Philip Roth: Novels, 1993-1995 - Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater

By Philip Roth

Roth has the distinction of being the only living writer included in the venerable Library of America series. This sixth installment of his collected works features two novels: 1993's Operation Shylock and 1995's Sabbath's Theater. Shylock is most unusual in that Roth uses himself as both the antagonist and the protagonist: a man impersonating Roth is touring Israel, and the real Roth goes after him. The comic Sabbath's Theater is more straightforward. This double edition is being released to coincide with the publication of his forthcoming novel, NEMESIS. Your hardcovers should be shot by now, so replace them with this single volume and save a couple of fazools.

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Hollywood: A Third Memoir

By Larry McMurtry

Although he is most famous as a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, McMurtry has worked for decades as a screenwriter. He and his partner, Diana Ossana, won the 2005 Academy Award for the screenplay of Brokeback Mountain. This is the third installment of a trilogy of memoirs dealing with McMurtry's artistic experiences, and it covers more than 40 years of his career interacting with Hollywood figures and the process of turning the written word into celluloid. This is the most intriguing of the three memoirs; it has an oddly detached tone, since McMurtry often writes like a starstruck outsider who fails to realize he has become a Hollywood insider. He asserts that he lacks a passion for the screenwriting craft and the filmmaking process, but he approaches the topic with relish. The memoir is divided into a series of short, often disconnected chapters in which a constant theme is the fact that the vast majority of screenplays, including his own, never become films. In his wanderings, McMurtry ranges from the role of agents to the difficulty of producing westerns to the tedium of attending awards ceremonies. He includes numerous vignettes in which he discusses his relations with various Hollywood personalities, some famous and some obscure. His descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.

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Fiction Writing: The Essential Guide to Writing a Novel

By Richard Skinner

Drawing from his own experiences as a novelist and creative writing tutor, Richard Skinner takes you through the process of writing a novel, from ways of generating ideas and beginning the actual process of writing, through to producing a final draft. The book is a both a 'guide' and an 'aid' to writing a novel. The first part - the guide - offers solid practical suggestions for writers who are just getting started on a long piece of fiction. The second part of the book - the aid - operates more like a troubleshooting gallery for those who are well into a long piece of fiction. Eschewing formulas and prescriptions, Skinner encourages readers to think differently about issues as they arise by means of lateral thinking, oblique strategies, aphorisms and quotations, and offers a range of ideas about the art of writing that stretches beyond the bounds of fiction.

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Antonio Lopez Garcia: Drawings

The Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia is revered worldwide not only for the extreme realism he brings to his paintings and drawings, but because he conveys through this extreme realism a wonderful sensitivity to light, color and space, enabling each to breathe with a tranquility that allows for the encroachments of everyday life. Interior scenes of dining tables, bathroom sinks, toilets, dressers are depicted in sober light that recall Chardin or the intimisme of Vuillard--though Lopez Garcia surpasses even these masters in his ability to make unforgivingly prosaic subject matter, such as a brick wall or a refrigerator, sparkle and throb with mood. The artist's statement that "you work until the whole surface has an expressive intensity equivalent to what you have before you, converted into a pictorial reality" conveys something of the labor he brings to his works: Lopez Garcia is not a prolific artist, and as a result shows rarely (his 2008 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, consolidated his already strong audience in the U.S.). His drawings and paintings are equally esteemed, but until now, the drawings have never been the subject of a monograph. All of the work in this superbly designed publication has been carefully selected by the artist's daughter, Maria; much of it has never been reproduced until now. Including 200 color plates and a moving text by the artist himself, it stands as a powerful testimony to Lopez Garcia's astounding achievement.
Antonio Lopez Garcia (born 1936) studied at the School of Art in Madrid in the early 1950s, and quickly became part of a nucleus of realist painters, such as Francisco Lopez Hernandez, Amalia Avia and Isabel Quintanilla. Lopez Garcia was the subject of Victor Erice's 1992 film El Sol del Membrillo (The Quince Tree of the Sun), which closely chronicles the artist's attempts to paint a quince tree. 

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Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems

Edited by Harold Bloom

Literary critic and scholar Bloom has a passion for literary assemblages. He is also ardent in his articulation of the psychological, philosophical, and spiritual roles literature, especially poetry, plays in life, and in coping with death. So who better than Bloom to gather poets' last poems? Bloom cites "three kinds of ‘last poems.'" The first is the obvious, the "final poems" composed by the 100 poets he holds dear. The second are poems "intended to mark the end," even though the poet continued to write, and the third are poems Bloom reads as "an imaginative conclusion to a poetic career." His great favorites are here: Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Hopkins, Emerson, and Stevens, as well as Conrad Aiken, A. R. Ammons, James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, and Agha Shahid Ali. Bloom introduces each poet and poem with his signature blend of knowledge, ardor, and, facing his eightieth year, poignancy. These are poems that embrace change, time, life, the self, and death. Poems that have lasted and that will "reverberate into the coming silence."

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Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems

Edited by Harold Bloom

Literary critic and scholar Bloom has a passion for literary assemblages. He is also ardent in his articulation of the psychological, philosophical, and spiritual roles literature, especially poetry, plays in life, and in coping with death. So who better than Bloom to gather poets' last poems? Bloom cites "three kinds of ‘last poems.'" The first is the obvious, the "final poems" composed by the 100 poets he holds dear. The second are poems "intended to mark the end," even though the poet continued to write, and the third are poems Bloom reads as "an imaginative conclusion to a poetic career." His great favorites are here––Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Hopkins, Emerson, and Stevens, as well as Conrad Aiken, A. R. Ammons, James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, and Agha Shahid Ali. Bloom introduces each poet and poem with his signature blend of knowledge, ardor, and, facing his eightieth year, poignancy. These are poems that embrace change, time, life, the self, and death. Poems that have lasted and that will "reverberate into the coming silence." A collection of surpassing splendor and resonance.

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Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. Demille

By Scott Eyman

An authoritative profile of the legendary director best known for such biblical productions as The Ten Commandments and King of Kings challenges popular portrayals of his tyrannical character, offering insight into how his career reflected Hollywood's first 50 years. By the author of Lion of Hollywood.

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