hughes’s journey in all its aspects: personal, political, practical, and—above all—literary. His letters range from those written to family members, notably his father (who opposed Langston’s literary ambitions), and to friends, fellow artists, critics, and readers who sought him out by mail. These figures include personalities such as Carl Van Vechten, Blanche Knopf, Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Vachel Lindsay, Ezra Pound, Richard Wright, Kurt Weill, Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, and Muhammad Ali. The letters tell the story of a determined poet precociously finding his mature voice; struggling to realize his literary goals in an environment generally hostile to blacks; reaching out bravely to the young and challenging them to aspire beyond the bonds of segregation; using his artistic prestige to serve the disenfranchised and the cause of social justice; irrepressibly laughing at the world despite its quirks and humiliations. Venturing bravely on what he called the “big sea” of life, Hughes made his way forward always aware that his only hope of self-fulfillment and a sense of personal integrity lay in diligently pursuing his literary vocation. Hughes’s voice in these pages, enhanced by photographs and quotations from his poetry, allows us to know him intimately and gives us an unusually rich picture of this generous, visionary, gratifyingly good man who was also a genius of modern American letters.
Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
Title | Essays, Speeches & Public Letters PDF eBook |
Author | William Faulkner |
Publisher | Modern Library |
Pages | 384 |
Release | 2011-04-20 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 1588363511 |
An essential collection of William Faulkner’s mature nonfiction work, updated, with an abundance of new material. This unique volume includes Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (in which he suggests that Hemingway has found God), and newly collected gems, such as the acerbic essay “On Criticism” and the beguiling “Note on A Fable.” It also contains eloquently opinionated public letters on everything from race relations and the nature of fiction to wild-squirrel hunting on his property. This is the most comprehensive collection of Faulkner’s brilliant non-fiction work, and a rare look into the life of an American master.