From the National Book Awardwinning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as a roadmap to my life.[Bokinfo]

Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy—Lee Israel’s hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Noel Coward, and many others. Before turning to her life of crime—running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI—Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines. But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she’d received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward—and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers. “Lee Israel is deft, funny, and eminently entertaining…[in her] gentle parable about the modern culture of fame, about those who worship it, those who strive for it, and those who trade in its relics” (The Associated Press). Exquisitely written, with reproductions of her marvelous forgeries, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is “a slender, sordid, and pretty damned fabulous book about her misadventures” ( The New York Times Book Review ).

My octogenarian dad wanted to study Homer's epic and learn its lessons about life's journeys. First he took my class. Then we sailed for Ithaca. When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired computer scientist who sees the world through a mathematician's unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his "one last chance" to learn the great literature he'd neglected in his youth--and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully understand his son, a writer and classicist. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months during which the two men explore Homer's great work together--first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then during a surprise--filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus's famous voyages--it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn's narrative comes to echo The Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home. Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned author-scholar's most triumphant entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.

Bestselling author Ruth Reichl embarks on a clear-eyed and openhearted investigation of her mother's life, piecing together the journey of a woman she comes to realize she never really knew. Looking to her mother's letters and diaries, Reichl confronts the painful transition her mother made from a hopeful young woman to an increasingly unhappy older one and realizes the tremendous sacrifices she made to make sure her daughter's life would not be as disappointing as her own. Book jacket.

"I wonder if Judy Blume really knows how many girls' lives she affected. I wonder if she knows that at least one of her books made a grown woman finally feel like she'd been a normal girl all along..." —from Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume Whether laughing to tears reading Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great or clamoring for more unmistakable "me too!" moments in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret , girls all over the world have been touched by Judy Blume's poignant coming-of-age stories. Now, in this anthology of essays, twenty-four notable female authors write straight from the heart about the unforgettable novels that left an indelible mark on their childhoods and still influence them today. After growing up from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing into Smart Women , these writers pay tribute, through their reflections and most cherished memories, to one of the most beloved authors of all time.

A zesty memoir of the celebrated writer's travels to England where she meets the cherished friends from 84, Charing Cross Road.

From The New York Times best-selling author of Paris to the Moon and beloved New Yorker writer, a memoir that captures the romance of New York City in the 1980s. When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, first arrived in 1980, New York City was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty, and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a place where both life’s consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder. At the Strangers’ Gate is a vivid portrait of this time, told through the story of one couple’s journey—from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Through a series of comic mini-anthropologies that capture the fashion, publishing, and art worlds of the era, Adam Gopnik transports us from his tiny basement room on the Upper East Side to a SoHo loft, from his time as a graduate student-cum-library-clerk to the galleries of MoMA. Filled with tender and humorous reminiscences—including affectionate reflections on Richard Avedon, Robert Hughes, and Jeff Koons, among many others— At the Strangers’ Gate is an ode to New York striving.

"You're not doing it right." Writer/comedian Michael Ian Black has been hearing these five words all his life. And now--on the eve of his fortieth birthday--he is finally beginning to wonder why. As a husband and father living in the suburbs, Michael asks the question so many of us ask ourselves at one point or another: How did I end up here? (And also: If Fat Kevin Federline succumbs to his own wasted potential, what does that mean for the rest of us?) The answers to these questions, and others that you probably would have never thought to ask, are painstakingly detailed in Black's debut memoir. Darkly humorous and told with raw honesty, Michael shares his neuroses as he takes on his childhood, his marriage, his children, and his career with candor and deadpan wit in this funny-because-it's-true essay collection.--From publisher description.

'Perec is serious fun' The Guardian Both an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I Remember is now available in English to UK readers for the first time, with an introduction by David Bellos. In 480 numbered statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember', Perec records a stream of individual memories of a childhood in post-war France, while posing wider questions about memory and nostalgia. As playful and puzzling as the best of his novels, I Remember is an ode to life: the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the sometimes trivial, as seen through the eyes of the irreplaceable Georges Perec.

In this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish--even when you're not. Self-hatred. Guilt. Resentment. Paranoia. Hysteria. Overbearing Mother-Love. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews. Reflecting on why Jews have so often been depicted, both by others and by themselves, as prone to "negative" feelings, she queries how negative these feelings really are. And as the pace of globalization leaves countless people feeling more marginalized, uprooted, and existentially threatened, she argues that such "Jewish" feelings are becoming increasingly common to us all. Ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Sarah Bernhardt to Woody Allen, Anne Frank to Nathan Englander, Feeling Jewish bridges the usual fault lines between left and right, insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, and even Semite and anti-Semite, to offer an indispensable guide for our divisive times.

From the bestselling novelist and author of "The Invention of Solitude," a moving and highly personal meditation on the body, time, and language itself ""That is where the story begins, in your body, and everything will end in the body as well." Facing his sixty-third winter, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations--both pleasurable and painful. Thirty years after the publication of "The Invention of Solitude," in which he wrote so movingly about fatherhood, Auster gives us a second unconventional memoir in which he writes about his mother's life and death. "Winter Journal" is a highly personal meditation on the body, time, and memory, by one of our most intellectually elegant writers.

In 1939, F. Scott Fitzgerald was in Hollywood, in failing health, trying to work—write for the movies, sell some stories—and to continue to be the mainstay and anchor for his family, paying Zelda’s substantial hospital bills, educating Scottie and remaining, through letters, a protective and anxious father. The magazines were no longer clamoring for his stories; his books had nearly disappeared from the bookstores. The fame, money and high times of the early years seemed to have evaporated. Fortune had not deserted him entirely, however—Frances Kroll applied for the position as Fitzgerald’s secretary. Young and a little shy, but nevertheless level-headed, intelligent, practical, versatile and resilient, Miss Kroll played a vital role during the last quiet but difficult twenty months of Fitzgerald’s life. They worked at home where she typed from his handwritten pages, ordered groceries, made appointments and listened while he talked out ideas. Finally, it fell to her to make his funeral arrangements and deal with the modest belongings. Nearly a lifetime later, Frances Kroll Ring gives us both the youthful experience of Fitzgerald, and her mature vision of it. This frankly admiring and respectful memoir of the extraordinary writer creates a uniquely domestic picture. We see an admirable and talented man carrying on with dignity, purpose and commitment against a tide of troubles and disappointments.

It was Christmas Eve 1927 and Prohibition was at its height when Diana and Lionel Trilling, that distinguished literary pair, were introduced to each other. They met at a Manhattan speakeasy. Both were 22. Lionel was a graduate student at Columbia, taking his first tentative steps to a literary career. Diana hoped to be a singer. Soon after their marriage in 1929, the stock market crashed. Their families were in financial ruin. Not until the forties did Lionel attain literary recognition and Diana launch her career as fiction critic of the Nation. A long arduous decade had been lost to illness, financial hardship, grueling family responsibility. Also to the lure, and rejection, of Communism. The Beginning of the Journey takes its title from Lionel Trilling's famous novel, The Middle of the Journey. An uncommonly personal account of the upbringing, education, and marriage of two remarkable individuals, it is also a probing portrait of life among the group now so widely referred to as "the New York intellectuals." Mary McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald, William Phillips, Phillip Rahv, Edmund Wilson, James Agee, Sidney Hook, Randall Jarrell, Allen Ginsberg: these are but a few of the well-known figures whom we come to see through the eyes of someone who lived at the center of America's Bloomsbury. Although Mrs. Trilling chiefly deals with the intellectual culture of our century, the range of her memoir is not limited to this single section of society. The Beginning of the Journey speaks to questions of a kind which transcend social lines but which have been largely ignored by our literary biographers. What was it like, what was it really like, to be a woman in this predominantly male universe? What did it feel like to be as respected a critic as Diana Trilling but married to a man so much more celebrated than herself? What did a woman of her generation sacrifice for marriage and motherhood?

Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. The Naked and the Dead (1948), inspired by his experience in World War II, was a bestseller and made him famous at the age of 25. Notoriously combative and egotistical, her father enjoyed a good fight both physically and verbally. Whether cheered or booed, Mailer was front and center in America's cultural battles for more than 50 years. He married six times and was father to nine children. Susan, born in 1949, is the eldest. Susan's parents separated when she was a baby. She grew up shuttling between her mother's home in Mexico and New York. Later she would marry a Chilean activist, spending the majority of her adult life in Chile, where she is a practicing psychoanalyst. In Another Place tells the story of her intense and complex relationship with her father, her five stepmothers and nine siblings, and the joys and pains of being part of the large Mailer clan. It is a tale of separation, and of the rewards and struggles of living in two very different cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life . . . In Another Place.

"In Another Place brings us to many remarkable new places in the Mailer universe. Written with tenderness, acuity and unadorned psychological depth, Susan Mailer's memoir is a powerful look at the literary world." -Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin"Brisk, enthralling [. . .] full of dramatic family scenes, most of them heretofore unknown. I wish I had her memoir in hand when writing my biography." -J. Michael Lennon, author of Norman Mailer: A Double Life Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. The Naked and the Dead (1948), inspired by his experience in World War II, was a bestseller and made him famous at the age of 25. Notoriously combative and egotistical, her father enjoyed a good ¿ght both physically and verbally. Whether cheered or booed, Mailer was front and center in America's cultural battles for more than 50 years. He married six times and was father to nine children. Susan, born in 1949, is the eldest.Susan's parents separated when she was a baby. She grew up shuttling between her mother's home in Mexico and New York. Later she would marry a Chilean activist, spending the majority of her adult life in Chile, where she is a practicing psychoanalyst.In Another Place tells the story of her intense and complex relationship with her father, her ¿ve stepmothers and nine siblings, and the joys and pains of being part of the large Mailer clan. It is a tale of separation, and of the rewards and struggles of living in two very di¿erent cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life . . . In Another Place.

The definitive memoir of Arthur Miller--the famous playwright of The Crucible , All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , A View from the Bridge , and other plays-- Timebends reveals Miller's incredible trajectory as a man and a writer. Born in 1915, Miller grew up in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, developed leftist political convictions during the Great Depression, achieved moral victory against McCarthyism in the 1950s, and became president of PEN International near the end of his life, fighting for writers' freedom of expression. Along the way, his prolific output established him as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century--he wrote twenty-two plays, various screenplays, short stories, and essays, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for Death of a Salesman and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1947 for All My Sons . Miller also wrote the screenplay for The Misfits, Marilyn Monroe's final film. This memoir also reveals the incredible host of notables that populated his life, including Marilyn Monroe, Elia Kazan, Clark Gable, Sir Laurence Olivier, John F. Kennedy, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Leaving behind a formidable reputation in the worlds of theater, cinema, and politics, Arthur Miller died in 2005 but his memoir continues his legacy.

With letters from Mordecai Richler, Mavis Gallant, and Brian Moore Getting Started is a wonderful memoir, a collection of extraordinary letters, and a brilliant recreation of a time when Canadian writers were set to make their mark in the world for the first time. Writer Brian Moore emigrated from Ireland to Canada in the late 1940s and found work at the Montreal Gazette, where he also found William Weintraub embarking upon a career as a freelance journalist. When he travelled to Paris, Weintraub saw an old friend and former Gazette writer, Mavis Gallant, who filled him in on the tribulations of the expatriate writer’s life ( “My room is enormous and the radiator very small indeed” ). Gallant introduced Weintraub to another Montreal writer, Mordecai Richler, also pursuing a career as a novelist while living a gloriously Bohemian life. Weintraub joined Richler for a while in Ibiza (he later introduced him to Brian Moore), and later they kept in touch. ( “Dear Bill: I got your highly unintellectual letter yesterday and it confirmed my suspicions that you slipped a chair under your arse in the Deux Magots as soon as you arrived in Paris and probably haven’t moved since.” ) In these years, Gallant had her short stories published for the first time in the New Yorker, Moore methodically churned out money-making thrillers while working on The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne , and Richler wrote his first acclaimed book, The Acrobats . Weintraub, meanwhile, returned to Montreal, where he saw published his brilliant comic novel, Why Rock the Boat? William Weintraub weaves together his own memories of the 1950s with letters both to and from his literary colleagues. The letters and his recollections are always fascinating, often hilarious, and provide intimate insight into the lives and work of some of Canada’s finest contemporary writers. From the Hardcover edition.

Conflicting Identities and Multiple Masculinities takes as its focus the construction of masculinity in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages until the fifteenth century, crossing from pre-Christian Scandinavia across western Christendom. The essays consult a broad and representative cross section of sources including the work of theological, scholastic, and monastic writers, sagas, hagiography and memoirs, material culture, chronicles, exampla and vernacular literature, sumptuary legislation, and the records of ecclesiastical courts. The studies address questions of what constituted male identity, and male sexuality. How was masculinity constructed in different social groups? How did the secular and ecclesiastical ideals of masculinity reinforce each other or diverge? These essays address the topic of medieval men and, through a variety of theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary approaches, significantly extend our understanding of how, in the Middle Ages, masculinity and identity were conflicted and multifarious.

This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of ‘Faithfull’, one of the most acclaimed rock autobiographies of all time, Marianne Faithfull is back, vowing periodically leave her wicked ways behind and grow up, but finding that somehow strange things keep happening. A wry observer of her slightly off-kilter world, Marianne muses nostalgically about afternoons languishing on Moroccan cushions at George and Pattie's, getting high and listening to new songs. She fondly recalls the outlandish antics of her Beat friends Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; is frequently baffled at her image in the press (opening the paper to read of her own demise: 'Sixties Star in Death Plunge'); terrified by the curse sent by Kenneth Anger; mortified by her history of reckless behaviour; not to mention her near-death experience in Singapore while looking for an opium den. Marianne peoples her anecdotal memoir with legendary characters one can imagine only Marianne assembling around her, both the eccentric and the beautiful, from Henrietta Moraes and Donatella Versace to Sofia Coppola, Juliette Greco, and Yves St. Laurent's dog. Here is Marianne on the dark side of the sixties and the bright side of the nineties, which saw her collaborating with the likes of Blur and Jarvis Cocker; compelling recollections of an unconventional childhood in her father's orgiastic literary commune to a hilariously decadent few days at Lady Caroline Blackwood's deathbed. Here she is her blossoming movie career, on her records as subliminal autobiography. This is as intimate a portrait as we've ever had of Marianne, as she meditates on sex and drugs, confronts her alter-ego, the Fabulous Beast, and faces her own mortality in her battle with breast cancer. Since her last book Marianne has, in her own words, 'made quite a few records, gone on many tours, tried to play it straight, and... Well, the rest is the subject of this book.'

"Biespiel’s supple memoir of becoming a poet will surely inspire other writers to embrace the bodily character of writing and feel the power and, sometimes, the emptiness of the act of writing poetry." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Education of a Young Poet is David Biespiel’s moving account of his awakening to writing and the language that can shape a life. Exploring the original source of his creative impulse—a great–grandfather who traveled alone from Ukraine to America in 1910, eventually settling as a rag peddler in the tiny town of Elma, Iowa—through the generations that followed, Biespiel tracks his childhood in Texas and his university days in the northeast, led along by the ""pattern and random bursts that make up a life." His book offers an intimate recollection of how one person forges a life as a writer during extraordinary times. From the Jewish quarter of Houston in the 1970s to bohemian Boston in the 1980s, from Russia’s Pale of Settlement to a farming village in Vermont, Biespiel remains alert to the magic of possibilities—ancestral journeys, hash parties, political rallies, family connections, uncertain loves, the thrill of sex, and lasting friendships. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft coupled with a classic coming–of–age tale that does for Boston in the 1980s what Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s and Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage did for Greenwich Village in the 1950s. Restless with curiosity and enthusiasm, The Education of a Young Poet is a singular and universal bildungsroman that movingly demonstrates, "in telling the story of one’s coming into consciousness, all languages are more or less the same."