"One of contemporary America's leading critics and scholars offers a provocative reassessment of the lives and work of eight influential twentieth- century American writers: Lionel Trilling Dwight Macdonald W.H. Auden William Maxwell Saul Bellow Alfred Kazin Norman Mailer Frank O'Hara Drawing on newly published letters and diaries, Edward Mendelson explores the responses of these writers, very public figures all, to major historical events--among...

"By the early 1970s, President John F. Kennedy has survived several assassination attempts and--martyred, heroic--is now in his third term. Twenty-two-year-old Eugene Allen returns home from his tour of duty in Vietnam and begins to write a war novel--a book echoing Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five--about veterans who have their battlefield experiences "enfolded," wiped from their memories through drugs and therapy. In Eugene's fictive universe, veterans...

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks' and the Hamilton's--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The story of two brothers, Aron is a clean-cut model student, engaged to be married, the pride of his hardworking father. Cal is a rebellious loner, sternly rejected...

This 24-lecture course is intended to help you analyze and appreciate the long poem by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) known as the Divine Comedy.

"Written by one of Vanity Fair's rising stars, Hollywood's Eve is a pulp propulsive account of the birth, adolescence, and adulthood of 20th-century Hollywood through the vivid and unashamed life of Los Angeles-born glamour girl, bohemian, artist, muse, sensualist, wit and pioneering writer Eve Babitz"--

Winner of High Honors from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, 'Pushcart Prize XLVII' includes over 60 stories, poems and essays from dozens of small literary presses.