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Drawing from contemporary journalism, reviews, program notes, memoirs, interviews, and other sources, Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History brings to life the controversies and critical issues that have accompanied every moment of jazz history. Highlighting the significance of jazz as a complex and consequential social practice as well as an art form, this book presents a multitude of ways in which people have understood and cared about jazz. It records a history not of style changes but of values, meanings, and sensibilities. Featuring sixty-two thought-provoking chapters, this unique volume gives voice to a wide range of perspectives, stressing different reactions to and uses of jazz, both within and across communities. It offers contributions from well-known figures including Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Wynton Marsalis, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis; from renowned writers such as Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, and Ralph Ellison; and from critics including Leonard Feather and Gunther Schuller. Walser has selected writings that capture the passionate reactions of people who have loved, hated, supported, and argued about jazz. Organized chronologically, Keeping Time covers nearly 100 years of jazz history. Filled with insightful writing, it aims to increase historical awareness, to provoke critical thinking, and to encourage lively classroom discussion as students relive the tangled and conflicted story of jazz. It enables readers to see that jazz is not just about names, dates, and chords, but rather about issues and ideas, cultural activities, and experiences that have affected people deeply in a great variety of ways. Concise headnotes provide historical context for each selection and point out issues for thinking and discussion. An excellent text for a variety of jazz courses, Keeping Time can serve as supplementary reading in popular music, American Studies, African American studies, history, and sociology courses, and will also appeal to anyone interested in jazz.
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Looking at Pictures (Hardcover)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky, Lydia Davis, Christopher Middleton
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R567
Discovery Miles 5 670
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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A beautiful and elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art
reproductions, Looking at Pictures presents a little-known side of
the eccentric Swiss genius: his great writings on art. His essays
consider Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau, Fragonard,
Brueghel and his own brother Karl and also discuss general topics
such as the character of the artist and of the dilettante as well
as the differences between painters and poets. Every piece is
marked by Walser's unique eye, his delicate sensitivity, and his
very particular sensibilities-and all are touched by his magic
screwball wit.
The Institut Benjamenta: a school of humility for the unambitious.
The young Jakob von Gunten arrives at this most curious of
educational establishments with the goal of becoming 'something
very small and subordinate later in life', a goal he sets about
achieving with laconic dedication and wry detachment. Irony,
scepticism, absurd images and sensations, disconcerting humour,
minor humiliations and minute observations mingle to form one of
the signature works of twentieth century fiction. First published
in 1908, a forerunner to and key influence on the work of writers
such as Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, Robert Walser's
masterpiece is a paean to infinitesimal unimportance, a celebration
of the marginal life that is the life of the mind.
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Microscripts (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky; Illustrated by Maira Kalman
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R581
Discovery Miles 5 810
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic,
shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper, covered with tiny
ant-like pencil markings a millimeter high, came to light only
after the author s death in 1956.At first considered random
restless pencil markings or a secret code, the microscripts were in
time discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of antique
German script: a whole story was deciphered on the back of a
business card. These twenty-five short pieces address schnapps,
rotten husbands, small town life, elegant jaunts, the radio, swine,
jealousy, and marriage proposals."
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The Poems (Hardcover)
Robert Walser, Daniele Pantano
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R927
R782
Discovery Miles 7 820
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The first complete publication of Robert Walser's poems translated
into English. Admired by the likes of Kafka, Musil, and Walter
Benjamin and acclaimed "unforgettable, heart-rending" by J. M.
Coetzee, Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) remains one of the
most influential authors of modern literature. Walser left school
at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence while
producing poems, stories, essays, and novels. In 1933, he abandoned
writing and entered a sanatorium, where he remained for the rest of
his life. "I am not here to write," Walser said, "but to be mad."
This first collection of Walser's poems in English translation
allows English-speaking readers to experience the author as he saw
himself at the beginning and the end of his literary career--as a
poet. The book also includes notes on dates of composition, draft
versions of the printed poems, and brief biographical information
on characters and locations that appear in the poems and may not be
known to readers. Few writers have ever experienced such a steady
rise in their reputation and public profile as Walser has seen in
recent years, and this collection of his poems will help readers
discover a unique writer whose off-kilter sensibility and
innovations in form are perfectly suited to our fragmented,
distracted, bewildering era.
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Comedies (Hardcover)
Robert Walser
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R641
R582
Discovery Miles 5 820
Save R59 (9%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Few writers have ever experienced such a steady rise in their
reputation and public profile as Swiss writer Robert Walser
(1878-1956) has seen in recent years. As more of his previously
little known work has been translated into English, readers have
discovered a unique writer whose off-kilter sensibility and
innovations in form are perfectly suited to our fragmented,
distracted, bewildered era. This book brings English-language
readers work by Walser in yet another form: dramolette. The short
plays presented here, inspired by the German theater Walser enjoyed
in his youth, while never meant to be performed, present scenes,
characters, and situations that comment on the brutality of fairy
tales, the impossibilities of love, the dark fate of the Christ
child (and Walser himself), and more. At the same time, like all of
Walser's work they are shot through with a humor that is wholly
genuine despite its shades of darkness. Gathering all of Walser's
plays, as well as his later, fragmentary dramatic writings,
Comedies will be celebrated by the many devoted fans of this lately
rediscovered master.
Ranging from one-page fantasies to novella-length studies of
everyday existence, The Walk reveals the irresistible genius of one
of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Under-appreciated even
in his own lifetime, Robert Walser has nonetheless been recognised
by such writers as W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Franz Kafka, Herman
Hesse and J.M. Coetzee. Like Kafka and Sebald, Walser wrote about
the solitude and unease of human existence. Honest, wry and
idiosyncratic, his stories are snapshots of the lives great
artists, poor young men, beautiful women and talking animals alike.
Ranging from the realist to the allegorical, the short fiction
collected in this volume demonstrates Walser's uncanny ability to
capture both life's strangeness and its small joys.
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Jakob von Gunten (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Christopher Middleton; Introduction by Christopher Middleton
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R415
R348
Discovery Miles 3 480
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The Swiss writer Robert Walser is one of the quiet geniuses of
twentieth-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether
indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short
stories, essays, as well as four novels, of which "Jakob von
Gunten" is widely recognized as the finest. The book is a young
man's inquisitive and irreverent account of life in what turns out
to be the most uncanny of schools. It is the work of an outsider
artist, a writer of uncompromising originality and disconcerting
humor, whose beautiful sentences have the simplicity and
strangeness of a painting by Henri Rousseau.
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Comedies (Paperback)
Robert Walser, Daniele Pantano, James Reidel
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R373
Discovery Miles 3 730
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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This book brings English-language readers works by Walser in a rare
form: dramolette. Few writers have ever experienced such a steady
rise in their reputation and public profile as Swiss writer Robert
Walser (1878-1956) has seen in recent years. As more of his
previously little-known work has been translated into English,
readers have discovered a unique writer whose off-kilter
sensibility and innovations in form are perfectly suited to our
fragmented, distracted, bewildering era. The short plays presented
here, inspired by the German theater Walser enjoyed in his youth,
while never meant to be performed, present scenes, characters, and
situations that comment on the brutality of fairy tales, the
impossibilities of love, the dark fate of the Christ child (and
Walser himself), and more. At the same time, like all of Walser's
work they are shot through with a humor that is wholly genuine
despite its shades of darkness. Gathering all of Walser's plays, as
well as his later, fragmentary dramatic writings, Comedies will be
celebrated by the many devoted fans of this lately rediscovered
master.
A Schoolboy's Diary brings together more than seventy of Robert
Walser's strange and wonderful stories, most never before available
in English. Opening with a sequence from Walser's first book,
"Fritz Kocher's Essays," the complete classroom assignments of a
fictional boy who has met a tragically early death, this selection
ranges from sketches of uncomprehending editors, overly passionate
readers, and dreamy artists to tales of devilish adultery, sexual
encounters on a train, and Walser's service in World War I.
Throughout, Walser's careening, confounding, delicious voice holds
the reader transfixed.
A New York Review Books Original. In 1905 the young Swiss writer
Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl,
already an important stage set designer, and immediately threw
himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city.
Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and
satirical observations on every aspect of the bustling German
capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters' galleries, and
literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the
Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram.
Originally appearing in literary magazines as well as the
feuilleton sections of newspapers including the Berliner Tageblatt,
the Vossische Zeitung, and the Frankfurter Zeitung, the early
stories are characterized by a joyous urgency and the generosity of
an unconventional guide. Later pieces take the form of more
personal reflections on the writing process, memories, and
character studies. All are full of counter-intuitive images and
vignettes of startling clarity, showcasing a unique talent for whom
no detail was trivial, at grips with a city diving headlong into
modernity.
Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the
Swiss writer Robert Walser. Narrated in Walser's inimitable,
playful language, these theatrical pieces overturn traditional
notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into
metatheater, even metareflections. Snow White forgives the evil
queen for trying to kill her, Cinderella doubts her prince and
enjoys being hated by her evil stepsisters; the Fairy Tale itself
is a character who encourages her to stay within the confines of
the story. Sleeping Beauty, the royal family, and its retainers are
not happy about being woken from their sleep by an absurd,
unpretentious, Walser-like hero. Mary and Joseph are taken aback by
what lies in store for their baby Jesus.
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Aufsätze
Robert Walser
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R386
Discovery Miles 3 860
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The Robber (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky; Introduction by Susan Bernofsky
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R450
R373
Discovery Miles 3 730
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The Robber, Robert Walser’s last novel, tells the story of a
dreamer on a journey of self-discovery. It is a hybrid of love
story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks
teaspoons, flirts with important politicians, plays maidservant to
young boys, and uses a passerby’s mouth as an ashtray. Walser’s
novel spoofs the stiff-upper-lipped European petit bourgeois and
its nervous reactions to whatever threatens the stability of its
worldview.
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Drucke Im Prager Tagblatt
Robert Walser; Edited by Bettina Braun, Barbara Von Reibnitz
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R1,588
Discovery Miles 15 880
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Thirty Poems (Hardcover)
Robert Walser; Translated by Christopher Middleton
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R513
Discovery Miles 5 130
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In a small, exquisite clothbound format resembling the early Swiss
and German editions of Walser s work, Thirty Poems collects famed
translator Christopher Middleton s favorite poems from the more
than five hundred Walser wrote. The illustrations range from an
early poem in perfect copperplate handwriting, to one from a 1927
Czech-German newspaper, to a microscript."
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:
++++ Aufsatze Robert Walser K. Wolff, 1913
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:
++++ Poetenleben Robert Walser Huber, 1918
The literature of the Wiener Moderne exhibits biting social satire
and other related aspects, first emanating from Karl Kraus
(1874-1936), a prolific writer, difficult to classify, who reminds
people of Jonathan Swift. Novelists and essayists Hermann Broch
(1886-1951) and Elias Canetti (1905-94), who won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1981, were likewise marginalized, to a large
extent as Jews. Robert Walser (1878-1956) is Swiss, and to a large
extent like the other three authors in this collection, had no less
a desire to upset the social applecart. Among the works included
are substantive selection from Krauss's "The Last Days of Mankind
and Aphorisms", Bloch's "The Anarchist," selections from Canetti's
"Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fe", and Walser's "Jakob von Gunten".
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