Showing results by author "Benjamin Taylor" in All Categories

So begins Benjamin Taylor's Here We Are, the unvarnished portrait of his best friend and one of America's greatest writers. Needless to say, Philip Roth's place in the canon is secure, but what is less clear is what the man himself was like. In Here We Are, Benjamin Taylor's beautifully constructed memoir, we see him as a mortal man, experiencing the joys and sorrows of aging, reflecting on his own writing, and doing something we all love to do: passing the time in the company of his closest friend.

It is a city of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, simultaneously glorious and ghastly. And it is Ben Taylor’s remarkable ability to meld these contradictions into a whole that makes this the exciting and original book it is. He takes his stroll around the bay with the acute sensitivity of a lover, the good humor of a friend, and the wisdom of a seeker who has immersed himself in all aspects of this contrapuntal culture. His curiosity leads him to many byways, both real and metaphoric, and his passion for this ancient city and its people becomes, in his graceful prose and amusing anecdotes, irresistibly contagious.

Marcel Proust came into his own as a novelist comparatively late in life, yet only Shakespeare, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky were his equals when it came to creating characters as memorably human. As biographer Benjamin Taylor suggests, Proust was a literary lightweight before writing his multivolume masterwork In Search of Lost Time, but following a series of momentous historical and personal events, he became—against all expectations—one of the greatest writers of his, and indeed any, era.

The story of Willa Cather is defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early, yet Cather was the opposite—she took her time and transformed herself by stages. The writer who leapt to the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) was already well into middle age. Through years of provincial journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines, she persevered in pursuit of the ultimate goal—literary immortality.

"Chemical Bliss" delves into the pivotal roles of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins in shaping our emotions, behaviors, and relationships. This insightful book explores how dopamine drives pleasure and motivation, oxytocin fosters social bonding and trust, serotonin regulates mood and cognitive functions, and endorphins provide natural pain relief and mood enhancement.

No matter what age you are, you must have experienced sleepless nights. This can be due to stress such as academic stress that most teenagers and young adults experience. The stress of an exam or a presentation the next day might have kept you tossing and turning all night. It could be that newborn babies are interrupting your sleep in the middle of the night, and you can’t fall back to sleep. It could be job-related like meeting a big client tomorrow or a big meeting with your boss. It could be anything!

There are things you want to buy but cannot afford. There are payments that are subconsciously stressing you out every month. Rent, mortgage, utilities, phone bills, streaming services, insurance, taxes, and the list goes on! You find yourself thinking about how much of your paycheck is left after paying for all these things? Do you even have enough left over to save for that trip you’ve always dreamed of, or that house you want to buy, or for your retirement fund? Don’t panic, it's not an irreversible situation.

After John F. Kennedy's speech in front of the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963, he was greeted by, among others, an 11-year-old Benjamin Taylor and his mother waiting to shake his hand. Only a few hours later, Taylor's teacher called the class in from recess and, through tears, told them of the president's assassination. From there Taylor traces a path through the next 12 months, recalling the tumult as he saw everything he had once considered stable begin to grow more complex.

Debriefing collects all of Susan Sontag's shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life. The book ranges from allegory to parable to autobiography and shows her wrestling with problems not assimilable to the essay, her more customary mode. Here she catches fragments of life on the fly, dramatizes her private griefs and fears, lets characters take her where they will. The result is a collection of remarkable brilliance, versatility, and charm.