The World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon is one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and Jean Moorcroft Wilson is the leading authority on him. In Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches, the second volume of her best-selling, authorized biography, Wilson completes her definitive analysis of his life and works, exploring Sassoon's experiences after the Great War. For many people, Sassoon exists primarily as a First World War poet and bold fighter, who earned the nickname 'Mad Jack' in the trenches and risked Court Martial, possibly the firing squad, with his public protest against the War. Much less is known about his life after the Armistice. Wilson uncovers a series of love affairs with such larger-than-life characters as Queen Victoria's great-grandson, Prince Phillip of Hess, the flamboyant Ivor Novello and the exotic and bejeweled Hon. Stephen Tennant. This period also sees Sassoon establishing close friendships with some of the greatest literary figures of the age, Hardy, Beerbohm, E. M. Forster and T. E.Lawrence among them. Sassoon himself said that most people thought he had died in 1919. But Wilson shows that his poetry is, if anything, more powerful in the second half of his life. Based on a decade of meticulous research and interviews with many who knew Sassoon well, much of the material is published here for the first time. Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches completes a fascinating story that is beautifully told.
New York Times • Times Critics Top Books of 2021 The Times (of London) • Best Books of the Year Excerpted in The New Yorker Profiled in The Los Angeles Times Publishing for the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries “offer the most complete picture ever published” of the canonical author (New York Times). Relegated to the genre of mystery during her lifetime, Patricia Highsmith is now recognized as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Beloved by fans who were unaware of the real psychological turmoil behind her prose, the famously secretive Highsmith refused to authorize a biography, instead sequestering herself in her Switzerland home in her final years. Posthumously, her devoted editor Anna von Planta discovered her diaries and notebooks in 1995, tucked in a closet—with tantalizing instructions to be read. For years thereafter, von Planta meticulously culled from over eight thousand pages to help reveal the inscrutable figure behind the legendary pen. Beginning with her junior year at Barnard in 1941, Highsmith ritualistically kept a diary and notebook—the former to catalog her day, the latter to brainstorm stories and hone her craft. This volume weaves diary and notebook simultaneously, exhibiting precisely how Highsmith’s personal affairs seeped into her fiction—and the sheer darkness of her own imagination. Charming yet teetering on the egotistical, young “Pat” lays bare her dizzying social life in 1940s Greenwich Village, barhopping with Judy Holliday and Jane Bowles, among others. Alongside Flannery O’Conner and Chester Himes, she attended—at the recommendation of Truman Capote—the Yaddo artist colony in 1948, where she drafted Strangers on a Train. Published in 1950 and soon adapted by Alfred Hitchcock, this debut novel brought recognition and brief financial security, but left a heartsick Highsmith agonizing: “What is the life I choose?” Providing extraordinary insights into gender and sexuality in mid-twentieth-century America, Highsmith’s diaries convey her euphoria writing The Price of Salt (1951). Yet her sophomore novel would have to be published under a pseudonym, so as not to tarnish her reputation. Indeed, no one could anticipate commercial reception for a novel depicting love between two women in the McCarthy era. Seeking relief from America, Highsmith catalogs her peripatetic years in Europe, subsisting on cigarettes and growing more bigoted and satirical with age. After a stay in Positano with a new lover, she reflects in her notebooks on being an expat, and gleefully conjures the unforgettable The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955); it would be this sociopathic antihero who would finally solidify her true fame. At once lovable, detestable, and mesmerizing, Highsmith put her turbulent life to paper for five decades, acutely aware there must be “a few usable things in literature.” A memoir as significant in our own century as Sylvia Plath’s journals and Simone de Beauvoir’s writings were to another time, Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks is an historic work that chronicles a woman’s rise against the conventional tide to unparalleled literary prominence.
Camus's 1st vol. of Notebooks (1935-1942) ; translated from the French, and with a pref. and notes, by P. Thody. (His 2nd vol. included 1942-1951, translated from the French and annotated by J. O'Brien).
When Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965) bequeathed a significant part of his remarkable art collection - chiefly of French nineteenth-century painting but also containing a number of outstanding Old Masters - to the Swiss nation, he did so on condition that the works of art would never be loaned. As a consequence the many very important works in the collection have not been discussed in major exhibition catalogues and have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. This volume, with full entries on the entire collection of 207 works by 45 leading scholars in their field, both American and European, and superb plates carefully checked against the originals, sets out to rectify this state of affairs. Artists represented by several works in the collection that Reinhart made his monument include: Cezanne (11), Chardin (4), Corot (9), Courbet (10), Daumier (20), Delacroix (9), Gericault (2), Van Gogh (5), Maillol (8), Manet (4), Picasso (4), Pissarro (2), Renoir (15), Sisley (2). A well illustrated introduction explains the ideas and context behind Reinhart's collecting and affords insights into his character.
In the library at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1976, George Andrews of Pennsylvania State University discovered a sheaf of pages in the handwriting of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Soon designated as "Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook," it contains considerable material on mock theta functions and undoubtedly dates from the last year of Ramanujan’s life. In this book, the notebook is presented with additional material and expert commentary.
Elia Kazan was the twentieth century’s most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this monumental, revelatory book shows us the master at work. Kazan’s list of Broadway and Hollywood successes—A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront, to name a few—is a testament to his profound impact on the art of directing. This remarkable book, drawn from his notebooks, letters, interviews, and autobiography, reveals Kazan’s method: how he uncovered the “spine,” or core, of each script; how he analyzed each piece in terms of his own experience; and how he determined the specifics of his production. And in the final section, “The Pleasures of Directing”—written during Kazan’s final years—he becomes a wise old pro offering advice and insight for budding artists, writers, actors, and directors.
Handgun enthusiasts, gun-owning do-it-yourself, law enforcement officials, and gunsmiths here is the ultimate one-volume guide to acquiring and developing all the necessary skills for making pistol repairs at home, from helpful hints on work space and setting up a small shop, to the tools needed and how to use them properly, to welding, hardening, and gun finishing. All this valuable information, plus much more, is contained in this easy-to-use reference for handgun aficionados.
