Dead Letters to the New World
Dead Letters to the New World

Author: Michael McLoughlin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-10-16

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1135885311

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This book contextualises and details Herman Melville's artistic career and outlines the relationship between Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Michael McLoughlin divides Melville's professional career as a novelist into two major phases corresponding to the growth and shift in his art. In the developmental phase, from 1845 to 1850, Melville wrote his five Transcendental novels of the sea, in which he defended self-reliance, attacked conformity, and learned to employ Transcendental symbols of increasing complexity. This phase culminates in Moby-Dick , with its remarkable matching of Transcendental idealism with tragic drama, influenced by Hawthorne. After 1851, Melville endeavoured to find new ways to express himself and to re-envision human experience philosophically. In this period of transition, Melville wrote anti-Transcendental fiction attacking self-reliance as well as conformity and substituting fatalism for Emersonian optimism. According to McLoughlin, Moby-Dick represents an important transitional moment in Herman Melville's art, dramatically altering tendencies inherent in the novels from Typee onward; in contrast to Melville's blithely exciting and largely optimistic first six novels of the sea, Melville's later works - beginning with his pivotal epic Moby-Dick - assume a much darker and increasingly anti-Transcendental philosophical position.

Dead Letters
Dead Letters

Author: Caite Dolan-Leach

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0399588876

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A missing woman leads her twin sister on a twisted scavenger hunt in this clever debut novel with eccentric, dysfunctional characters who will keep you guessing until the end—for readers of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Wife Between Us. Ava has her reasons for running away to Paris. But when she receives the shocking news that her twin sister, Zelda, is dead, she is forced to return home to her family’s failing vineyard in upstate New York. Knowing Zelda’s penchant for tricks and deception, Ava is not surprised when she receives her twin’s cryptic message from beyond the grave. Following her sister’s trail of clues, Ava immerses herself in Zelda’s drama and her outlandish circle of friends and lovers, and soon finds herself confronted with dark family legacies and twisted relationships. Is Zelda trying to punish Ava for leaving? Or is she simply trying to write her own ending? Caite Dolan-Leach’s debut thriller is a literary scavenger hunt for secrets hidden everywhere from wine country to social media, and buried at the dysfunctional heart of one utterly unforgettable family. Praise for Dead Letters “Dolan-Leach writes like Paula Hawkins by way of Curtis Sittenfeld.”—Amy Gentry, author of Good as Gone “A sharp, wrenching tale of the true love only twins know . . . Dolan-Leach nimbly entwines the clever mystery of Agatha Christie, the wit of Dorothy Parker, and the inebriated Gothic of Eugene O’Neill.”—Kirkus Reviews “A smart, dazzling mystery . . . Dolan-Leach revels in toying with both Ava and her audience . . . and the result is captivating.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Draws you in like you are part of the story itself, living and breathing alongside the compelling characters as they uncover the dark secrets of their complicated family.”—Wendy Walker, author of All Is Not Forgotten “Push-pull tension . . . This book is wine-soaked yet lucid, comforting and frightening, asking the big questions about intimacy and loyalty.”—Caroline Kepnes, author of You

Love Letters to the Dead
Love Letters to the Dead

Author: Ava Dellaira

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0374346682

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“Dear Ava, I loved your book.” —Award-winning actress Emma Watson For fans of Kathleen Glasgow and Amber Smith, Ava Dellaira writes about grief, love, and family with a haunting and often heartbreaking beauty in this emotionally stirring, critically acclaimed debut novel, Love Letters to the Dead. It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more—though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was—lovely and amazing and deeply flawed—can she begin to discover her own path.

Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen
Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen

Author: Brad Warner

Publisher: New World Library

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1608686019

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The night Brad Warner learns that his childhood friend Marky has died, Warner is about to speak to a group of Zen students in Hamburg, Germany. It's the last thing he feels like doing. What he wants to do instead is tell his friend everything he never said, to explain Zen and what he does for a living and why he spends his time "Sitting. Sitting. Sitting. Meditating my life away as it all passes by. Lighting candles and incense. Bowing to nothing." So, as he continues his teaching tour through Europe, he writes to his friend all the things he wishes he had said. Simply and humorously, he reflects on why Zen provided him a lifeline in a difficult world. He explores grief, attachment, and the afterlife. He writes to Marky, "I'm not all that interested in Buddhism. I'm much more interested in what is true," and then proceeds to poke and prod at that truth. The result for readers is a singular and winning meditation on Zen — and a unique tribute to both a life lost and the one Warner has found.

The Spirit and the Letter
The Spirit and the Letter

Author: Paul S. Fiddes

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-08-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0567218856

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Paul's statement that 'letter kills but the spirit gives life' [2 Corinthians 3.6] has had an extraordinary impact on Christian thought through the ages. It has been read both as affirming the saving power of the new covenant in comparison to the old, and as a key to hidden, spiritual meanings in the text of scripture. It is, however, an ambiguous phrase, followed by a tangled story. This book explores the Pauline distinction both in its original context and in its aftermath in the early church, the Reformation and modern Biblical Studies. It then considers a postmodern reversal, where ideas of 'Spirit' are often seen as 'deadly' and the openness of the 'letter' or text as life-affirming, and draws conclusions for Spirit in the world.

Dead Letters Sent
Dead Letters Sent

Author: Kevin Ohi

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2015-06-20

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1452944334

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Literary texts that address tradition and the transmission of knowledge often seem concerned less with preservation than with loss, recurrently describing scenarios of what author Kevin Ohi terms “thwarted transmission.” Such scenes, however, do not so much concede the impossibility of survival as look into what constitutes literary knowledge and whether it can properly be said to be an object to be transmitted, preserved, or lost. Beginning with general questions of transmission—the conveying of knowledge in pedagogy, the transmission and material preservation of texts and forms of knowledge, and even the impalpable communication between text and reader—Dead Letters Sent examines two senses of “queer transmission.” First, it studies the transmission of a minority sexual culture, of queer ways of life and the specialized knowledges they foster. Second, it examines the queer potential of literary and cultural transmission, the queerness that is sheltered within tradition itself. By exploring how these two senses are intertwined, it builds a persuasive argument for the relevance of queer criticism to literary study. Its detailed attention to works by Plato, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, James, and Faulkner seeks to formulate a practice of reading adequate to the queerness Ohi’s book uncovers within the literary tradition. Ohi identifies a radical new future for both queer theory and close reading: the possibility that each might exceed itself in merging with the other, creating a queer theory of literary tradition immanent in an immersed practice of reading.

The Summer of Letting Go
The Summer of Letting Go

Author: Gae Polisner

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2014-02-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1616204400

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Just when everything seems to be going wrong, hope—and love—can appear in the most unexpected places. Summer has begun, the beach beckons—and Francesca Schnell is going nowhere. Four years ago, Francesca’s little brother, Simon, drowned, and Francesca’s the one who should have been watching. Now Francesca is about to turn sixteen, but guilt keeps her stuck in the past. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lisette, is moving on—most recently with the boy Francesca wants but can’t have. At loose ends, Francesca trails her father, who may be having an affair, to the local country club. There she meets four-year-old Frankie Sky, a little boy who bears an almost eerie resemblance to Simon, and Francesca begins to wonder if it’s possible Frankie could be his reincarnation. Knowing Frankie leads Francesca to places she thought she’d never dare to go—and it begins to seem possible to forgive herself, grow up, and even fall in love, whether or not she solves the riddle of Frankie Sky.

Dead Letters
Dead Letters

Author: Jessica Weible

Publisher: Sunbury Press

Published: 2020-04-30

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9781620062777

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On assignment for a small-town newspaper in rural Pennsylvania, rookie reporter, Jessica Weible, meets Joan Swigart, a creative fireball and "pioneer in print". As the two women forge a relationship based on their passion for storytelling, Joan reveals a mystery that she had discovered years ago, but had never solved-a pile of dead letters found in an abandoned general store, just before it was torn down. Joan gives Jessica the letters, each stamped and dated over a hundred years ago, and encourages Jessica to investigate the untold stories of the people and places contained in each one. What begins as yet another assignment for the reporter, a young millennial who relies happily on email and texting as the primary means of communication, develops into a heartfelt mission to tell the story of the people and places in the letters. The young reporter's journey takes unexpected twists and turns through the quiet lumber towns of Pennsylvania, the early American settlements in Massachusetts, the bustling crowds at Ellis Island, the violent strikes at the Passaic textile mills, and beyond. Dead Letters is an intimate portrait of small town America and the people who, at times, risked everything in pursuit of economic prosperity, religious freedom, and social equity.

The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma
The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma

Author: Monica Osborne

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-12-06

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1498564917

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Since the end of World War II we have witnessed countless artistic responses to the Holocaust, yet we remain unable to adequately address the atrocities. While Theodor Adorno later rescinded his comments on the barbaric nature of writing poetry after Auschwitz, The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma begins with the possibility that he was right—that his admonition against poetry warns against employing representational modes that transgress the boundaries of the ethical when it comes to the Holocaust. There is a language, other than the language of representation, with which we might speak authentically about such atrocities. This study explores what it means for the world of literature to renounce the language of representation and retain the language of witness. Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, Geoffrey Hartman, and others the book focuses on the increasing tendency of contemporary writers to rely on non-representational approaches to storytelling in the context of trauma. This tendency is named the “midrashic impulse” given its similarity to ancient rabbinic approaches to the silences of the Hebrew bible through the creation of Midrash.

James Joyce's America
James Joyce's America

Author: Brian Fox

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-02-14

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0192543679

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James Joyce's America is the first study to address the nature of Joyce's relation to the United States. It challenges the prevalent views of Joyce as merely indifferent or hostile towards America, and argues that his works show an increasing level of engagement with American history, culture, and politics that culminates in the abundance of allusions to the US in Finnegans Wake, the very title of which comes from an Irish-American song and signals the importance of America to that work. The volume focuses on Joyce's concept of America within the framework of an Irish history that his works obsessively return to. It concentrates on Joyce's thematic preoccupation with Ireland and its history and America's relation to Irish post-Famine history. Within that context, it explores first Joyce's relation to Irish America and how post-Famine Irish history, as Joyce saw it, transformed the country from a nation of invasions and settlements to one spreading out across the globe, ultimately connecting Joyce's response to this historical phenomenon to the diffusive styles of Finnegans Wake. It then discusses American popular and literary cultures in terms of how they appear in relation to, or as a function of, the British-Irish colonial context in the post-Famine era, and concludes with a consideration of how Joyce represented his American reception in the Wake.