|
Showing 1 - 25 of
40 matches in All Departments
Gregory Woods (born in 1953 in Egypt) is a British gay poet, critic
and academic poet who grew up in Ghana. The people in these poems
are coping with the extremes of ordinary life. In looking to the
past, to exalt or repudiate it, they make and unmake their futures.
Using unrhymed iambic trimeter, Woods plays forty variations on the
sonnet's simple progress from octet to sestet. Pared down to its
basics, all sinew and bone, the form is efficient and starkly
beautiful.
"In this remarkable first novel Mr. Baxter does a great deal more
than show promise; if there is any justice in the world he has
arrived." - "Times Literary Supplement"
"A first novel of more than promise. It is a distinct
achievement." - Joseph Taggart, "Star"
"An uncommonly good novel." - "Time Magazine"
"A first novel of great promise . . . penetrating insight of a
man's struggle against the dark powers of moral disintegration." -
"News Chronicle"
"A brilliantly good novel." - Lionel Hale, "Observer"
"Automatically rises to a high level of interest by facing up to
problems which have been considered taboo in numerous other war
novels by writers on both sides of the Atlantic . . . Mr. Baxter
displays a rousing knack for good story-telling with lean,
unfrilled prose." - "Saturday Review"
" M]ay well be considered one of the finest pieces of descriptive
writing to come out of the war. . . . This is an outstanding novel.
The writing is very, very good. Highly recommended." - "Birmingham
News"
" O]ne of the best of its kind ever written . . . quite literally
an unforgettable experience." - "Savannah News"
One of the finest British novels to come out of World War II,
"Look Down in Mercy" is the story of the moral disintegration of an
ordinary British Army officer when faced with the unspeakable
horrors of war. Newly arrived in Burma and waiting for the fighting
to start, the outwardly brave and rugged Capt. Tony Kent passes the
interminable and swelteringly hot days in bouts of heavy drinking
and casual sex. But when the campaign begins in earnest, Kent is
forced to confront his own inner darkness as his cowardice and fear
lead to treason and cold-blooded murder. Surrounded by brutality
and death on all sides, Kent's sole source of comfort is his love
for his batman, Anson. But in the face of nearly insurmountable
obstacles - enemy artillery, legal and social condemnation, and
Kent's own doubts and self-loathing - can their love possibly
survive?
"Look Down in Mercy" (1951) was both a bestseller and a major
critical success for its author, Walter Baxter (1915-1994), whose
second novel, "The Image and the Search" (1953), landed him in
court on criminal obscenity charges and ended his writing career.
This edition, the first in more than four decades, features a new
introduction by Gregory Woods and includes both the original ending
and the alternate ending from the 1952 American edition.
As life spans expanded dramatically in the United States after
1900, and employers increasingly demanded the speed and stamina of
youth in the workplace, men struggled to sustain identities as
workers, breadwinners, and patriarchs-the core ideals of
twentieth-century masculinity. Longer life threatened manhood as
men confronted age discrimination at work, mandatory retirement,
and fixed incomes as recipients of Social Security and workplace
pensions. They struggled to somehow sustain manliness in
retirement, a new phase of life supposedly defined by the absence
of labor. Ironically, retiring men pursued ways to stay
"productive": retirees created new daily routines of golf and
shuffleboard games, tinkered with tools in garages, attended social
club meetings, armed themselves for hunting and fishing excursions,
and threw themselves into yard work. Others looked for new jobs or
business ventures. Only unending activity could help to ensure that
the "golden years" would be good years for older men of the
twentieth century.
Longlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2022. Gregory Woods is the
leading British critic and historian of gay literature. He has
published five previous Carcanet poetry collections, the first
being We Have The Melon (1992). Ten years in the making, Records of
an Incitement to Silence revisits many of the original themes, but
here Woods brings them closer to the endgame. The sequence of
stripped-down, unrhymed sonnets, and the longer poems that
accentuate it, suggest a missing narrative: the growth of the
individual in a world of upheaval, the search for and loss of love,
the formation of memories, the limits of what can truthfully be
said, the traces we leave and the chance of their survival. 'One of
my creative habits,' Woods writes, 'is the wringing-out of a single
form until it's bone dry: the unrhymed sonnets; the monosyllabic
syllabics of the long poem "Hat Reef Loud"; the incompatible
yoking-together of iambic pentameter and dactylic trimeter in the
long poem "No Title Yet".' His formal stringency intensifies the
poems' emotional and erotic charge, their celebration and their
plaint.
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBTQ Studies
category: a landmark account of the seismic changes brought to
twentieth-century culture by gay and lesbian networks "An avalanche
of stories, ribald gossip, and lengthy asides . . . collectively
confirm the book's central thesis: gay culture, or at least gays
and lesbians, did indeed liberate the modern world."-Booklist In a
hugely ambitious study which crosses continents, languages, and
almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which
homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the
trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines
a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of
homosexuality one of the measures of modernity. Woods shines a
revealing light on the diverse, informal networks of gay people in
the arts and other creative fields. Uneasily called "the Homintern"
(an echo of Lenin's "Comintern") by those suspicious of an
international homosexual conspiracy, such networks connected gay
writers, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers,
politicians, and spies. While providing some defense against
dominant heterosexual exclusion, the grouping brought solidarity,
celebrated talent, and, in doing so, invigorated the majority
culture. Woods introduces an enormous cast of gifted and
extraordinary characters, most of them operating with surprising
openness; but also explores such issues as artistic influence, the
coping strategies of minorities, the hypocrisies of conservatism,
and the effects of positive and negative discrimination. Traveling
from Harlem in the 1910s to 1920s Paris, 1930s Berlin, 1950s New
York and beyond, this sharply observed, warm-spirited book presents
a surpassing portrait of twentieth-century gay culture and the men
and women who both redefined themselves and changed history.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields
in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as
an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification:
++++ Pagan Ireland; An Archaeological Sketch: A Handbook Of Irish
Pre-Christian Antiquities William Gregory Wood Martin Longmans,
Green, and co., 1895 History; Europe; Ireland; History / Europe /
Ireland; Ireland; Travel / Europe / Ireland
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger
Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain
imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed
pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we
have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting,
preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger
Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and
hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone
|
You may like...
1979
Val McDermid
Paperback
R484
R400
Discovery Miles 4 000
Not Dark Yet
Peter Robinson
Paperback
R540
R461
Discovery Miles 4 610
The Cuckoo
Camilla Lackberg
Paperback
R420
R280
Discovery Miles 2 800
The Red Book
James Patterson, David Ellis
Paperback
R443
Discovery Miles 4 430
|