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Recommended
Reading
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International Directory of Little Magazines & Small
Presses, edited by
Len
Fulton This essential reference for writers, librarians, students of
modern literature, and readers worldwide is a publishing legend. It includes
information on over 5,000 presses and journals from around the world, listing
addresses, manuscript requirements, payment rates, and recent publications.
Subject and regional indexes are also provided. |
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 American Short Story Masterpieces,
edited by
Tom
Jenks and
Raymond
Carver First published in 1987, this outstanding anthology has been
continuously in print, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, and is a
standard text in colleges and universities throughout the United States. |
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Charles
Bukowski has become a cult favorite among American readers. Notes of a Dirty old
Man is a great place to start if you are interested in the Bukowskian world
of skid row drunks, whores, gamblers, criminals, and freaks. Bukowski writes
like Hemingway, but with no pretentions of romance. Read him if you want
to expose yourself to the best American realist author, one of the most powerful,
and oddly enough, one of the funniest. |
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Khristian
E.
Kay is fast becoming an underground favorite with his social commentary on
contemporary Americana. Highway Tourette's by Proxy reads like a wink and
a nod tale of America's bluest highways but explodes in your head as visual
metaphor of social mores. Kay not only points out societal flwas but picks
at them lifting and tearing off the scabs to force us to view the poison
which oozes from with us. |
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CJ
Hribal slides the emotional fabric of America under a literary microscope to
reveal the lies, betrayals and yearnings that connect and divide us all,
giving his stories extraordinary power. He establishes an American landscape
in the tradition of Cheever and Updike, though his is a world not of cocktail
parties but of trailer parks, bars and courtrooms.
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James Baldwin’s book-length
essay The Fire Next
Time, which appeared ten years after his famous short
story "Sonny's
Blues" (1951), demonstrated the author's intelligent, heartfelt will
to counter the rage and hatred created by racial inequality in America. The
Fire Next Time reveals the thinking and autobiography that Baldwin brought
to bear in writing "Sonny's Blues" and makes a good study of how he transformed
life into art. |
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Henry
James's novella
The Aspern
Papers concerns a publisher eager to obtain
the correspondence that a famous romantic poet wrote long ago to his lover,
who survived him and is now an old woman living in Venice. The publisher
stoops to deception and nearly to theft in his lust for the old woman's papers,
and the contest between the two characters gives James ample material for
psychological drama and a rich satire on the acquistiveness of publishers.
The story was inspired by Clare Claremont, one of Byron's lovers, and the
world's inevitable pursuit of him through her, as the years passed after
his death. |
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Carol Edgarian's
provocative essay
"The Soul of San
Francisco", "city of gold dust and wireless dreamers, of causes and
capitalists — a city finally of immigrants," appeared in the February
2003 issue of Travel
& Leisure. The essay celebrates the city's micro-environments,
fractious diversities, hedonism, and perennial talent for remaking itself
without losing its charm. |
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The Writer's Life: Intimate Thoughts
on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame from the Diaries of the World's Great
Writers, edited by
Carol Edgarian
and Tom Jenks.
An invaluable resource for any writer -- or for anyone seeking expert instruction
in the art of living. Available from
Amazon
or by calling 1-800-223-6834 or from your bookstore. |
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Irwin Shaw's 1969 novel
Rich Man, Poor
Man sold six million copies and was made into a popular
television miniseries starring Nick Nolte and Peter Straus, as two brothers
bitterly set against each other yet inextricably drawn back to each other.
The novel is a page-turner, a quintessential American tale of self-made fortunes
and tragedy. For the ready diversion and the lessons on craft it offers,
Rich Man, Poor Man is well worth taking the trouble to find via
Alibris or a
rare
book dealer. |
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James Welch drew on his Native American heritage to write
poems, stories, and novels, including the masterly
Fools Crow, which one reviewer noted "may be the
closest we will ever come in literature to an understanding of what life
was like for a western Indian." The novel details a crucial year in the life
of a Blackfoot tribe in the Montana territory, shortly after the end of the
Civil War and during the sudden increase of the white man’s
encroachment on tribal lands. The story is remarkable for Welch’s
even-handedness and ability to put any reader directly inside the experience
of his Indian characters as well as for the novel’s portrayal of
the stunning swiftness of the alteration in the Indians’ lives.
What comes home finally in Welch’s telling is the universality
of the spirit life of the tribes, the dignity of that life, and the loss
and sorrow visited on it in the irresistible momentum of history. |
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Other highly recommended books |
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