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Mississippi Books and WritersMarch 2002Note: Prices listed below reflect the publisher's suggested list price. They are subject to change without notice.
By David Galef University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover, $25.00, ISBN: 1578064228) Publication date: March 2002 Description from Publishers Weekly: Fifteen far-ranging and idiosyncratic glimpses of life most often from a dark, quixotic psychosocial perspective make up this collection, selected from more than 60 published stories by Galef (Turning Japanese; Flesh). The topics are curious and far-ranging: the last day of an over-the-hill mob enforcer (Butch), the struggles of a blocked gag writer who plays canned laughter at his therapy sessions (Laugh Track), the interaction between a chimerical landlord and a novelist who has come to Mexico to work on a memoir (The Landlord) and the angst of an American lawyer who tries to forget his gay lover by running off to Greece (All Cretans). The opening vignette (You) imagines the day of the authors conception, and a third-grade teacher whose love-life is on the skids acts out her sexual frustration on a precocious male student in Triptych. The tersely noted impressions of a juror in Jury Duty and a college instructors wry account of his eccentric writing workshop in Metafiction up the humor quotient, while arguably the darkest and most affecting of the stories is Dear, Dirty Paris, which recounts the experience of a high school student on her maiden trip to the City of Light. Her parents entrust her to the care of two rather questionable men who had provided them with a similar introduction to the city in their youth. Though well crafted, this set is likely a bit obscure for mainstream readers, but fans of literary fiction will be won over by Galefs ironic and enigmatic sensibility. —Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. By Eudora Welty University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover, $20.00, ISBN: 1578064872) Publication date: March 2002 Description from the publisher: Weltys graceful, appreciative essay about one of the Souths notable painters. William Hollingsworth, Jr., and Eudora Welty were Mississippi contemporaries who began their careers in the arts almost simultaneously. Just as the Great Depression struck the nation, both were finishing their educations in big citiesWelty at Columbia University in New York, Hollingsworth at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. This keepsake book uniting these two acclaimed Mississippi artists and their work gives the pleasure of encountering Welty as an art critic and of meeting an astonishingly talented painter she admired. In 1958, after seeing a large posthumous exhibition of his paintings at the Jackson Municipal Art Gallery, Welty wrote this critical appreciation. It appeared in the Clarion-Ledger, the local newspaper, and has never been reprinted until now. Accompanying Weltys essay are full-color plates of eleven Hollingsworth paintings she mentions or to which she makes reference. An afterword puts the work of Hollingsworth and Welty in the context of time, place, and circumstance. A chronology shows how Hollingsworth was a rising star whose life was cut short. As young Mississippians who had been schooled away from home, they returned to Jackson during hard times but were afforded a serendipitous gifta sense of place that became a resource for their art. Although both longed to connect with the mainstream of the art world in the North, Hollingsworth and Welty discovered the significance of regional roots. A great American writer, Welty had a career that lasted for nearly seventy years. Hollingsworths lasted for only one decade. He died in 1944 at the age of thirty-four. She died at the age of ninety-two in 2001. Two of his watercolors that she bought in the 1930s still hang in her home.
Poems by Claire T. Feild NewSouth Books (Paperback, $15.95, ISBN: 1588380386) Publication date: March 2002 Description: In her debut collection, Claire T. Feild offers narrative poems about women living in the Mississippi Delta in the 1950s and the early 1960s. Many of the poems speak of proprieties revered by these women during a time of placidity that eventually sparked radical change. A darker meaning pervades these poems, for black-white relationships are explored by a writer whose formative years were spent collecting images from the kudzu-covered hills along Highway 49, the sultry cotton fields of the Yazoo Delta, and locales such as Henick’s Auto Supply and Goose Egg Park. Baylor University Press (Paperback, $14.95, ISBN: 0918954843) First published in 1992 Publication date: March 2002 Description from the publisher: Hailed as Will Campbells most literary work, Providence chronicles the more than 170-year history of a square mile of plantation land in Holmes County, Mississippi. Shifting between history and autobiography, Campbell illustrates the quest for justice among the Choctaws, African Americans, and whites on the parcel of land designated Section 13. From the forcible removal of native Choctaws, to slavery and sharecropping on the Providence Plantation, to an interracial cooperative farm in the 1930s-50s, and finally to the present-day ownership by the Department of the Interior, Providence, according to Campbell, has seen a lot. In a way its saga is the story of the nation. Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe Harvard University Press (Paperback, $19.95, ISBN: 0674008693) First published in 1989 Publication date: March 2002 Description from the publisher: Thomas Wolfe, one of the giants of twentieth-century American fiction, is also one of the most misunderstood of our major novelists. A man massive in his size, his passions, and his gifts, Wolfe has long been considered something of an unconscious genius, whose undisciplined flow of prose was shaped into novels by his editor, the celebrated Maxwell Perkins. In this definitive and compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Herbert Donald dismantles that myth and demonstrates that Wolfe was a boldly aware experimental artist who, like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and John Dos Passos, deliberately pushed at the boundaries of the modern novel. Donald takes a new measure of this complex, tormented man as he reveals Wolfes difficult childhood, when he was buffeted between an alcoholic father and a resentful mother; his magical years at the University of North Carolina, where his writing talent first flourished; his rise to literary fame after repeated rejection; and the full story of Wolfes passionate affair with Aline Bernstein, including their intimate letters. Supersedes all previous Wolfe biographies in illuminating detail, in empathy for its complex unhappy subject, in sympathy for what he wanted to do, and what he did, as a writer, and in its own literary distinction … A work of great subtlety and sophistication. Washington Post Book World Edited by Robert Paul Ashley and Joseph L. Fant University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover, $22.00, ISBN: 1578064457) First published in 1964 Publication date: March 2002 Description from the publisher: A new edition of a classic and a commemoration of William Faulkners visit to West Point forty years ago. The Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner (1897-1962) visited the United States Military Academy at West Point less than three months before his death in 1962. On the night of April 19 he read aloud episodes from his forthcoming novel The Reivers before an audience of cadets, faculty, and staff. After the reading he answered questions about his own work and about the art of writing. Later he met the press publicly and responded graciously to probing questions. The following morning he met with cadets in two advanced literature courses and discussed a wide range of subjectshis philosophy of life, his writings, his views on America. All these sessions were tape recorded and photographed. Two members of the English department at West Point edited the transcriptions of the tapes for this volume. It is reprinted in this new edition in commemoration of Faulkners sojourn to the academy forty years ago and of the academys bicentennial. Faulkner at West Point, first published in 1964, includes a new preface, an introduction, and reflections on the historic visit written by two graduates who were present as cadets during the Nobel writers appearance. All these materials, along with the original text, testify to the import of Faulkners visit and, at times, to the curmudgeonly Faulkners obliging good will in answering questions about himself and the writing process. This memorable book documents not only the collegial spirit of fellowship that Faulkner enjoyed while at the academy but also the great writers thoughts and opinions expressed shortly before his death. William Faulkner, a Mississippian, was one of the most admired and renowned writers of the twentieth century. Among his works are The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, Sanctuary, and As I Lay Dying. Joseph L. Fant and Robert Ashley, now retired, were professors of English at the U.S. Military Academy. By Karen Knight Winter PublishAmerica (Paperback, $16.95, ISBN: 1591291356) Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publication date: March 2002 Description: Sixteen-year-old Rob finds himself in the rainforest of New Guinea on a Youth Corp project after being expelled from boarding school. Shortly after arriving in New Guinea, Rob and his friends, Mike and Teke (a native New Guinean), discover the Youth Corps project is actually a front for an international gold smuggling ring. The leaders of the Youth Corps project are shipping gold from the gold mines in the New Guinea highlands and shipping it to the United States and Japan. Rob and his friends realize that their very lives are dependent on the project leaders for food, medicine, and communications.
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