1.
Alfred A. Knopf
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Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. in 1915. The publisher had a reputation for a pursuit of perfection and elegant taste and it was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. The Knopf publishing house is associated with its borzoi colophon, which was designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1925, Knopf was founded in 1915 by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. with a $5,000 advance from his father. The first office was located in New Yorks Candler Building, the publishing house was officially incorporated in 1918, with Alfred Knopf as president, Blanche Knopf as vice-president, and Samuel Knopf as treasurer. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, william A. Koshland joined the company in 1934, and worked with the firm for more than fifty years, rising to take the positions of President and Chairman of the Board. Blanche became President in 1957 when Alfred became Chairman of the Board, Alfred Knopf retired in 1972, becoming chairman emeritus of the firm until his death in 1984. Alfred Knopf also had a home in Purchase, New York. Beginning in 1920, Knopf also produced a chapbook, for the purpose of promoting new books, the Borzoi was published periodically over the years, the first being a hardback called the Borzoi and sometimes quarterly as the Borzoi Quarterly. In 1923 Knopf also started publishing periodicals, beginning with The American Mercury, founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, following the Good Neighbor policy, Blanche Knopf visited South America in 1942, so the firm could start producing texts from there. She was one of the first publishers to visit Europe after World War II and her trips, and those of other editors, brought in new writers from Europe, South America, and Asia. Alfred traveled to Brazil in 1961, which spurred a corresponding interest on his part in South America and their son, Alfred Pat Jr. was hired on as secretary and trade books manager after the war. In a 1957 advertisement in the Atlantic Monthly, Alfred A. Knopf published the Borzoi Credo, the credo includes a list of what Knopfs beliefs for publishing including the statement that he never published an unworthy book. Among a list of beliefs listed is the final one--I believe that magazines, movies, television, in 1960 Random House acquired Alfred A. Knopf. It is believed that the decision to sell was prompted by Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. leaving Knopf to found his own book company, Atheneum Books in 1959. While there have many notable editors at Knopf there have only been three editors-in-chief-- Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. Robert Gottlieb and Sonny Mehta. Knopf also employed literary scouts to good advantage, at least 17 Nobel Prize and 47 Pulitzer Prize winning authors have been published by Knopf, though they have also passed at times on subsequently notable books. Knopf books conclude with a page titled A Note on the Type. In addition, Knopf books date the year of the current printing on the title page
2.
John Updike
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John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954 and he also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His most famous work is his Rabbit series, which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry Rabbit Angstrom over the course of several decades, both Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest were recognized with the Pulitzer Prize. Updike populated his fiction with characters who frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations and his work has attracted significant critical attention and praise, and he is widely considered one of the great American writers of his time. He described his style as an attempt to give the mundane its beautiful due, Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the only child of Linda Grace and Wesley Russell Updike, and was raised in the nearby small town of Shillington. The family later moved to the village of Plowville. His mothers attempts to become a published writer impressed the young Updike, one of my earliest memories, he later recalled, is of seeing her at her desk. I admired the writers equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper, and I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in—and come back in. These early years in Berks County, Pennsylvania, would influence the environment of the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, as well as many of his early novels, Updike graduated from Shillington High School as co-valedictorian and class president in 1950 and attended Harvard with a full scholarship. He received recognition for his writing as a teenager by winning a Scholastic Art, at Harvard, he soon became well known among his classmates as a talented and prolific contributor to the Harvard Lampoon, of which he served as president. He graduated summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, upon graduation, Updike attended The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford with the ambition of becoming a cartoonist. After returning to the United States, Updike and his moved to New York. This was the beginning of his writing career. Updike stayed at The New Yorker as a staff writer for only two years, writing Talk of the Town columns and submitting poetry and short stories to the magazine. In New York, Updike wrote the poems and stories came to fill his early books like The Carpentered Hen. These works were influenced by Updikes early engagement with The New Yorker and this early work also featured the influence of J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, and the Modernists Marcel Proust, Henry Green, James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov. During this time, Updike underwent a spiritual crisis. Suffering from a loss of faith, he began reading Søren Kierkegaard
3.
Esquire (magazine)
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Esquire is an American mens magazine, published by the Hearst Corporation in the United States. Founded in 1933, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founders Arnold Gingrich, Esquire was first issued in October 1933. The magazine was first headquartered in Chicago and then, in New York City and it was founded and edited by David A. Smart, Henry L. Jackson and Arnold Gingrich. Jackson died in the crash of United Airlines Flight 624 in 1948, Smart died in 1952, although he left Esquire in 1936 to found a different magazine, Coronet. Additionally, Jacksons Republican political viewpoints contrasted with the liberal Democratic views of Smart, the administration alleged that Esquire had used the US Postal Service to promote lewd images. Esquire started in 1933 as a press run of a hundred thousand copies. It cost fifty cents per copy and it later transformed itself into a more refined periodical with an emphasis on mens fashion and contributions by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alberto Moravia, André Gide, and Julian Huxley. In the 1940s, the popularity of the Petty Girls and Vargas Girls provided a circulation boost. In the 1960s, Esquire helped pioneer the trend of New Journalism by publishing such writers as Norman Mailer, Tim OBrien, John Sack, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern. In August 1969, Esquire published Normand Poiriers piece, An American Atrocity, under Harold Hayes, who ran it from 1961 to 1973, it became as distinctive as its oversized pages. The magazine shrank to the conventional 8½×11 inches in 1971, the magazine was sold by the original owners to Clay Felker in 1977, who reinvented the magazine as a fortnightly in 1978, under the title of Esquire Fortnightly. However, the experiment proved to be a failure, and by the end of that year. Felker sold Esquire in 1979 to the 13-30 Corporation, a Tennessee publisher, during this time, New York Woman magazine was launched as something of a spinoff version of Esquire aimed at female audience. 13-30 split up in 1986, and Esquire was sold to Hearst at the end of the year, David M. Granger was named editor-in-chief of the magazine in June 1997. Since his arrival, the magazine has received awards, including multiple National Magazine Awards—the industrys highest honor. Prior to becoming editor-in-chief at Esquire, Granger was the editor at GQ for nearly six years. Its award-winning staff writers include Tom Chiarella, Scott Raab, Mike Sager, Chris Jones, John H. Richardson, Cal Fussman, Lisa Taddeo, famous photographers have also worked for the magazine, among which fashion photographer Gleb Derujinsky, and Richard Avedon. In January 2009 Esquire launched a new blog—the Daily Endorsement Blog, each morning the editors of the magazine recommend one thing for readers immediate enjoyment, not a political candidate or position or party, but a breakthrough idea or product or Web site
4.
The New Yorker
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The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It is published by Condé Nast, started as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the life of New York City. The New Yorker debuted on February 21,1925 and it was founded by Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, a New York Times reporter. Ross wanted to create a humor magazine that would be different from perceivably corny humor publications such as Judge. Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann to establish the F-R Publishing Company, the magazines first offices were at 25 West 45th Street in Manhattan. Ross edited the magazine until his death in 1951, during the early, occasionally precarious years of its existence, the magazine prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication. Ross famously declared in a 1925 prospectus for the magazine, It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque, although the magazine never lost its touches of humor, it soon established itself as a pre-eminent forum for serious fiction literature and journalism. Shortly after the end of World War II, John Herseys essay Hiroshima filled an entire issue, D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, James Thurber, John Updike, Eudora Welty, Stephen King, and E. B. White. Publication of Shirley Jacksons The Lottery drew more mail than any story in the magazines history. In its early decades, the magazine published two or even three short stories a week, but in recent years the pace has remained steady at one story per issue. Kurt Vonnegut said that The New Yorker has been an instrument for getting a large audience to appreciate modern literature. Vonneguts 1974 interview with Joe David Bellamy and John Casey contained a discussion of The New Yorkers influence, No other art requires the audience to be a performer. You have to count on the readers being a good performer and those writers you mentioned and myself are teaching an audience how to play this kind of music in their heads. Its a learning process, and The New Yorker has been a good institution of the sort needed. They have an audience, and they come out every week, and people finally catch on to Barthelme, for instance. The non-fiction feature articles cover an array of topics. Recent subjects have included eccentric evangelist Creflo Dollar, the different ways in which humans perceive the passage of time, the magazine is notable for its editorial traditions
5.
Reading, Pennsylvania
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Reading, is the county seat of Berks County and with a population of 98,653 is the fifth-largest city in Pennsylvania. Located in southeastern Pennsylvania, it is the city of the Greater Reading Area. Reading Railroad is one of the four properties in the classic United States version of the Monopoly board game. Reading was one of the first localities where outlet shopping became a tourist industry and it has been known as The Pretzel City, because of numerous local pretzel bakeries. Currently, Bachman, Dieffenbach, Tom Sturgis, and Unique Pretzel bakeries call the Reading area home, according to the 2010 census, Reading has the highest share of citizens living in poverty in the nation. In recent years, the Reading area has become a destination for cyclists, with more than 125 miles of trails in five major preserves, it is an International Mountain Bicycling Association Ride Center and it annually hosts the Reading 120 international road cycling race. In April 2017, it was announced that an indoor velodrome, or cycling track, will be built in Reading as the first of its kind on the East Coast and it will also serve as the Cycling Leagues world headquarters. Lenni Lenape people, also known as Delaware Indians, were the inhabitants of the Reading area. The Colony of Pennsylvania was a 1680 land grant from King Charles II of England to William Penn, comprising more than 45,000 square miles, it was named for his father, Sir William Penn. In 1743, Richard and Thomas Penn mapped out the town of Reading with Conrad Weiser, taking its name from Reading, Berkshire, England, the town was established in 1748. Upon the creation of Berks County in 1752, Reading became the county seat, the region was settled by emigrants from southern and western Germany, who bought land from the Penns. The first Amish community in the New World was established in Greater Reading, the Pennsylvanian German dialect was spoken in the area well into the 1950s and later. During the French and Indian War, Reading was a base for a chain of forts along the Blue Mountain. By the time of the American Revolution, the iron industry had a total production which exceeded Englands. That output that would help supply George Washingtons troops with cannons, rifles, during the early period of the conflict, Reading was again a depot for military supply. Hessian prisoners from the Battle of Trenton were also detained here, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the capital of the United States at the time of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. President Washington traveled to Reading, and considered making it the national capital. Susanna Cox was tried and convicted for infanticide in Reading in 1809 and her case attracted tremendous sympathy,20,000 viewers came to view her hanging, swamping the 3,000 inhabitants
6.
High school football
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High school football is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular sports in both countries. It is also popular amongst American High school teams in Europe, High school football began in the late 19th century, concurrent with the start of many college football programs. In the late 19th and early 20th century, many college, other traditions of high school football such as pep rallies, marching bands, mascots, and homecomings are mirrored from college football. No true minor league farm organizations exist in American football, therefore, high school football is generally considered to be the third tier of American football in the United States, behind professional and college competition. The National Federation of State High School Associations establishes the rules of high school football in the United States, two states, Texas and Massachusetts, use NCAA playing rules except as shown below. Kickoffs take place at the kicking teams 40-yard line, as opposed to the 35 in college, if an attempted field goal is missed it is treated as a punt, normally it would be a touchback and the opposing team will start at the 20-yard line. However, if it not enter the end zone, it can be downed or returned as a normal punt. Any kick crossing the line is automatically a touchback, kicks cannot be returned out of the end zone. Pass interference by the results in a 15-yard penalty. Pass interference by the results in a 15-yard penalty, from the previous spot. The defense cannot return an extra-point attempt for a score, any defensive player that encroaches the neutral zone, regardless of whether the ball was snapped or not, commits a dead ball foul for encroachment. 5-yard penalty from the previous spot, prior to 2013, offensive pass interference resulted in a 15-yard penalty AND a loss of down. The loss of down provision has been deleted from the rules starting in 2013, in college and the NFL, offensive pass interference is only 10 yards. The use of overtime, and the type of overtime used, is up to the state association. The NFHS offers a suggested overtime procedure based on the Kansas Playoff, intentional grounding may be called even if the quarterback is outside the tackle box. The home team must wear dark-colored jerseys, and the team must wear white jerseys. In the NFL, the team has choice of jersey color, and in the NCAA
7.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
8.
Aesthete
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Aestheticism is an intellectual and art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts. This meant that Art from this movement focused more on being beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning - Art for Arts sake. His text Studies in the History of the Renaissance was very well regarded by art-oriented young men of the late 19th century, writers of the Decadent movement used the slogan Art for Arts Sake, the origin of which is debated. It is generally accepted to have been promoted by Théophile Gautier in France, the artists and writers of Aesthetic style tended to profess that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. As a consequence, they did not accept John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose, it only needed to be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed a cult of beauty, which considered the basic factor of art. Life should copy Art, they asserted and they considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art. Music was used to establish mood, predecessors of the Aesthetics included John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and some of the Pre-Raphaelites. In Britain the best representatives were Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, the style and these poets were satirised by Gilbert and Sullivans comic opera Patience and other works, such as F. C. Burnands drama The Colonel, and in magazines such as Punch. Compton Mackenzies novel Sinister Street makes use of the type as a phase through which the protagonist passes as he is influenced by older, decadent individuals. The novels of Evelyn Waugh, who was a participant of aesthete society at Oxford, describe the aesthetes mostly satirically. Some names associated with this assemblage are Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, Nancy Mitford, A. E. Housman, artists associated with the Aesthetic style include James McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Aubrey Beardsley. The primary element of Decorative Art is utility, the maxim Art for Arts Sake, identifying art or beauty as the primary element in other branches of the Aesthetic Movement, especially Fine Art, cannot apply in this context. Decorative art must first have utility but may also be beautiful, Decorative art is dissociated from Fine Art. Important elements of the Aesthetic Movement have been identified as Reform, the Government Schools of Design were founded from 1837 onwards in order to improve the design of British goods. Following the Great Exhibition of 1851 efforts were intensified and Oriental objects purchased for the schools teaching collections, production of Aesthetic style furniture was limited to approximately the late 19th century. Aesthetic style furniture is characterized by common themes, Ebonized wood with gilt highlights
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Johannes Vermeer
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Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his treatment and use of light in his work. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes and he was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbrakens major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting, since that time, Vermeers reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Relatively little was known about Vermeers life until recently and he seems to have been devoted exclusively to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. Until the 19th century, the sources of information were some registers, a few official documents. John Michael Montias added details on the family from the city archives of Delft in his Artists and Artisans in Delft, Johannes Vermeer was baptized in the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632. His father Reijnier Janszoon was a worker of silk or caffa. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, in 1615, he married Digna Baltus. The couple moved to Delft and had a daughter named Geertruy who was baptized in 1620, in 1625, Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier named Willem van Bylandt who died from his wounds five months later. Around this time, Reijnier began dealing in paintings, in 1631, he leased an inn, which he called The Flying Fox. In 1635, he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or 26, in 1641, he bought a larger inn on the market square, named after the Flemish town Mechelen. The acquisition of the inn constituted a financial burden. When Vermeers father died in October 1652, Vermeer took over the operation of the art business. In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic girl, the blessing took place in the quiet nearby village of Schipluiden. Vermeers new mother-in-law Maria Thins was significantly wealthier than he, according to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeers conversion seems to have been made with conviction
10.
Of the Farm
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Of the Farm is a 1965 novel by the American author John Updike. Of the Farm was his fourth novel, the story concerns Joey Robinson, a divorced, thirty-five-year-old Manhattan advertising executive who visits his mother on her unfarmed farm in rural Pennsylvania. He has come with his new wife, Peggy and her son, Richard, the novel explores both Joeys relationship to his widowed mother, a flinty woman who reveres her farm, and to Peggy, a kind, sensual woman. Joey feels guilt for leaving his mother, and anger at her refusal to leave the farm. Joey, though the man in the novel, is not a man in charge. He is buffeted by doubt, angst, and anger, and is pinballed between his mother and Peggy
11.
James Joyce
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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential, other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners, and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake. His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism and his published letters, Joyce was born in 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin—about half a mile from his mothers birthplace in Terenure—into a middle-class family on the way down. He went on to attend University College Dublin, in 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated permanently to continental Europe with his partner Nora Barnacle. They lived in Trieste, Paris and Zurich, Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. In the particular is contained the universal, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane May Murray, in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was baptised according to the Rites of the Catholic Church in the nearby St Josephs Church in Terenure on 5 February by Rev. John OMulloy and his godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. He was the eldest of ten surviving children, two of his siblings died of typhoid and his fathers family, originally from Fermoy in County Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyces father and paternal grandfather both married into families, though the familys purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe was a stonemason from Connemara. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation, around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from astraphobia, as an aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of Gods wrath. In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership. But the Vaticans role in allying with the British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left an impression on the young Joyce. The elder Joyce had the printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that year, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs Gazette. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the familys slide into poverty caused mainly by his drinking and general financial mismanagement. Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare and this came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life
12.
Ulysses (novel)
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Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is considered to be one of the most important works of modernist literature, according to Declan Kiberd, Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking. Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of a day,16 June 1904. The novel imitates registers of centuries of English literature and is highly allusive, Ulysses is approximately 265,000 words in length and is divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual Joyce Wars, Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday. Joyce first encountered the figure of Odysseus/Ulysses in Charles Lambs Adventures of Ulysses—an adaptation of the Odyssey for children, at school he wrote an essay on the character, entitled My Favourite Hero. Joyce told Frank Budgen that he considered Ulysses the only character in literature. Leopold Blooms home at 7 Eccles Street - Episode 4, Calypso, Episode 17, Ithaca, sweny’s pharmacy, Lombard Street, Lincoln Place. Episode 15, Circe Cabman’s shelter, Butt Bridge, - Episode 16, Eumaeus The action of the novel takes place from one side of Dublin Bay to the other, opening in Sandycove to the South of the city and closing on Howth Head to the North. Joyce divided Ulysses into 18 episodes, every episode of Ulysses has a theme, technique and correspondence between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The original text did not include these episode titles and the correspondences, instead, they originate from the Linati, Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. It is 8 a. m. Buck Mulligan, a medical student. The three men eat breakfast and walk to the shore, where Mulligan demands from Stephen the key to the tower, departing, Stephen declares that he will not return to the tower tonight, as Mulligan, the usurper, has taken it over. Stephen is teaching a class on the victories of Pyrrhus of Epirus. After class, one student, Cyril Sargent, stays behind so that Stephen can show him how to do a set of arithmetic exercises, Stephen looks at the ugly face of Sargent and tries to imagine Sargents mothers love for him. Stephen then visits school headmaster Garrett Deasy, from whom he collects his pay, the two discuss Irish history and the role of Jews in the economy. As Stephen leaves, Deasy said that Ireland has never persecuted the Jews because the country never let them in. This episode is the source of some of the novels most famous lines, such as Dedaluss claim that history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake and that God is a shout in the street
13.
Centaur
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A centaur, or occasionally hippocentaur, is a mythological creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse. The centaurs were usually said to have born of Ixion. Another version, however, makes them children of a certain Centaurus and this Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele or of Apollo and Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. In the later version of the story his twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the Lapiths, Centaurs were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus, according to Nonnus, they were fathered by Zeus, who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were horned, there were also the Lamian Pheres, twelve rustic daimones of the Lamos river. They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos, protecting him from the machinations of Hera, the Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians. Centaurs subsequently featured in Roman mythology, and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary and they remain a staple of modern fantastic literature. The strife among these cousins is a metaphor for the conflict between the lower appetites and civilized behavior in humankind, theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the right order of things, and assisted Pirithous. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed, another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as wild as untamed horses, like the Titanomachy, the defeat of the Titans by the Olympian gods, the contests with the Centaurs typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism. The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the Parthenon metopes by Phidias, a painted terracotta centaur was found in the Heros tomb at Lefkandi, and by the Geometric period, centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Greek art of the Archaic period, centaurs are depicted in three different forms. Some centaurs are depicted with a human torso attached to the body of a horse at the withers, where the neck would be. Class B centaurs are depicted with a body and legs, joined at the waist with the hindquarters of a horse. A third type, designated Class C, depicts centaurs with human forelegs terminating in hooves, Baur describes this as an apparent development of Aeolic art, which never became particularly widespread. At a later period, paintings on some amphoras depict winged centaurs, Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world
14.
Chiron
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In Greek mythology, Chiron was held to be the superlative centaur amongst his brethren. Chiron was notable throughout Greek mythology for his youth-nurturing nature and his personal skills tend to match those of Apollo, his foster father, medicine, music, archery, hunting, prophecy. His parents were Cronus and Philyra, although a centaur, Chirons physical appearance often differs somewhat from other centaurs, demonstrating his status and heritage. This clearly sets Chiron apart from the centaurs, making him easily identifiable. This difference may also have highlighted Chirons unique lineage, being the son of Cronus, Chiron is often depicted carrying a branch with dead hares he has caught hanging from it. Chiron is also depicted wearing clothes, demonstrating he is more civilised. The Education of Achilles wall painting, from the basilica in Herculaneum, is one of the most common Roman depictions of Chiron, as he teaches Achilles the lyre. In this version we see Chiron with a fully equine lower body, in addition to this reconfiguration, Chiron’s appearance is further altered with his ears. Whereas previously human, Chiron’s ears now match those of a satyr and this rendering creates a more bestial version of Chiron, much more akin to a standard centaur. This may then, not be a reworking of the Chiron myth on the part of the Romans. It has also suggested that this fresco is a reproduction of an actual statue in the Roman forum. Like satyrs, centaurs were notorious for being wild, lusty, overly indulgent drinkers and carousers, violent when intoxicated, Chiron, by contrast, was intelligent, civilized and kind, but he was not related directly to the other centaurs. He was known for his knowledge and skill with medicine, according to an archaic myth, he was sired by the Titan Cronus when he had taken the form of a horse and impregnated the nymph Philyra. Myths in the Olympian tradition attributed Chirons uniquely peaceful character and intelligence to Apollo, some sources speculate that Chiron was originally a Thessalian god, later subsumed into the Greek pantheon as a centaur. Chiron lived predominantly on Mount Pelion, there he married the nymph Chariclo who bore him three daughters, Hippe, Endeïs, and Ocyrhoe, and one son Carystus. A great healer, astrologer, and respected oracle, Chiron was said to be the first among centaurs and highly revered as a teacher, Dionysus was loved by Chiron, from whom he learned chants and dances, the bacchic rites and initiations. There is also a persistent link with Peleus throughout Chirons myth, Chiron saved the life of Peleus when Acastus tried to kill him by taking his sword and leaving him out in the woods to be slaughtered by the centaurs. Chiron retrieved the sword for Peleus, Chiron then explained to Peleus how to capture the nymph Thetis, leading to their marriage
15.
Prometheus
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Ancient myths and legends relate at least four versions of the narratives describing Prometheus, his exploits with Zeus, and his eternal punishment as also inflicted by Zeus. There is a single somewhat comprehensive version of the birth of Prometheus, the most significant narratives of his origin appear in the Theogony of Hesiod which relates Prometheus as being the son of the Titan Iapetus by Clymene, one of the Oceanids. Hesiod then presents Prometheus as subsequently being a challenger to Zeuss omnipotence. Each individual ancient author selectively preferred certain crucial stories depicting Prometheus over others, all three of the major Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, were affected by the myth of Prometheus. The surviving plays and fragments of Aeschylus regarding Prometheus retain a place of prominence within modern scholarship for their having survived the ravages of time. The majority of written by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been lost to literary antiquity. The influence of the myth of Prometheus extends well into the 20th, the etymology of the theonym prometheus is debated. The classical view is that it signifies forethought, as that of his brother Epimetheus denotes afterthought. It has been theorized that it derives from the Proto-Indo-European root that also produces the Vedic pra math, to steal, hence pramathyu-s, thief, cognate with Prometheus, the Vedic myth of fires theft by Mātariśvan is an analog to the Greek account. Pramantha was the used to create fire. Prometheus, himself a Titan, managed to avoid being in the direct confrontational cosmic battle between Zeus and the other Olympians against Cronus and the other Titans. Prometheus and his struggle would be of vast merit to society as well in this mythology as he was to be credited with the creation of humans. The four most ancient historical sources for the Prometheus myth are Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, the Prometheus myth first appeared in the late 8th-century BCE Greek epic poet Hesiods Theogony. He was a son of the Titan Iapetus by Clymene, one of the Oceanids and he was brother to Menoetius, Atlas, and Epimetheus. In the Theogony, Hesiod introduces Prometheus as a challenger to Zeuss omniscience and omnipotence. In the trick at Mekone, a sacrificial meal marking the settling of accounts between mortals and immortals, Prometheus played a trick against Zeus. He placed two sacrificial offerings before the Olympian, a selection of hidden inside an oxs stomach. Zeus chose the latter, setting a precedent for future sacrifices, henceforth, humans would keep that meat for themselves and burn the bones wrapped in fat as an offering to the gods
16.
Hephaestus
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Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera, in another version, he was Heras parthenogenous child, rejected by his mother because of his deformity and thrown off Mount Olympus and down to earth. As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus and he served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly Athens. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos, Hephaestus symbols are a smiths hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs. The name of the god in Greek has a root which can be observed in names of places of Pre-Greek origin, Hephaestus had his own palace on Olympus, containing his workshop with anvil and twenty bellows that worked at his bidding. Hephaestus crafted much of the magnificent equipment of the gods, in later accounts, Hephaestus worked with the help of the chthonic Cyclopes—among them his assistants in the forge, Brontes, Steropes and Pyracmon. Hephaestus built automatons of metal to work for him and this included tripods that walked to and from Mount Olympus. He gave to the blinded Orion his apprentice Cedalion as a guide, in some versions of the myth, Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to man from Hephaestuss forge. Hephaestus also created the gift that the gods gave to man, being a skilled blacksmith, Hephaestus created all the thrones in the Palace of Olympus. The Greek myths and the Homeric poems sanctified in stories that Hephaestus had a power to produce motion. He made the golden and silver lions and dogs at the entrance of the palace of Alkinoos in such a way that they could bite the invaders, the Greeks maintained in their civilization an animistic idea that statues are in some sense alive. This kind of art and the animistic belief goes back to the Minoan period, when Daedalus, a statue of the god was somehow the god himself, and the image on a mans tomb indicated somehow his presence. Homers Odyssey and Iliad have Hephaestus being born of the union of Zeus, in another tradition, attested by Hesiod, Hera bore Hephaestus alone. In Hesiods Zeus-centered cosmology, Hera gave birth to Hephaestus as revenge for Zeus giving birth to Athena without her, several later texts follow Hesiods account, including Bibliotheke, Hyginus, and the preface to Fabulae. In the account of Attic vase painters, Hephaestus was present at the birth of Athena, in the latter account, Hephaestus is there represented as older than Athena, so the mythology of Hephaestus is inconsistent in this respect. In one branch of Greek mythology, Hera ejected Hephaestus from the heavens because he was shrivelled of foot and he fell into the ocean and was raised by Thetis and the Oceanid Eurynome. In another account, Hephaestus, attempting to rescue his mother from Zeus advances, was flung down from the heavens by Zeus. He fell for a day and landed on the island of Lemnos
17.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
18.
Zeus
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Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
19.
J. F. Powers
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Although not a priest himself, he is known for having captured a clerical idiom in postwar North America. Powers was born in Jacksonville, Illinois to a devout Catholic family and he graduated from Quincy College Academy, a Franciscan high school. He took English and philosophy courses at Wright Junior College and at Northwestern University in Chicago and he had various jobs, such as insurance salesman, sales clerk, editor and bookstore clerk. Powers was a conscientious objector during World War II, and went to prison for it, later he worked as a hospital orderly. His first writing experiment began as an exercise during a religious retreat. His work has long admired for its gentle satire and its astonishing ability to recreate with a few words the insular. Evelyn Waugh, Flannery OConnor, and Walker Percy praised his work, Prince of Darkness and Other Stories appeared in 1947. His story The Valiant Woman received the O. Henry Award in 1947, the Presence of Grace was also a collection of short stories. His first novel was Morte dUrban, which won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction, look How the Fish Live appeared in 1975 and Wheat that Springeth Green in 1988. Powers lived in Ireland for thirteen years, after moving back and forth from Ireland, he settled with his family in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he taught creative writing and English literature at Saint Johns University. Following his death in 1999, the New York Review reissued his novels, the Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center has collected the records or Manuscript Collections Created by Powers. Powers met and married Betty Wahl after reviewing a sample of Wahls fiction, sister Mariella Gable, OSB, a member of the College of Saint Benedict English faculty, sent him the sample and Powers asked to meet the writer. Powers and Wahl were married in 1946 after Wahls graduation,1947 — Prince of Darkness and Other Stories 1949 — Cross Country. St. Paul, Home of the Saints
20.
Herzog (novel)
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Herzog is a 1964 novel by Saul Bellow, composed in large part of letters from the protagonist Moses E. Herzog. It won the U. S. National Book Award for Fiction, TIME magazine named it one of the 100 best novels in the English language since the beginning of TIME. Herzog is set in 1964 in the United States, and is about the crisis of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. At the age of forty-seven, he is just emerging from his second divorce and he has two children, one by each wife, who are growing up without him. His career as a writer and an academic has floundered and he is in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but finds himself running away from commitment. Herzogs second marriage, to the demanding, manipulative Madeleine, has ended in a humiliating fashion. Herzog spends much of his time writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures, the recipients may be dead, and Herzog has often never met them. The one common thread is that Herzog is always expressing disappointment, either his own in the failings of others or their words, the novel opens with Herzog in his house in Ludeyville, a town in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. He is contemplating returning to New York to see Ramona, and he arrives at their house, but writes a note – this one an actual note – saying that he has to leave, Not able to stand kindness at this time. Feeling, heart, everything in strange condition and he heads to New York to start trying to finish that business, which includes regaining custody of his daughter Junie. After spending a night with Ramona, he heads to the courthouse to discuss his plans with his lawyer and he ends up witnessing a series of tragicomic court hearings, including one where a woman is charged with beating her three-year-old to death by flinging him against a wall. Moses, already distraught after receiving a letter from Junies babysitter about an incident where Valentine locked Junie in the car while he and Madeleine argued inside the house, heads to Chicago. He goes to his stepmothers house and picks up a pistol with two bullets in it, forming a vague plan of killing Madeleine and Valentine and running off with Junie. The plan goes awry when he sees Valentine giving Junie a bath, the next day, after taking his daughter to the aquarium, Herzog crashes his car and ends up being charged with possession of a loaded weapon. His brother, the rational Will, picks him up and tries to get him back on his feet, Herzog heads to Ludeyville, where his brother meets him and tries to convince him to check himself into an institution. But Herzog, who had considered doing just that, is now coming to terms with his life. Ramona comes up to him for dinner – much to Wills surprise – and Herzog begins making plans to fix up the house
21.
Saul Bellow
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Saul Bellow was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and he is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the National Book Foundations lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammlers Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldts Gift, widely regarded as one of the 20th centurys greatest authors, Bellow has had a huge literary influence. Bellow said that of all his characters Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself, Bellow grew up as an insolent slum kid, a thick-necked rowdy, and an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellows fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, Bellows protagonists, in one shape or another, all wrestle with what Corde called the big-scale insanities of the 20th century. This transcendence of the unutterably dismal is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a ferocious assimilation of learning and an emphasis on nobility. Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his parents, Lescha and Abraham Bellows, emigrated from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Bellows family was Lithuanian-Jewish, his father was born in Vilnius. Bellow celebrated his birthday in June, although he may have born in July. Of his familys emigration, Bellow wrote, The retrospective was strong in me because of my parents and they were both full of the notion that they were falling, falling. They had been prosperous cosmopolitans in Saint Petersburg and my mother could never stop talking about the family dacha, her privileged life, and how all that was now gone. She was working in the kitchen, there had been servants in Russia. But you could always transpose from your humiliating condition with the help of a sort of embittered irony, when Bellow was nine, his family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop of many of his novels. Bellows father, Abraham, had become an onion importer and he also worked in a bakery, as a coal delivery man, and as a bootlegger. Bellows mother, Liza, died when he was 17 and he was left with his father and brother Maurice. His mother was religious, and wanted her youngest son, Saul. But he rebelled against what he called the suffocating orthodoxy of his religious upbringing. Bellows lifelong love for the Bible began at four when he learned Hebrew, Bellow also grew up reading William Shakespeare and the great Russian novelists of the 19th century. In Chicago, he took part in studies at the Anthroposophical Society of Chicago
22.
John Updike bibliography
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The following is the complete bibliography of John Updike, an American novelist, poet, critic and essayist noted for his prolific output over a 50-year period. His bibliography includes some 21 novels,18 short story collections,12 collections of poetry,4 childrens books, alfred A. Begley, Adam, Updike, Harper-Collins Publishers, New York, NY,2014. A Revised Cumulative Updike Publications Bibliography 1997-2009--Books, Short Stories, Articles, Reviews, archived from the original on 4 July 2013. New York Review of Books Updike archive New Yorker archive
23.
Rabbit, Run
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Rabbit, Run is a 1960 novel by John Updike. It spawned several sequels, including Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, as well as a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered. In these novels Updike takes a comical and retrospective look at the relentless questing life of Rabbit against the background of the events of the latter half of the 20th century. Harry Rabbit Angstrom, formerly a school basketball star, is now 26. He is married to Janice, who was a salesgirl at the store where he worked. They live in Mount Judge, a suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania, Harry believes that his marriage is corrupt, and finds middle-class family life unsatisfying. On the spur of the moment, he leaves his family and drives south, after getting lost, he returns to his home town, but not wanting to return to his family, he instead visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero. That night, Harry has dinner with Tothero and two girls, one of whom, Ruth Leonard, is a part-time prostitute, Harry and Ruth begin a two-month affair and he soon moves into her apartment. During this time, Janice moves back into her parents house, nonetheless, Harry remains with Ruth until the night he learns that she had a fling with his high school nemesis, Ronnie Harrison. Enraged, Harry pressures Ruth into performing fellatio on him, the same night, Harry learns that Janice is in labor, and he leaves Ruth to visit his wife at the hospital. Reunited with Janice, Harry returns home with her and their daughter, Harry attends church one morning and, after walking the ministers wife Lucy home, interprets her invitation to come in for a coffee as a sexual invitation. When he declines the invitation for coffee, stating that he has a wife, Harry returns to his apartment, and, happy about the birth of his daughter, tries to reconcile with Janice. He encourages her to have a whiskey, then, misreading her mood, when she refuses and accuses him of treating her like a prostitute, Harry leaves, yet again, in an attempt to resume his relationship with Ruth. Finding her apartment empty, he spends the night at a hotel, the next morning, still distraught at Harrys new departure, Janice gets drunk and accidentally drowns Rebecca June in the bath tub. The other main characters in the book except Harry soon learn of the accident, later in the day, unaware of what has happened, Harry calls Reverend Eccles to see how his return home would be received. Reverend Eccles shares the news of his daughters death, and Harry returns home immediately, Tothero later visits Harry and suggests that the thing he is looking for probably does not exist. At Rebecca Junes funeral, Harrys internal and external conflicts result in a proclamation of his innocence in the babys death. He then runs from the graveyard, pursued by Jack Eccles, Harry returns to Ruth and learns that she is pregnant by him
24.
Rabbit Redux
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Rabbit Redux is a 1971 novel by John Updike. It is the book in his Rabbit series, beginning with Rabbit, Run and followed by Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit At Rest, published from 1960 to 1990. Rabbit Redux finds former high-school basketball star Harry Rabbit Angstrom working a dead-end job and he is approaching middle age in the declining and fictional city of Brewer, Pennsylvania, the place of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his son are at a loss. He encounters people and events reflecting the state of the nation circa 1969, Updikes recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined in Redux by racism. Harry plays host to Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing African-American Vietnam vet who engages him in debates about the war, jill, a wealthy white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, enthralls both Harry and his son. The four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Loves most confusing implications, jill dies in a house fire. Harry and his wife are reconciled at books end, the plot refers to the background of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Contemporary reviews of the book were positive and often glowing. Time Magazine said of the book and its author, Updike owns a rare genius, a gifted intelligence. Anatole Broyard, writing for The New York Times opined, In Rabbit Redux, Updikes ear is perfect and he has sacrificed none of his sensibility—simply translated it into gutsier, more natural but no less eloquent rhythms. He moves now with the sureness, grace and precision of the born athlete, but enough—for Gods sake, read the book. It may even—will probably—change your life, in later years, eminent critics and authors alike have praised the book. The Rabbit novels, for all their grittiness, constitute John Updikes surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country, in 2015, The Guardian Newspaper ranked it number 88 in a list of the 100 Best Novels. Other works of literature using the word in the title include John Drydens Astraea Redux, a poem on the happy restoration and return of His Sacred Majesty. The books popularity resulted in a rise in the use of the word redux in popular discourse, in Rabbit at Rest, Rabbit notices, a story. in the Sarasota paper a week or so ago, headlined Circus Redux. He hates that word, you see it everywhere, and he doesnt know how to pronounce it, anatole Broyard, Review, Rabbit Redux, New York Times,5 November 1971
25.
Rabbit Is Rich
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Rabbit Is Rich is a 1981 novel by John Updike. It is the novel of the four-part series which begins with Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered, Rabbit Is Rich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1982, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1981. The first-edition hardcover dust jacket for the novel was designed by the author, later printings, including trade paperbacks, feature the trademark stripe motif with stock images of a set of car keys or an image of a late-1970s Japanese automobile. Harry and Janice, his wife of twenty-two years, live comfortably and he is indeed rich, but Harrys persistent problems — his wifes drinking, his troubled sons schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past — complicate life. Having achieved a lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, Harry has become somewhat enamored of a country-club friends young wife. He also has to deal with the indecision and irresponsibility of Nelson, his son, throughout the book, Harry wonders about his former lover Ruth, and whether she had ever given birth to their daughter. Later printings change the Ford Maverick to a more accurate Ford Mustang, which was popular in the convertible body
26.
Rabbit at Rest
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Rabbit at Rest is a 1990 novel by John Updike. It is the fourth and final novel in a beginning with Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991, the second Rabbit novel to garner the award. This novel is part of the series follows the life of Harry Rabbit Angstrom from 1960 to 1990. Rabbit at Rest focuses on the years 1988-9, unable to stop nibbling corn chips, macadamia nuts and other junk food, Rabbit nearly dies after a heart attack while sunfishing with his nine-year-old granddaughter, Judy. In a redemption of the death of his infant daughter Rebecca in the earlier novel Rabbit, Run. He is distracted from his own existential worries by the acts of his son, Nelson, to whom Janice has given control of the familys thriving business. The discovery that Nelson has been stealing from the company to support his drug habit leads to Harry losing the family business. Despite his problems and growing unhappiness, he manages to take comfort in Judy, who has turned out to be beautiful and charming. He is less attached to his four-year-old grandson Roy, who seems wary and fearful of Rabbit, while recuperating from heart surgery, Rabbit recognizes one of the nurses, Annabelle Byer, as the young woman he believes is his illegitimate daughter by his old girlfriend, Ruth. He becomes friendly with her but decides not to himself as her possible father. Around this time, his long-term mistress Thelma Harrison dies of lupus, ron confronts Harry at Thelmas funeral, but the men later reconcile while playing golf. Harry also sees Cindy Murkett at the funeral, a woman he had obsessed over 10 years ago. Janices anger over this betrayal prompts Harry to escape to Florida, while in hiding, Harry has a heart attack shortly after winning a one-on-one basketball game with a local youth. Nelson and Janice manage to get to his bedside while Harry is still alive, his wife forgives him and his personal business now resolved as much as possible, and therefore his lifes work essentially completed, Rabbit dies. New York Times review Photos of the first edition of Rabbit At Rest
27.
The Witches of Eastwick
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The Witches of Eastwick is a 1984 novel by American writer John Updike. Their coven is upset by the arrival of Darryl Van Horne, the mysterious Daryl seduces each of the women, encouraging their creative powers and creating a scandal in the town. The power of the three witches grows, so much so that they unknowingly bewitch the townsfolk they come in contact with and this becomes clear when Sukies lover and boss, Clyde Gabriel, kills his busybody wife Felicia before hanging himself. The three women share Daryl in relative peace until he unexpectedly marries their young, innocent friend, Jenny, the witches resolve to take revenge by giving her cancer through their magic. Although Alexandra feels remorse for their hex, the spell kills Jenny and Daryl flees town with her brother, Chris. In his wake, he leaves their relationships strained and their sense of self in doubt, eventually, each summons her ideal man and leaves town. Updike described his novel as about power, a power that patriarchal societies have denied. Many scholars viewed it as strongly pro-feminist, an intelligent engagement with feminism, at the same time, there were those who praised the novel as a departure from John Updikes previous novels. In 1987, the novel was adapted into a film starring Jack Nicholson as Darryl, Cher as Alexandra, Susan Sarandon as Jane, the films Oscar-nominated score was composed by John Williams. In 1992, a series pilot aired starring Michael Siberry as James, Ally Walker as Alexandra, Julia Campbell as Jane. It was not picked up as a series, in 2000, the novel was adapted into a stage musical by John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe. In 2002, a series pilot was filmed based on the world created in the book. It starred Jason OMara as Darryl, Marcia Cross as Jane, Kelly Rutherford as Alexandra and it was not picked up as a series so only the pilot episode exists. In 2007, the musical had its American debut at the Signature Theatre in Arlington. The Widows of Eastwick, John Updikes sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2008. In 2009, The Witches of Eastwick was adapted into a series on ABC. Veronica Cartwright who had played Felicia Alden in the 1987 movie is also in the cast of the series as Bun Waverly, the show was cancelled during its first season
28.
The Widows of Eastwick
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The Widows of Eastwick is the final novel by John Updike, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning Rabbit series. First published in 2008, it is a sequel to his novel The Witches of Eastwick, all three women had remarried, left Eastwick and gradually fallen out of touch. They begin to restore their friendship as one by one become widowed. While conducting a white magic spell at their rented condominium, Jane, alexandra and Sukie both learn that Jennys brother, Christopher killed Jane using methods involving electrons and quantum physics he learned from Van Horne. He plans to kill the two witches next but doesnt, possibly because Sukie seduces him. Alexandra returns to New Mexico, where she settled with her second husband after first leaving Eastwick
29.
The Poorhouse Fair
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The Poorhouse Fair was the first novel by the American author John Updike. A second edition included an introduction by the author and was slightly revised, the residents of the Diamond County Home for the Aged prepare for their annual fair, a summer celebration at which they sell their crafts and produce to the people of the nearby town. The fair is at first rained out, and the prefect, Conner. After the rain clears, some residents fling small stones at Conner, the novel examines the political and religious dialectics that exist among its characters and their respective generations. The novel has been overshadowed by Updikes more popular works, as examples, Donald Barr of The New York Times deemed it a work of intellectual imagination and great charity, while Commentary called it a hearty but not very successful try at a first novel
30.
Couples (novel)
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Couples is a 1968 novel by American author John Updike. The novel focuses on a circle of ten couples in the small Massachusetts town of Tarbox. Much of the plot of Couples concerns the efforts of its characters to balance the pressures of Protestant sexual mores against increasingly flexible American attitudes toward sex in the 1960s. The book suggests that this relaxation may have driven by the development of birth control. The book is rich in period detail, the lyrical and explicit descriptions of sex, unusual for the time, made the book somewhat notorious. Time, while detailing similarities between real Ipswich and fictional Tarbox, called the book sensational, critic and novelist Wilfred Sheed, in the New York Times Book Review, found Couples ingenious and scorching. the games are described with loving horror. Addressing of the novels famous frankness about sexual manners, Sheed wrote, If this is a dirty book, updikes treatment of sex is central to his method, which is that of a fictional biochemist approaching mankind with a tray of hypersensitive gadgets. Certain locals though, did not embrace the novel and it is rumored that Mr. Updike was quietly but definitely dismissed from prominent social circles as well as the insular Myopia Hunt Club for his writings about peers and fellow members. More recently, Martin Amis dismissed Couples as one of the lesser works. Couples is often inscribed in the literary side of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In 1993 Edward Sorel illustrated the authors as a trio of satyrs, Updike had meant to call the novel, in honor of its amplitude, Couples and Houses and Days. To an interviewers question about the difficulty of writing scenes about sex, Updike replied, They were no harder than landscapes and a little more interesting. Its wonderful the way people in bed talk, the sense of voices, the book is, of course, not about sex as such, Its about sex as the emergent religion, as the only thing left. He becomes merely a name in the last paragraph, he becomes a satisfied person, in other words, a person who has what he wants, a satisfied person, a content person, ceases to be a person. Yes, I guess I do feel that, I feel that to be a person is to be in a situation of tension, is to be in a dialectical situation. A truly adjusted person is not a person at all—just an animal with clothes on or a statistic, so that its a happy ending, with this but at the end. Time Magazine Cover on John Updike and Couples Wilfred Sheed in The New York Times Book Review on Couples
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Marry Me (novel)
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Marry Me, A Romance is a 1976 novel by American writer John Updike. As in Updikes 1968 Couples, two married households—in this case, the Conants and the Mathiases—meet and entwine, jerry Conants love for Sally Mathias is the primary engine of the novel, his wife Ruths reaction, and the reaction of Sallys husband Richard, are the storys bookends. The novel was received by critics. In The Atlantic, Richard Todd enthusiastically welcomed the book, Marry Me and his writing has deepened, grown wiser and funnier, like a face that is aging well. In Newsweek, Peter S. Prescott called the novel Updikes most affecting and this understatement, this unwavering vision fixed on only four characters, is a part of what makes the story so effective. Mary Me is the best written and least self-conscious of Updikes longer fiction, it contains his most sophisticated and it is quite simply, Updikes best novel yet. I cant believe that anyone married or divorced could read it without being moved, the New York Times John Updike page, Essays, reviews, audio Time magazine on Marry Me
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Roger's Version
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Roger becomes obsessed with the thought that Dale is having an affair with his wife, Esther, although it remains ambiguous whether this affair takes place. Roger himself becomes involved with his niece Verna, a coarse but lively nineteen-year-old, Verna, frustrated by her poverty and limited opportunities, becomes increasingly abusive towards her one and a half year old, mixed-race daughter, Paula. Roger, out of sympathy for her situation and his sexual attraction for her. One evening, when Paula refuses to go to sleep, Verna shoves and hits her, Paula falls, Roger, after helping Verna disguise the assault as a playground accident from the hospital staff, has sex with her. Dale, meanwhile, grows depressed and disillusioned when his computer data does not seem to point to the existence of God, the novel ends with Verna leaving Boston to return to her parents in Cleveland and Roger and Esther receiving temporary custody of Paula
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Memories of the Ford Administration
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Memories of the Ford Administration is a 1992 novel by John Updike published by Knopf. Set in the early 1990s, it concerns a historian and teacher, Alfred Clayton, the novel is presented as Claytons improbably long and incredibly personal response, submitted to his professional association, the Northern New England Association of American Historians. Rather, the Ford-era part of Claytons memories centers almost entirely on the personal life. Sexual encounters are described in loving detail, leaving the reader to think that Clayton must be off his rails to be enumerating such dalliances before members of the NNEAAH. And he is off his rails in another way, too, namely, in being unable to constrain himself in writing about Buchanan, someone thought to have been rather a dud as a person. The novel is a tour de force in the genre of mixed history and fiction, writing a standard biography would have been too objectifying an act. He needs the prompt of memories and impressions concerning another president to get him going and he vaguely laments the loss, although now back with his wife in the era of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and comes across as a chastened man
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Brazil (novel)
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Brazil is a 1994 novel by the American author John Updike. It contains many elements of magical realism and it is a retelling of the ancient tale of Tristan and Isolde, the subject of many works in opera and ballet. Their flight into marriage takes them from urban banality to the farthest reaches of Brazil’s wild west, privation, violence, captivity and poverty afflict them, his mother curses them, her father strives to separate them, and neither lover is absolutely faithful. Eventually, ancient charms change him to white and her to black, yet Tristão and Isabel hold on to the belief that each is the other’s fate for life, as they develop in ways they never thought possible
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In the Beauty of the Lilies
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In the Beauty of the Lilies is a 1996 novel by John Updike. It takes its title from a line of the abolitionist song The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The first section, set mainly in Paterson, New Jersey, is centered on Clarence Wilmot, a minister in his forties who abruptly loses his faith one very hot afternoon shortly before a dinner party. His loss of faith is presented as coinciding with the spell of the 17-year-old silent film actress Mary Pickford. His decision to leave the ministry has serious social and financial consequences for his wife, unable to find work suitable for a man of his education, Clarence is reduced to selling encyclopedias door to door, a job he performs poorly. Growing more and more depressed and withdrawn, he finds only in the nickelodeon cinemas of the time. The remainder of Clarences family moves to the town of Basingstoke. This next section covers the 1920s, focuses on Clarences youngest son Ted. A quiet child, he grows up to be a diffident adult, on their first date they see the Greta Garbo feature Flesh and the Devil. His mother and Aunt Esther, disappointed with Teds choice of Emily as a girlfriend and his lack of ambition. Jared has married the daughter of a bootlegger and is involved in shady schemes himself, Ted is uncomfortable with the job Jared finds for him as a rent collector in immigrant neighborhoods and feels out of place at the speakeasies Jared and his friends frequent. He decides to return home and marry Emily, his mother and aunt resign themselves to Teds choice of a bride and his marriage to Emily proves emotionally and sexually fulfilling, and by the end of the second section they are the parents of a baby daughter named Esther. In the following section, Esther becomes the main protagonist, a beautiful and confident, if somewhat arrogant, little girl, she decides at a young age that she wants to be a movie star. She gets her first real break at eighteen when she agrees to a shoot with a photographer who noticed her at a beauty contest. He asks to photograph her topless and after hesitating, she agrees, later she moves to New York City to stay with her wealthy cousin Patrick who has offered to further her career. Assuming that Patrick is expecting sexual favors from her, she tries to seduce him, Esther finds work modeling and gradually begins appearing in films, typically as a spunky girl next door similar to Judy Garland. Renamed Alma DeMott, She gradually becomes a minor celebrity, a number of actual Hollywood personalities from this time are featured, including Gary Cooper and Clark Gable who are two of her first co-stars. She has an affair with Gable, and Cooper gives her fatherly advice about acting
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Gertrude and Claudius
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Gertrude and Claudius is a novel by John Updike. And, finally, it brings in elements from Shakespeares play. This story, in its three forms, is concerned with Hamlet avenging his fathers murder, but the story starts earlier. The novel is concerned with that life of Gertrude, Claudius, and old Hamlet. The characters have different names in Saxo, Belleforest, and Shakespeare, the story takes elements from all three predecessors, but is consistent only with Shakespeares. For example, the murder that was public knowledge in Saxo and Belleforest becomes secret in Shakespeare, but Belleforest introduces the adultery between Gertrude and Claudius, and further, implies that Gertrude encouraged Claudius to murder her husband. Updike takes the adultery, and makes it a love affair. Gertrude is a sensual, somewhat neglected wife, Claudius a rather dashing fellow, but Updike has Claudius kill his brother without Gertrudes knowledge or encouragement. Finally, Gertrude has definite intimations of a ghost of her dead husband and he never speaks for himself, and is seen very briefly only twice. Edwards, Philip, ed. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
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Terrorist (novel)
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Terrorist is the 22nd novel written by John Updike. The story centers on an American-born Muslim teenager named Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, although Ahmad’s high school guidance counselor, Jack Levy. The novel begins with a monologue by Ahmad on the condition of American youth as represented by the student body mingling in the corridors of his high school. He gets into a fight with a boy named Tylenol who thinks Ahmad is flirting with his girlfriend Joryleen. While Ahmad has sexual impulses toward the girl, he represses them, Ahmad finds solace at his mosque and in the study of the Quran under the guidance of his imam, Shaikh Rashid. Supporting Ahmad at home is his rather negligent mother, Teresa Mulloy, on the other hand Ahmad idolizes his absent father, an Egyptian immigrant who abandoned him and his mother when Ahmad was three years old. One of Teresa’s suitors in the story is Ahmad’s guidance counselor, Jack Levy, Levy is an American Jew who has abandoned practicing his religion yet still maintains the stereotypical Jewish cynicism and depression. He can be just as critical as Ahmad about American culture, for his part, Ahmad desires to become a truck driver on the advice of his Shaikh because driving is a practical skill of good merit whereas academic studies serve only to advance secular beliefs. He is also afraid that academic studies will strengthen his occasional religious doubt, trucking is also the path that leads Ahmad toward involvement in a terrorist plot directed against the American infidels — an attempt to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River. Ahmad agrees to drive the truck into the tunnel and blow himself up, on the day of the planned attack, his accomplices are not at their planned meeting place. Ahmad avoids arrest by agents and continues his suicide mission alone. Driving the bomb-laden truck, he encounters Jack Levy on the side of the road before getting on the highway, Jacks sister-in-law Hermione Fogel has alerted him to Ahmads involvement in a possible terrorist attack. Jack rides into the Lincoln Tunnel with Ahmad and while sitting in traffic tries to him not to go through with the bombing. Jack also admits to having an affair with Ahmads mother for the several months. While approaching the planned location of the bombing, Ahmad reconsiders his interpretation of Islam deciding that God does not want him to kill anyone and he and Jack ride through Manhattan together towards the George Washington Bridge to return to New Jersey. Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy An 18-year-old radical Islamist who seeks jihad and to follow the Straight Path, after taking vocational courses in high school, Ahmad is hired as a truck driver for Excellency Home Furnishings. He is coerced by his mentor and friend Charlie Chehab into driving a truck, Joryleen Grant A kindhearted African American classmate of Ahmads. Ahmad is attracted to her, but resists her advances as he sees her as an unclean infidel, after high school she becomes a prostitute to support her shiftless boyfriend
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The Same Door
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The Same Door is the first collection of John Updikes short stories in book form. It was published in 1959 by Alfred A. Knopf and this was the year after his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, was published by the same company, a house he was to remain with for 50 years. The book consists of 16 stories, all published in The New Yorker between 1954 and 1959, some in somewhat different form according to the title page. The stories appeared in the magazine in the order in which appear in the book. The sixteens stories are, Friends from Philadelphia Ace in the Hole This story prefigures Rabbit, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and So Forth This story has a high school girl in it named Gloria Angstrom, Harrys last name in the Rabbit books. See Updikes reasons for the name Angstrom, stream of angst, sunday Teasing His Finest Hour A Trillion Feet of Gas Incest A Gift From the City Intercession The first story about golf, a lifelong Updike subject. He has already written five books — two novels, a volume of verse, and two books of stories, read in chronological order they show clearly the battle that has gone on between his power to dazzle and his serious insight. Arthur Mizener on John Updike in The New York Times Book Review
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Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories
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Pigeon Feathers is an early collection of short stories by John Updike, published in 1962. It includes the stories Wife-Wooing and A&P, which have both been anthologized, A&P and the title story, Pigeon Feathers, were both adapted into films. Walter Briggs The Persistence of Desire Still Life A Sense of Shelter Dear Alexandros Wife-Wooing Pigeon Feathers, refers to H. G. Wells book The Outline of History. It was directed by Sharron Miller and starred Christopher Collet, Caroline McWilliams, Jeffrey DeMunn, Lenka Peterson and it tells the story of David, a young man who has a crisis of faith as he struggles with his belief in life after death. In 1996, the short story A&P was made into a film directed by Bruce Schwartz. It starred Sean Hayes as Sammy and Amy Smart as Queenie in their first official movie roles
