This novel reads like a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, with detailed accounts of interactions with his Cambridge mentors, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. Yet it's all fiction—defiantly so. Wittgenstein's personality is so quirky, and his path through life so improbable, that I found it hard to put down. Also, there are few other books, if any, that give you such an intimate look at the sex lives of Cambridge dons in the early 1900s.
This “wicked, melancholy, and . . . astonishing” novel reimagines the lives of three wildly different men adrift in the 20th century: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore (Newsday).
When Bruce Duffy’s The World As I Found It was first published, critics and readers were bowled over by its daring reimagining of the lives of three very different men, the philosophers Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A brilliant group portrait with the vertiginous displacements of twentieth-century life looming large in the background, Duffy’s novel depicts times and places as various as Vienna 1900, the trenches…
Invisible Man is a classic that, somehow, I never got around to reading until this year. The story line is Dickensian, to a point. In Ellison's telling, the young man on his own makes his way to the city and meets unscrupulous characters at every turning. But he never meets the wonderful woman or mysterious benefactor who makes everything OK at the end. Instead, we find the narrator living "underground" having deliberately made himself "invisible," but promising to re-emerge. So what is Ellison’s invisibility? Many current reviews online say that invisibility is imposed on the narrator (who stands for all black people) by whites who are racist. Ellison's position is actually more complex. While there's no lack of white-on-black racism in the novel, the narrator receives some of his roughest treatment from the hypocritical Dr. Bledsoe and gang leader Ras the Destroyer, who are black. For the narrator, everyone he meets is a potential exploiter of his individuality. In the epilogue, he says, “My problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.” However, he had intuited the solution earlier in the story: “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," before retreating amid violence and confusion.
Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for…
Best known for his work in the theater and movies, David Mamet is also a fabulous essayist. Whether the subject is religion (The Wicked Son), politics (Recessional), or his current Hollywood tell-all, Everywhere an Oink Oink, the writing's always taut and the ideas incisive—with a sensibility that ranges from subtle cynicism to wildly funny. In Everywhere an Oink Oink, Mamet seems omniscient: he knows everybody, has seen every film and can tell you all the inside gossip. The chapters are short, standalone essays, illustrated with his own cartoons. Whether you love Hollywood or hate it, this book is worth reading.
Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director David Mamet shares his "smart, addictive, hilarious, and insightful" (Breitbart) tales from his four decades in Hollywood where he worked with some of the biggest names in movies.
David Mamet went to Hollywood on top-a super successful playwright summoned west in 1980 to write a vehicle for Jack Nicholson. He arrived just in time to meet the luminaries of old Hollywood and revel in the friendship of giants like Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Bob Evans, and Sue Mengers. Over the next forty years, Mamet wrote dozens of scripts, was fired off dozens of movies, and…
A senseless murder stuns a quiet South Jersey suburb. No grieving parents come forward to claim the unknown girl’s body, and there’s no physical evidence. The local media are casting blame. A mini-culture war is brewing...
So what do the civic leaders do? They hire Bruno X, Psychic Detective. His psychic shtick is totally unorthodox, yet, somehow he gets results. Now, can he solve the mysteries locked inside the old Quaker meeting house?
And what about the violet crow? Is it a maltese-falcon-like thing of value, or something else entirely? Here’s a clue: the word for “bird” in ancient Greek also means omen. And sages say this reappearance of The Violet Crow portends a new novel by Michael Sheldon, Reveille in Birdland, landing in 2025.
