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"A reprint of a 1904 novel by Pennsylvania State College (now University) professor of English Fred Lewis Pattee, set in the 1890s in central Pennsylvania. Includes a preface by poet and essayist Julia Spicher Kasdorf and endnotes by Joshua R. Brown" --Provided by publisher.

Pennsylvania --- LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General.

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"A detailed study of Yates's novels and stories"-- "Dismembering the American Dream offers a detailed study of the novels and stories of Richard Yates, fiction which examined mid-twentieth century middle-class American life. Since his death in Alabama in 1992, the work of American writer Richard Yates has enjoyed a renaissance, culminating in director Sam Mendes's adaption of the novel Revolutionary Road starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Dismembering the American Dream is the first booklength critical study of Yates's fiction. Kate Charlton-Jones argues that to read Yates's tales of disordered lives is to uncover not misery, though the lives he describes are sad ones, but a profound, enriching, and humorous understanding of human weakness and vulnerability. Yates's narratives absorb his readers so entirely, mirroring their own emotional highs and lows with such skill, that reading becomes recognition. Yates demonstrates his ability to tease powerful human drama out of the most ordinary, quotidian moments. At the same time, Yates's fiction displays an object lesson in the art of fine prose writing, so it is no surprise that many early fans of Yates were established writers. Charlton-Jones explores how Yates extends the realist form and investigates three main recurring themes of his fiction: observations about performative behavior, which are at the heart of all his fictions; his conception of the writer's role in society; and how he envisages the development of social and sexual relationships. Furthermore, Charlton-Jones illustrates how Yates incorporates some of the concerns and methods of postmodernist writers but how, nevertheless, he resists their ontological challenges. Drawing on the author's personal papers and with a foreword by DeWitt Henry and a special afterword by Richard Yates's daughter Monica, Dismembering the American Dream provides an extended critical examination of the often neglected but important work of this talented author"--

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General. --- Yates, Richard, --- Criticism and interpretation.

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"John Guare, one of the most innovative and influential contemporary American playwrights of the last sixty years, is best known for such works as House of Blue Leaves, winner of an Obie Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play, and four Tony Awards, and Six Degrees of Separation, recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and the Olivier Best Play Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. In Understanding John Guare, William W. Demastes provides a concise biography and analyzes the playwright's career from his earliest works produced off-off Broadway in the 1960s to his most recent Broadway play, A Free Man of Color, a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Often compared to his contemporaries Sam Shepard and David Mamet, who have distinctive voices tied to their mastery of realistic, idiomatic American English, Guare has a style that is perhaps more varied, Demastes speculates, the result of his formal training in theater. After earning a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, Guare earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. He then polished his theater craft in New York City during the exciting and turbulent 1960s, breaking from realist conventions and creating an unlikely blend of comedy, burlesque, stand-up comedy, and absurdly incongruous plotlines. The result has been a theater of surprise, rich in stage action, and experimentally invigorating. Demastes examines Guare's tools and techniques such as mixing serious with comic, creating characters who break into song and dance, inserting standup comedy routines, and drawing from the most absurd incongruities of everyday life. In doing so, Guare has created plays about the best and worst of humanity, about lost souls, and about delusional ideals."--

PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Playwriting. --- LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General. --- Guare, John.

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"An original exploration of the work of writer Richard Ford in the context of its place within contemporary debates about the possible role, meaning of, and value of literary realism in a postmodern age"--

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General. --- Ford, Richard, --- Criticism and interpretation.

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Thirty-five leading essayists, literary critics and writing instructors explore the essay from multiple perspectives, including its theories, forms and histories as well as its cultural, political and pedagogical contexts. In particular, the volume extends the theory of the essay by addressing topics such as the construction of an essayistic self and the political dimensions of essaying. It further explores the relationship between the essay and other forms, such as philosophical writing, the column, science writing, the novel, the lyric and the advert as well as the essay in digital spaces.

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General. --- Essay. --- Literary sketch --- Sketch, Literary