Offers seven poems, seven works of fiction, including an excerpt from the author's novel "Trust," and eight essays that discuss such authors as Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, feminism, and other topics

Open City features a dynamic mix of prominent writers, undiscovered aspirants, and lost treasures from writers of past eras. Including fiction, essays, poetry, and artwork by an exciting range of talents, Open City has presented new works by Michael Cunningham, Deborah Garrison, Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace, Geoffrey O'Brien, Sam Lipsyte, Meghan Daum, David Berman, and previously unpublished work by Delmore Schwartz, Richard Yates, Edvard Munch, and Ford Madox Ford. Praised in the pages of publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Library Journal, and The New York Times, Open City is today's most important literary journal. Open City #14 includes John Seabrook on ancestor hunting; Arthur Nersessian, from Fuck-Up to makeup; new fiction by Betsy Bern and Martha McPhee; and the original treatment for the improvised cult-classic film Waiting for Guffman.

Levi writes on a variety of subjects, always of interest, always lucid, and always literary

The Story Of A Man's Bondage To Passion And Prejudice.

The nineteen stories contained herein, all beautifully translated for the first time into English by Sue Boswell, combine work published by Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) in newspapers together with manuscripts never published in his lifetime. From historical pieces, such as "Poupa", an early unfinished novel which takes place in ancient Rome, to horrific tales, such as "The Hand of Glory" and "The Maison Close", and others, such as "On Umbrellas", which are completely unclassifiable, the present collection displays the diversity and genius of one of France's greatest yet largely forgotten writers.

The author of the widely syndicated "Uncivil Liberties" column ruminates on everything from Fidel Castro to the calorie count of his favorite food. "Trillin is a curmudgeon's curmudgeon".--People.

Spanning three decades of his literary career, from Catch-22 to comments on the Persian Gulf War, Conversations with Joseph Heller contains a selection of the most significant, informative, and interesting interviews with one of America's foremost novelists. In these interviews Heller reveals his interest in the structure, effects, and themes of his works, his satirical purposes, the influences upon him, his writing methods, his political opinions, and a host of other topics that challenge and engage his lively and reflective mind. Included here are two interviews not previously published, interviews from student newspapers and university magazines, and two highly comic ""anti-interviews"" with close friends Mel Brooks and George Mandel. Here are two largely serious interviews with his friends Robert Alan Aurthur and Barbara Gelb. Also in this collection are Heller's conversations with authors Martin Amis and George Plimpton and a probing exchange with Bill Moyers about democracy, politics, and Heller's Picture This. Among the interviews are his talks with Sam Merrill in Playboy, Paul Krassner of The Realist, and with Chet Flippo of Rolling Stone.

An issue of the American literary magazine which brings its readers not only fiction and poetry, but also scientific essays on the state of the planet, dialogues, oral histories and excerpts of musical scores. Each issue features the work of contemporary artists and sculptors.

Modern Japanese Short Stories is a remarkable collection of Japanese stories from the pioneers of contemporary Japanese literature. This volume's twenty-five stories by as many authors display a wide range of style and subject matter--offering a revealing picture of modern Japanese culture and society. The stories in this anthology include: "Tattoo" by Junichiro Tanizaki--a large spider tattooed on the back of a young woman results in unexpected changes "Autumn Mountain" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa--vivid memories of a beautiful painting leads a man to wonder if the it ever actually existed "The Priest and His Love" by Yukio Mishima--a Buddhist priest finds his path to enlightenment challenged after falling in love "The Moon on the Water" by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata--a young woman who cared for her ailing first husband through most of their marriage regrets remarrying after his death Featuring a new foreword by Japanese literary scholar Seiji Lippit and striking woodcut illustrations by Masakazu Kuwata, the stories are translated by the editor, Ivan Morris, and Edward Seidensticker, George Saito, and Geoffery Sargent. This collection of short stories shows why Japanese literature is so highly valued today--it teaches not only about Japan, but about the human condition and the possibilities of art.

We first meet Lucy Appelbaum, the heroine of Paradise, New York , n 1970, when she is a nine year old girl enjoying her family's Catskills hotel, the Garden of Eden. Ten years later, having found nothing else at which she can distinguish herself, she tries to save the Eden by capitalizing on a wave of nostalgia for the Borscht Belt, running the hotel as a sort of living museum of Yiddish culture. In the course of that season, Lucy comes to realize her love for the hotel's black handyman, Mr. Jefferson -- and the difficulties she faces in overcoming the barriers between them. She battles her grandmother's not-so-subtle attempts to sabotage her success, her parents' superstitious fear of anything that attracts attention to the Jews, and her brother's contention that what Lucy is doing is more a matter of ego than authentic religious feeling. On top of all this, Lucy must contend with the Hasid who buys the chicken farm next door, a cell of ancient Jewish Communist who foment a strike among Eden's overworked young staff, and a gay chef and a gay baker who want to prove to the world that kosher cuisine can satisfy the most sophisticated gourmet. Among the novel's characters are Shirley and Nat Feidel, who barely survived the Holocaust but refuse to allow bitterness to rule their lives; Mami Goshgarian, the Eden's tumeler ; and Jimmy Kilcoin, and Irish Catholic insurance adjustor who has earned a reputation as "the Don Juan of the Catskills" and is determined to seduce Lucy before summer's end.

The haunting story of a woman who desires “something more, as if something more had been promised her that was not yet given.” Vivian Carpentier, confined by her role as an upper class woman in the 1940s, gleans meaning only from erotic love. Troubled by the elusiveness of men, yet convinced that they run the world, she can barely conceal her desperation to entice. Struggling with motherhood and the failure of marriage, she takes jobs to bridge intervals between lovers. She sings in a hotel bar, sells dresses, and nurses her father’s friend through his last illness, hoping to atone for a self-centered life. The constant in Vivian’s life is her son, David. Having seen her worst and best moments, he provides her with consolation and a reason for living.

"The Crow's Dinner" is master novelist Jonathan Carroll's debut essay collection, and that is very good news. Gathering together hundreds of entries that initially appeared on the website Medium, "The Crow's Dinner" is at once a wide-ranging spiritual autobiography and an annotated guide to what Carroll calls "The Map of Me." Beginning with an appreciation of "The Invisibles," those insignificant moments we overlook at our peril, "The Crow's Dinner" encompasses an extraordinary range of incidents, ideas, and images that cumulatively illuminate the inner and outer weather of a major American artist. This generous volume contains fragments of autobiography, reflections on the nature of creativity, vivid recreations of chance encounters, and provocative meditations on the complexityand unpredictabilityof human relationships. It is a book filled with colorful vignettes, unexpected bursts of whimsy, and observations filtered through an utterly unique sensibility. Witty, compassionate, open at all times to the "momentary magic" of existence, it is a work of singular beauty that is unlike anything you have ever read. Since the publication of his first novel, "The Land of Laughs," in 1980, Jonathan Carroll has repeatedly offered us new and startling ways of looking at our familiar world. With "The Crow's Dinner," he speaks to us in direct, unmediated fashion about the things that matter most: love, lust, books, dogs, food, friendshipand the transforming power of the imagination. The result is an intimate, one-of-a kind tour of a lively, unfettered mind. Like the best of Carroll's fiction, "The Crow's Dinner" is a book that matters.

Before E. M. Forster's Maurice, written in 1914, introduced a new openness about the favorable depiction of homosexuality in English fiction, a number of novels and stories carried coded portraits of homosexuals and homosexuality. Many of these were, by necessity, published privately; still others were written to insure that the homosexual component would be recognizable to a select few; still others embedded homosexual content within such "safe" genres as the Western and the public school novel. There have been several recent anthologies of twentieth-century gay fiction, but David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell's fascinating book is the first to explore the texts that circulated before the "gay fiction" genre came into being, and before greater tolerance allowed writers to treat homosexual themes directly. Leavitt and Mitchell include extracts from stories and novels by well-known writers such as Herman Melville, Walter Pater, Henry James, Willa Cather, and D. H. Lawrence, as well as work from neglected figures such as Count Eric Stenbock, John Francis Bloxam, "Alan Dale," and Gerald Hamilton -- the inspiration for Christopher Isherwood's Mr. Norris. The result is an entertaining and revelatory anthology, and a valuable contribution to our understanding of the literary treatment of homosexuality.

"Roth comments, in selected interviews, articles, and essays, on the origins and developments of his five most recent books and on key preoccupations, preferences, experiences, and enthusiasms in his written and unwritten worlds." --Amazon.com.

Includes The Articles Confidence Game, By Jim Harmon; The Hardest Bargain, By Evelyn E. Smith; Lulu, By Clifford D. Simak; And Many Others.

THE CLASSIC COLLECTION OF JEWISH FANTASY! "Marks a milestone in the literature of the fantastic." - Paul Di Filippo, author of The Steampunk Trilogy In HebrewPunk , World Fantasy Award winning author Lavie Tidhar had reinvented pulp fantasy fiction in Jewish terms, creating a hidden world where fantasy, horror and history intertwine. Featuring the Rabbi, the Rat and the Tzaddik, their stories take us on a journey from an expedition to an alternate world in Kenya in 1904 to the drug-soaked streets of 1920s London and to Transylvania in the Second World War. "Imagine Hard-Boiled Kabbalah... If you like your otherworld fun noir, have I got a book for you!" - Kage Baker, author of In the Garden of Iden "Wondrous, adventurous, and thought-provoking." - Ellen Datlow, co-editor of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror "Tidhar writes a sort of intensified supernatural action-surrealism that fair rattles along and is full of surprises--not only plot twists and thrills but a level of conceptual surprise, a reinvigoration of some of the more tired conventions of the fantasy-horror genre... not to be missed." - Adam Roberts, author of The Thing Itself

The most important new literary journal to emerge since Granta, Open City has published some of the best work by major writers and artists such as Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons, David Foster Wallace, Irvine Welsh, Terry Southern, Patrick McCabe, Sam Lipsyte, and David Berman. Edited by the writers Thomas Beller and Daniel Pinchbeck and originally published by the late Robert Bingham, writing from Open City has been included in many prestigious anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Known for launching the careers of today's best new writers, the editors are also committed to printing important unpublished work by writers from past eras, such as Richard Yates, Delmore Schwartz, Jim Thompson, Cyril Connolly, Edvard Munch, and Gregor von Rezzori. With its innovative and daring mix of the old and the new, Open City combines undiscovered writing by classic authors with a fascinating portrait of a literary generation in the making.

This is a new release of the original 1954 edition.

Nothing is as it seems at Wood Norton. A Zeppelin on a midnight flight over the English coast nearly crashes, leaving behind its observation car-and a Homberg hat. A mysterious stranger who appears from nowhere bearing news of Lady Cranston's brother, who languishes as a German prisoner of war. And Sir Henry Cranston, who refuses to come out of retirement at a time when his country is in need, but prefers instead to spend his time fishing. The fate of nations and of two lovers separated by war depends on discovering the secret of... The Zeppelin's Passenger!

Book by Lopate, Phillip