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.

PORTABLE LITERATURE: READING, REACTING, WRITING, Ninth Edition, includes a wide selection of essential classic and contemporary readings along with brief introductions to the literary genres, useful study questions and prompts, and a down-to-earth, accessible guide to writing about literature. This streamlined edition is an affordable, portable alternative to the full-length and compact versions of this popular Introduction to Literature text. This edition has been updated to reflect guidelines from the 2016 MLA HANDBOOK, Eighth Edition. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Learn how to write about literature the convenient, affordable way! COMPACT LITERATURE: READING, REACTING, WRITING,9E helps you succeed in class and make literature a part of your life. Combining a broad selection of literature with time-proven writing instruction, this reader-friendly text walks you step-by-step through the entire research and writing process, helping you learn to craft literary analyses and arguments. Demonstrating that writing about literature is a process of discovery, examination, and debate, the text includes a comprehensive guide to writing about literature with full coverage of critical thinking and argument. Sampler chapters on fiction, poetry, and drama involve you in the variety and diversity of literature through brief, accessible works that showcase representative selections from four popular contemporary literary subgenres. This edition has been updated to reflect guidelines from the 2016 MLA HANDBOOK, Eighth Edition.

Far less expensive than comparable guides, Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide is an ideal supplement for writing courses where literature anthologies and individual literary works that lack writing instruction are assigned. This brief guide introduces strategies for reading literature, explains the writing process and common writing assignments for literature courses, provides instruction in writing about fiction, poetry, and drama, and includes coverage of writing a research paper as well as sections on literary criticism and theory. This volume in the popular Bedford/St. Martin's series of Portable Anthologies and Guides offers a trademark combination of high quality and great value.

Learn how to write about literature the convenient, affordable way! COMPACT LITERATURE: READING, REACTING, WRITING,9E helps you succeed in class and make literature a part of your life. Combining a broad selection of literature with time-proven writing instruction, this reader-friendly text walks you step-by-step through the entire research and writing process, helping you learn to craft literary analyses and arguments. Demonstrating that writing about literature is a process of discovery, examination, and debate, the text includes a comprehensive guide to writing about literature with full coverage of critical thinking and argument. Sampler chapters on fiction, poetry, and drama involve you in the variety and diversity of literature through brief, accessible works that showcase representative selections from four popular contemporary literary subgenres. Each student text is packaged with a free Cengage Essential Reference Card to the MLA HANDBOOK, Eighth Edition.

The Norton Introduction to Literature presents an engaging, balanced selection of literature to suit any course. Offering a thorough treatment of historical and critical context, the most comprehensive media package available, and a rich suite of tools to encourage close reading and thoughtful writing, the Shorter Twelfth Edition is unparalleled in its guidance of understanding, analyzing, and writing about literature.

'A fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book...I lost count of the times I exclaimed with delight when I read a nugget of information I hadn't encountered before' Val McDermid, The Times Most of what we say about books is really about the words inside them- the rosy nostalgic glow for childhood reading, the lifetime companionship of a much-loved novel. But books are things as well as words, objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines, loosen their leaves and write in their margins, so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are, as Stephen King put it, 'a uniquely portable magic'. Here, Emma Smith shows us why. Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands, exploring when, why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millennium's worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small, Smith reveals that, as much as their contents, it is books' physical form - their 'bookhood' - that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Cooper's Riders, to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese, this composite artisanal object has, for centuries, embodied and extended relationships between readers, nations, ideologies and cultures, in significant and unpredictable ways. Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books, Portable Magic hails the rise of the mass-market paperback, and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg; it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers, and proposes new definitions of a 'classic'-and even of the book itself. Ultimately, it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal - and more turbulent - than we tend to imagine.