Art Essays

If Only You People Could Follow Directions is a spellbinding debut by Jessica Hendry Nelson. In linked autobiographical essays, Nelson has reimagined the memoir with her thoroughly original voice, fearless writing, and hypnotic storytelling. At its center, the book is the story of three people: Nelson’s mother Susan, her brother Eric, and Jessica herself.

In the three decades that Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has devoted himself to writing fiction, he has also produced scores of witty, moving, and provocative essays and articles. He engages the work of Nabokov, Kundera, Rushdie, and Vargas Llosa, among others, and he discusses his own books and writing process. We also learn how he lives, as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking, describes his relationship with his daughter, and reflects on the controversy he has attracted in recent years.

Poartry: A Collision of Poetry and Art by Douglas Kiburz, MD, is a collection of poetry, essays, eulogies, philosophy, and interpretation of historical events. From Maple Leaf Meadows ranch in the Midwest, Kiburz brings his experience as an orthopedic surgeon, father, son, husband, sculptor, rancher, and poet to bear in the sometimes comical, often dignified, and always thought-provoking collection.

Un document pour les passionnés de littérature russe et de Gide. Gide a commencé à écrire sur Dostoievsky dès les premières années du vingtième siècle. Passionné par ce grand écrivain, il en parla dans plusieurs conférences et c'est vers 1930 qu'il rassembla toutes ses connaissances dans un ouvrage.

Paradoxe entre l’abondance pour le consommateur et ses choix de plus en plus restreints ; mépris  de la propriété intellectuelle, donc incapacité  d’assurer un revenu décent aux créateurs ; modèle  d’affaires ne servant que les monopoles (70 % à  85 % des revenus publicitaires engrangés par  Google, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix… ) ; "indifférence" politico­juridique, car les gouvernements  ne semblent pas vouloir remédier à cette situation.

How do you become a television writer? What does it take to create your own show? Did the writers of Lost really have a plan, or were they making it all up as they went? In a career spanning far longer than he cares to admit, Javier Grillo-Marxuach has not only written for some of your favorite (and not-so-favorite) shows.

"Menschen können gut ohne Gedichte sein, aber ein Gedicht nicht ohne Menschen." Wie kann es sein, dass eine Strickerin aus dem Lavanttal in Kärnten zu einer der größten deutschsprachigen Dichterinnen des 20. Jahrhunderts wird? Jenny Erpenbeck lässt uns an ihrer Faszination für Christine Lavant (1915–1973) teilhaben, deren Gedichte sie zum ersten Mal liest, als sie Mitte der Neunziger in Graz lebt. An der Faszination für eine Frau, die sich durch ihre Lesewut, Sensibilität und Klugheit aus dem elenden Dasein, das ihr durch Krankheit und Armut vorgezeichnet war, herausgeschrieben hat.

After a 12-year absence, a real-life prodigal seeks to serve his hometown, New Auburn, Wisconsin, population: 485, by joining the volunteer fire and rescue department. In a place where men post claims of manhood on bug deflectors, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife with a pistol and a Bible, and where the most senior firefighter is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives, writer Michael Perry sets out "to meet my neighbors at the invitation of the fire siren".

Fun, bright, and playful, Power Pop is a sometimes adored, sometimes maligned, often misunderstood genre of music. From its heyday in the '70s and '80s to its resurgence in the '90s and '00s, Power Pop has meant many things to many people. In Go Further, editors Paul Myers and S. W. Lauden have a whole new crop of writers going deep on what certain Power Pop bands and songs mean and have meant to them. Whether they love or hate it, Go Further is a dive into the Beatles-inspired pop rock of the last five decades.

Un albero disegnato da Marcello Mastroianni, la rabbia e l'orgoglio di Oriana Fallaci dietro le quinte, le lunghe camminate per Roma con Ennio Flaiano. Nella sua carriera Anna Maria Mori ha incrociato nomi altisonanti che hanno sconvolto culturalmente l'ultima metà del Novecento e di cui racconta con sensibilità e acume. Nessuno di loro però è riuscito a farle dimenticare le sue umili origini, la lontananza dalla città natale, gli anni di studio in collegio, la gavetta, il sogno femminista, la maternità.

For 30 years Meeka Walsh has been the Editor of the Canadian art magazine, Border Crossings. A selection of her much-admired essays published in each issue of that magazine have been selected for this substantial book.

"Hace tiempo que no leía algo tan bueno. En pana puede leerse como una autobiografía—porque es la biografía de unos autos—o un ménage à trois entre novela, ensayo y poesía, o una exagerada nota al pie acerca del copiloto como un pequeño dios. Martín Cinzano ha escrito un libro inolvidable, muy divertido, melancólico, vertiginoso e introspectivo: callejero, carretero y carrilero." —Alejandro Zambra

A welcome surprise: more than 50 prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America's most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary - appearing in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere - have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.

Ein kleines Buch über Kummer, das erstaunlich gute Laune macht. "Alle wirken innerlich blitzblank, nur in unserem Inneren sieht es aus wie bei Hempels unterm Sofa", denkt sich Kioskbesitzer Armin, als er vergeblich versucht, erfolgreich zu meditieren. Und auch im Inneren der anderen Figuren dieser literarischen Kolumnen herrscht Unordnung: Frau Wiese kann nicht mehr schlafen, Herr Pohl ist nachhaltig verzagt, Lisa hat ihren ersten Liebeskummer, Vadims Hände zittern, Frau Schwerter muss ganz dringend entspannen, ein trauriger Patient hat seine Herde verloren, und Psychoanalytiker Ulrich legt sich mit der Vergänglichkeit an.

Mit ihren Romanen ist Herta Müller berühmt geworden – in ihren Essays gibt sie Auskunft über sich und ihre Zeit. Wohl nirgends ist ihr bizarrer Weg aus einem Dorf in Rumänien in die Welt der Literatur so gut nachvollziehbar. In den ausgewählten Texten erzählt sie von Kindheit und Jugend, berichtet von den Verfolgungen durch die Geheimpolizei, aber sie widmet sich auch Fragen ihres eigenen Schreibens, seinen literarischen und politischen Seiten. Mit der Stockholmer Rede zur Nobelpreisverleihung und der Tischrede im Originalton.

These days, the road to success can feel jampacked with scheduling, networking, nonstop hustle, and flat-out absurdity. And no one knows that better than Al Roker - beloved cohost of The Today Show, weatherperson extraordinaire, and the man we all secretly wish we could turn to for wisdom and wisecracks in our everyday lives. Al has learned worthwhile lessons over a long, successful career. And now, for the first time, Al is ready to unleash savvy advice on how to embrace happiness.

Since Andrew Hudgins was a child, he was a compulsive joke teller, so when he sat down to write about jokes, he found that he was writing about himself — what jokes taught him and mistaught him, how they often delighted him but occasionally made him nervous with their delight in chaos and sometimes anger. Because Hudgins’s father, a West Point graduate, served in the US Air Force, his family moved frequently; he learned to relate to other kids by telling jokes and watching how his classmates responded. And jokes opened him up to the serious, taboo subjects that his family didn’t talk about openly — religion, race, sex, and death. Hudgins tells and analyzes the jokes that explore the contradictions in the Baptist religion he was brought up in, the jokes that told him what his parents would not tell him about sex, and the racist jokes that his uncle loved, his father hated, and his mother, caught in the middle, was ambivalent about. This audiobook is both a memoir and a meditation on jokes and how they educated, delighted, and occasionally horrified him as he grew.

Una oda a la importancia de los trabajos artesanos en el siglo XXI, una celebración del mar, un emotivo relato sobre la relación padre-hija. Cómo construir una barca es la historia de un hombre moderno y sin ninguna habilidad destacable que, inspirado por su amor al mar y todo lo que éste le ha enseñado, se propone construir una barca de madera según los métodos tradicionales como regalo para su hija recién nacida. Es una tarea ridículamente quijotesca para un hombre que, con una familia y una hipoteca, no sabe absolutamente nada sobre trabajar la madera.

Der Autor Wilhelm von Kügelgen (1772-1820) beschreibt detailliert seine Kindheit und Jugend am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Er berichtet über die Kriege zwischen Napoleon und den Russen, über Hunger, seine Schulzeit und die Reisen und Freunde der Künstlerfamilie. Regie: Stefanie Hoster.

Giovanni Pascoli, in omaggio alla sua Ravenna, si unisce a Dante, che là compì la sua grande opera, per comunicarci bagliori di quella “mirabile visione” che è apparsa a Dante ragazzo, e poi l’ha ritrovato maturo, costretto suo malgrado a seguire quella vita contemplativa che, da ragazzo, era stata una sua aspirazione, e che era poi stata trascurata per smarrirsi nella selva di una vita politica.