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While paratexts - among them headnotes, footnotes, or endnotes -
have never been absent from American literature, the last two
decades have seen an explosion of the phenomenon, including (mock)
scholarly footnotes, to an extent that they seem to take over the
text itself. In this Special Focus we shall attempt to find the
reasons for this astonishing development. In our first (diachronic)
section we shall explore such texts as might have fostered the
present boom, from fictions by Edgar Allan Poe to Vladimir Nabokov
to Mark Z. Danielewski. The second (synchronic) section, will
concentrate on paratexts by David Foster Wallace, perhaps the
"father" of the post-postmodern footnote, as well as those to be
found in novels by Bennett Sims, Jennifer Egan and Junot Diaz,
among others. It appears that, while paratexts definitely point to
a high degree of self-reflexivity in the author, they equally draw
attention to the textual and authorial functions of the works in
which they exist. They can thus cause a reflection on the
boundaries between genres like fiction, faction, and autobiography,
as well as serving to highlight a host of pedagogical and social
concerns that exist in the interstices between fiction and reality.
Travel back in time to the Current Middle Ages, a re-created world
of knights in shining armor, lords and ladies, artisans and
minstrels with one foot in history, the other in today's modern
society. Join a journey through the nation's largest medievalist
group, the Society for Creative Anachronism, as it and other groups
act out their passion for times long past. Meet the cast of
colorful characters who call this re-created world home and follow
a young fighter as he struggles to earn knighthood and the crown of
the kingdom that serves as his stage.
David Mitchell has emerged as one of the leading figures of the
current "under-50" generation of contemporary British writers and
is rapidly taking his place amongst British novelists with the
gravitas of an Ishiguro or a McEwan. Written for a wide
constituency of scholars, students, and readers of contemporary
literature, " A Temporary Future: The Fiction of David Mitchell"
explores Mitchell's primary concerns--including those of identity,
history, language, imperialism, childhood, the environment,
ethnicity--across the six novels published thus far, as well as his
protean ability to write in multiple and diverse genres. It places
Mitchell in the tradition of Murakami, Sebald, Ishiguro, and
Rushdie--writers whose work explore narrative in an age of
globalization and cosmopolitanism. O'Donnell traces the
through-lines of Mitchell's work from "Ghostwritten "to "The Bone
Clocks "and, with a chapter on each of the six novels, tracks the
evolution of Mitchell's fictional project. The concluding chapter
addresses Mitchell as a writer of the future.
Five months after being deployed to Iraq, Lima Company's 1st
Platoon, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, found itself in
Fallujah, embroiled in some of the most intense house-to-house,
hand-to-hand urban combat since World War II. In the city's bloody
streets, they came face-to-face with the enemy-radical insurgents
high on adrenaline, fighting to a martyr's death, and suicide
bombers approaching from every corner. award-winning author and
historian Patrick O'Donnell stood shoulder to shoulder with this
modern band of brothers as they marched and fought through the
streets of Fallujah, and he stayed with them as the casualties
mounted.
Increasingly disillusioned by the rejection slips that studded the walls of his room and his on/off engagement to Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald began his third revision of the novel that was to become This Side of Paradise. The story of a young man’s painful sexual and intellectual awakening that echoes Fitzgerald’s own career, it is also a portrait of the lost generation that followed straight on from the First World War, ‘grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken’ and wanting money and success more than anything else.
"What would you want if you could have any wish?" asked the
photojournalist of the haggard, bloodied Marine before him. The
Marine gaped at his interviewer. The photographer snapped his
picture, which became the iconic Korean War image featured on this
book's jacket. "Give me tomorrow," he said at last.
After nearly four months of continuous and agonizing combat on
the battlefields of Korea, such a simple request seemed impossible.
For many men of George Company, or "Bloody George" as they were
known--one of the Forgotten War's most decorated yet unrecognized
companies--it was a wish that would not come true. This is the
untold story of "Bloody George," a Marine company formed quickly to
answer its nation's call to duty in 1950. This small band of men--a
colorful cast of characters, including a Native American fighting
to earn his honor as a warrior, a Southern boy from Tennessee at
odds with a Northern blue-blood reporter-turned-Marine, and a pair
of twins who exemplified to the group the true meaning of
brotherhood--were mostly green troops who had been rushed through
training to fill America's urgent need on the Korean front. They
would find themselves at the tip of the spear in some of the Korean
War's bloodiest battles. After storming ashore at Inchon and
fighting house-to-house in Seoul, George Company, one of America's
last units in reserve, found itself on the frozen tundra of the
Chosin Reservoir facing elements of an entire division of Chinese
troops. They didn't realize it then, but they were soon to become
crucial to the battle--modern-day Spartans called upon to hold off
ten times their number. "Give Me Tomorrow "is their unforgettable
story of bravery and courage. Thoroughly researched and vividly
told, "Give Me Tomorrow" is fitting testament to the heroic deeds
of George Company. They will never again be forgotten.
The Crying of Lot 49 is widely recognized as a significant contemporary work that frames the desire for meaning and the quest for knowledge within the social and political contexts of the '50s and '60s in America. In the introduction to this collection of original essays on Thomas Pynchon's important novel, Patrick O'Donnell discusses the background and critical reception of the novel. Further essays by five experts on contemporary literature examine the novel's "semiotic regime" or the way in which it organizes signs; the comparison of postmodernist Pynchon and the influential South American writer, Jorge Luis Borges; metaphor in the novel; the novel's narrative strategies; and the novel within the cultural contexts of American Puritanism and the Beat movement. Together, these essays provide an examination of the novel within its literary, historical, and scientific contexts.
The Crying of Lot 49 is widely recognized as a significant contemporary work that frames the desire for meaning and the quest for knowledge within the social and political contexts of the '50s and '60s in America. In the introduction to this collection of original essays on Thomas Pynchon's important novel, Patrick O'Donnell discusses the background and critical reception of the novel. Further essays by five experts on contemporary literature examine the novel's "semiotic regime" or the way in which it organizes signs; the comparison of postmodernist Pynchon and the influential South American writer, Jorge Luis Borges; metaphor in the novel; the novel's narrative strategies; and the novel within the cultural contexts of American Puritanism and the Beat movement. Together, these essays provide an examination of the novel within its literary, historical, and scientific contexts.
The inspiration for the major motion picture starring Brad Pitt and
Cate Blanchett, plus eighteen other stories by the beloved author
of The Great Gatsby In the title story of this collection by one of
America's greatest writers, a baby born in 1860 begins life as an
old man and proceeds to age backward. F. Scott Fizgerald hinted at
this kind of inversion when he called his era "a generation grown
up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man
shaken." Perhaps nowhere in American fiction has this "Lost
Generation" been more vividly preserved than in Fitzgerald's short
fiction. Spanning the early twentieth-century American landscape,
this original collection captures, with Fitzgerald's signature
blend of enchantment and disillusionment, America during the Jazz
Age. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading
publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With
more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global
bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres
and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative
texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars
and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by
award-winning translators.
The first history of America's major literary form offers new
views of our literary history and a sophisticated examination of
areas of fiction that have only recently begun to receive
attention.
David Mitchell has emerged as one of the leading figures of the
current "under-50" generation of contemporary British writers and
is rapidly taking his place amongst British novelists with the
gravitas of an Ishiguro or a McEwan. Written for a wide
constituency of scholars, students, and readers of contemporary
literature, " A Temporary Future: The Fiction of David Mitchell"
explores Mitchell's primary concerns--including those of identity,
history, language, imperialism, childhood, the environment,
ethnicity--across the six novels published thus far, as well as his
protean ability to write in multiple and diverse genres. It places
Mitchell in the tradition of Murakami, Sebald, Ishiguro, and
Rushdie--writers whose work explore narrative in an age of
globalization and cosmopolitanism. O'Donnell traces the
through-lines of Mitchell's work from "Ghostwritten "to "The Bone
Clocks "and, with a chapter on each of the six novels, tracks the
evolution of Mitchell's fictional project. The concluding chapter
addresses Mitchell as a writer of the future.
Ben Pals is a collection of humorous letters to famous people,
corporations, and government figures from closet philosopher Ben
Ogobe. Not only a catalog of American history over the past 20
years, but a peek into the author's unique sense of humor. "Ben
Ogobe" will leave you pondering, chuckling, and sometimes rolling
on the floor.
At the height of World War II, with the Third Reich's final
solution in full operation, a small group of Jews who had barely
escaped the Nazis did the unthinkable: They went back. Spies now,
these men took on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. They
Dared Return is their story-a tale of adventure, espionage, love,
and revenge.
The aftermath of the Civil War saw the Ku Klux Klan founded as a
white supremacist insurgency of former Confederate rebels. But the
Klan saw its greatest growth in the first decades of the 20th
century. By 1925, with a membership of about four million, it was
established in every state of the Union. Fueling its incredible
growth was a potent combination of public relations expertise and
high-pressure sales tactics applied to the business of hate. Its
sinister legacy still confronts us today. Collected here for the
first time is a massive dossier of original source material
documenting this bizarre episode of American history. Materials
include government reports; long-hidden pages from the Klan's own
handbook; pro- and anti-Klan articles from newspapers and magazines
of the period; and much more, including the complete text of Ezra
A. Cook's classic piece of investigative reporting, "Ku Klux Klan:
Secrets Exposed." All unabridged.
Travel back in time to the Current Middle Ages, a re-created world
of knights in shining armor, lords and ladies, artisans and
minstrels with one foot in history, the other in today's modern
society. Join a journey through the nation's largest medievalist
group, the Society for Creative Anachronism, as it and other groups
act out their passion for times long past. Meet the cast of
colorful characters who call this re-created world home and follow
a young fighter as he struggles to earn knighthood and the crown of
the kingdom that serves as his stage.
Like a scene from "Where Eagles Dare," a small team of American
spies parachutes into Italy behind enemy lines. Their orders: link
up with local partisans and sabotage the well-guarded Brenner
Pass--the Nazis' crucial supply route through the Alps--thereby
bringing the German war effort in Italy to a grinding halt.
In the summer of 1942, an extraordinary group of men united to form
an exceptional unit. Known as the Maritime Unit, it comprised
America's first swimmer-commandos- an elite breed of warrior-spies
who were decades ahead of their time when they created the tactics,
technology, and philosophy that live on in today's Navy SEALs.
Often armed only with knives and wearing nothing more than swim
trunks and flippers, the Maritime Unit's combat swimmers and other
operatives carried out seaborne clandestine missions in the
Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean theatres of World War II. In
First SEALs , Patrick K. O'Donnell unearths their incredible
history- one of the greatest untold stories of World War
II.FirstSEALsBook.com
"Latent Destinies" examines the formation of postmodern
sensibilities and their relationship to varieties of paranoia that
have been seen as widespread in this century. Despite the fact that
the Cold War has ended and the threat of nuclear annihilation has
been dramatically lessened by most estimates, the paranoia that has
characterized the period has not gone away. Indeed, it is as if--as
O'Donnell suggests--this paranoia has been internalized, scattered,
and reiterated at a multitude of sites: Oklahoma City, Waco, Ruby
Ridge, Bosnia, the White House, the United Nations, and numerous
other places.
O'Donnell argues that paranoia on the broadly cultural level is
essentially a narrative process in which history and postmodern
identity are negotiated simultaneously. The result is an erasure of
historical temporality--the past and future become the
all-consuming, self-aware present. To explain and exemplify this,
O'Donnell looks at such books and films as "Libra, JFK, The Crying
of Lot 49, The Truman Show, Reservoir Dogs, Empire of the
Senseless, Oswald's Tale, The Executioner's Song, Underworld, The
Killer Inside Me, "and "Groundhog Day." Organized around the topics
of nationalism, gender, criminality, and construction of history,
"Latent Destinies" establishes cultural paranoia as consonant with
our contradictory need for multiplicity and certainty, for openness
and secrecy, and for mobility and historical stability.
Demonstrating how imaginative works of novels and films can be
used to understand the postmodern historical condition, this book
will interest students and scholars of American literature and
cultural studies, postmodern theory, and film studies.
An epic World War II story of valor, sacrifice, and the Rangers who
led the way to victory in EuropeIt is said that the right man in
the right place at the right time can make the difference between
victory and defeat. This is the dramatic story of sixty-eight
soldiers of the U.S. Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion, D Company- Dog
Company- who made that difference, time and again.From D-Day, when
German guns atop Pointe du Hoc threatened the Allied landings and
the men of Dog Company scaled the ninety-foot cliffs to destroy
them to the thickly forested slopes of Hill 400, in Germany's
Hurtgen Forest, where the Rangers launched a desperate bayonet
charge across an open field, captured the crucial hill, and held it
against all odds. In each battle, the men of Dog Company made the
difference. Dog Company is their unforgettable story- thoroughly
researched and vividly told by acclaimed combat historian Patrick
K. O'Donnell- a story of extraordinary bravery, courage, and
determination. America had many heroes in World War II, but few can
say that, but for them, the course of the war may have been very
different. The right men, in the right place, at the right time-
Dog Company.
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