Have you taken children to a gallery recently? Did you struggle to explain the work to them in plain , simple English? With this new Dung Beetle book, both parents and young children can learn about contemporary art, and understand many of its key themes. Join John and Susan on their exciting journey through the art exhibition, where, with Mummy's help, they will discover the real meaning of all the contemporary art works from empty rooms, to vagina paintings or giant inflatable dogs.
A Jew's 50-year search for his Christian wife and child. Separated in World War II Kiev, he learns she went to Warsaw, follows, is caught and sent to a death camp. After the war, thinking him dead, she goes to Canada. He follows, loses track, then a locket in a flea market sends him searching again.
Elia, Daughter of the Earth is a powerful story about embracing our uniqueness and being true to who we are—no matter whether that brings us favor or threats. Elia is a young woman who’s had a difficult childhood but also realizes she has special gifts. Initially, she’s reluctant to let anyone know about her powers, but eventually she sees that she can help others by revealing them. She gains thousands of disciples as well as deep heartache when social media catapults her to global fame—and makes her a target. Her deep connection to the natural world provides her with the grounding and strength she needs to fulfill her destiny. Elia, even with her extraordinary powers, is someone the reader easily relates to. On her journey, she finds love, friendship, loyalty, and other people with unique powers. The reader is captivated by her journey and cheers her every step of the way. This is a brave book, and an inspiring one. Highly recommended.
The inherent 'metropolitanism' of writing for a Romantic-era periodical is here explored through the Elia articles that Charles Lamb wrote for the London Magazine.
This collection of nearly three hundred letters gives us the life of Elia Kazan unfiltered, with all the passion, vitality, and raw honesty that made him such an important and formidable stage director (A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman), film director (On the Waterfront, East of Eden), novelist, and memoirist. Elia Kazan’s lifelong determination to be a “sincere, conscious, practicing artist” resounds in these letters—fully annotated throughout—in every phase of his career: his exciting apprenticeship with the new and astonishing Group Theatre, as stagehand, stage manager, and actor (Waiting for Lefty, Golden Boy) . . . his first tentative and then successful attempts at directing for the theater and movies (The Skin of Our Teeth, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) . . . his cofounding in 1947 of the Actors Studio and his codirection of the nascent Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center . . . his innovative and celebrated work on Broadway (All My Sons, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, J.B.) and in Hollywood (Gentleman’s Agreement, Splendor in the Grass, A Face in the Crowd, Baby Doll) . . . his birth as a writer. Kazan directed virtually back-to-back the greatest American dramas of the era—by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams—and helped shape their future productions. Here we see how he collaborated with these and other writers: Clifford Odets, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, and Budd Schulberg among them. The letters give us a unique grasp of his luminous insights on acting, directing, producing, as he writes to and about Marlon Brando, James Dean, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Boris Aronson, and Sam Spiegel, among others. We see Kazan’s heated dealings with studio moguls Darryl Zanuck and Jack Warner, his principled resistance to film censorship, and the upheavals of his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. These letters record as well the inner life of the artist and the man. We see his startling candor in writing to his first wife, his confidante and adviser, Molly Day Thacher—they did not mince words with each other. And we see a father’s letters to and about his children. An extraordinary portrait of a complex, intense, monumentally talented man who engaged the political, moral, and artistic currents of the twentieth century.
I am but a leaf carried by the winds of destiny, and I find myself faced with the task of navigating the traditions of a society I never imagined I would challenge. How can I, with mere words, capture the essence of a journey that breaks the bonds of the tangible and the comprehensible? It is I who leave the placid shores of gentle comfort, launching myself into the turbulent waters of passion. Passion, with its evocative name, a burning and eternal feeling, becomes the stage where my destiny unfolds in all its glory. It is here, in the vigor of youth, that I meet the one who would change my life forever - oh Darius, how his name still echoes in the caverns of my heart, like the last breath of a wilting rose. He is the embodiment of the eternal paradox - love and suffering, blessing and opprobrium, all contained in a single being. Our love is an explosion of emotions, bright as a star and devastating in equal measure. For a moment, I believe I have defied the immutable laws of tradition, freeing him from the chains of his family heritage. But society, in its cruel and infinite wisdom, has other plans for our love. Traditions and prejudices judge us, suffocating passion, are like implacable forces that claim what belongs to them, tearing him from my arms as easily as winter steals the leaves from the trees. The forces that separate us - the intrigues and rivalries of our families (Gareth and Shadowthorn) - are like the tides of the ocean: relentless, inexorable. And he, my beloved wanderer, disappears into the misty horizon without a goodbye, leaving only the echo of his passing in the void of my being. Alone, I face the abyss left by his departure. I fear that his family's legacy will repeat itself, like an eternal cycle of the seasons. But my heart, filled with the light of our love, proves to be stronger than the shadows that threaten to swallow me. Now, as I make my own way through the labyrinths of existence, I feel him watching from afar—a silent guardian on the shores of my personal world. He understands, as I do, that I must navigate the stormy seas of life alone to discover the fundamental truths of my being. Our story, etched on the pages of time, is a testament to the fundamental duality of existence. Every joy and every pain we experience are like drops of water that make up the greater ocean of life. We are blessed and martyred, we experience the best and worst of each other and of ourselves. And yet, in the end, love emerges as the fundamental force of this world we share. Like the roots that hold a tree steady against the storms, the love we share keeps us eternally connected, transcending the barriers of time, space, and circumstance. This is my story—a chronicle of love—a reflection of life in miniature, vast and mysterious, and ineffably beautiful. And in the end, after all the suffering and all the trials, we are able to truly love. And that, dear reader, makes every moment of this journey worthwhile.
Few figures in film and theater history tower like Elia Kazan. Born in 1909 to Greek parents in Istanbul, Turkey, he arrived in America with incomparable vision and drive, and by the 1950s he was the most important and influential director in the nation, simultaneously dominating both theater and film. His productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman reshaped the values of the stage. His films -- most notably On the Waterfront -- brought a new realism and a new intensity of performance to the movies. Kazan's career spanned times of enormous change in his adopted country, and his work affiliated him with many of America's great artistic moments and figures, from New York City's Group Theatre of the 1930s to the rebellious forefront of 1950s Hollywood; from Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy to Marlon Brando and James Dean. Ebullient and secretive, bold and self-doubting, beloved yet reviled for "naming names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Kazan was an individual as complex and fascinating as any he directed. He has long deserved a biography as shrewd and sympathetic as this one. In the electrifying Elia Kazan, noted film historian and critic Richard Schickel illuminates much more than a single astonishing life and life's work: He pays discerning tribute to the power of theater and film, and casts a new light on six crucial decades of American history.
