Letters To Friends Family And Editors

"These magnificent letters, meticulously set up and annotated, show us aspects of Kafka that were only hinted at in earlier collections and help us trace his development from unhappy young law student and insurance administrator to novelist and short-story writer of originality and genius." --Publishers Weekly "When we turn from Kafka's books to his letters we have a series of self-portraits desperate and courageous, always eager and warm in feeling; the self is lit by fantasy and, of course, by drollery. His candor is of the kind that flies alongside him in the air. He was a marvelous letter writer." --V.S. Pritchett, The New York Review of Books "These letters are like messages from the underground, from the dark side of the moon, presenting aspects of Kafka that would have died with his friends. We meet alternately Kafka the artist, friend, son, father figure, marriage counselor, literary critic, insurance official. . . . A full portrait, and a significant contribution to Kafka scholarship." --Smithsonian Magazine "An inside view of a writer who, perhaps more than any other novelist or poet in our century, stands at the center of our culture." --Robert Alter, The New York Times Book Review

Far from the noisy drumming of Iron John, the contributors (including David Epstein, John Fowles and John Hoyland) shed new light on the nature of masculinity, and how men become men.

A virtual memoir in letters by the beloved creator of the Moomins Tove Jansson’s works, even her famed Moomin books, fairly teem with letters of one kind or another, from messages bobbing in bottles to whole epistolary novels. Fortunately for her countless readers, her life was no different, unfolding as it did in the letters to family, friends, and lovers that make up this volume, a veritable autobiography over the course of six decades—and the only one Jansson ever wrote. And just as letters carry a weight of significance in Jansson’s writing, those she wrote throughout her life reflect the gravity of her circumstances, the depth of her thoughts and feelings, and the critical moments of humor, sadness, and grace that mark an artist’s days. These letters, penned with characteristic insight and wit, provide an almost seamless commentary on Jansson’s life within Helsinki’s bohemian circles and on her island home. Shifting between hope and despair, yearning and happiness, they describe her immersion in art studies and her ascension to fame with the Moomins. They speak frankly of friendship and love, loneliness and solidarity, and also of politics, art, literature, and society. They summon a particular place and time reflected through a mind finely attuned to her culture, her world, and her own nature—all clearly put into biographical and historical context by the volume’s editors, both longtime friends of Tove Jansson—and, in the end, draw a complex, intimate self-portrait of one of the world’s most beloved authors.

"This short and readable critical biography emphasizes the relationship between Franz Kafka's life and works as read through his culture and his understanding of his own 'body'. Kafka's writings, letters and diaries provide a window into his ongoing attempt to create an identity for himself in a world where being a Central European Jew dictated an uneasy fate. Sander L. Gilman stresses the image and role of the Jew in Kafka's world of the 'modern' and how Kafka responded to these attitudes, actions and stereotypes." "Gilman also looks at the impact of psychoanalysis on Kafka and his works. The book contains much material that elucidates how Kafka reshaped such experiences of the world in his literary texts. It examines the creation of the 'Kafka-myth' after his death, presenting material emerging from the subsequent eighty years, including work by such illustrious minds as Walter Benjamin and Ted Hughes."--BOOK JACKET.

Spanning nearly forty years, the letters collected in this volume form the most significant correspondence—and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships—in American history.

While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists worldwide who have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables, and allegories. The goal of the present volume is to document this influence in different language groups and traditions. Tome I explores Kierkegaard’s influence on literature and art in the Germanophone world. He was an important source of inspiration for German writers such as Theodor Fontane, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Andersch, and Martin Walser. Kierkegaard’s influence was particularly strong in Austria during the generation of modernist authors such as Rudolf Kassner, Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, and Hermann Broch. Due presumably in part to the German translations of Kierkegaard in the Austrian cultural journal Der Brenner, Kierkegaard continued to be used by later figures such as the novelist and playwright, Thomas Bernhard. His thought was also appropriated in Switzerland through the works of Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The famous Czech author Franz Kafka identified personally with Kierkegaard’s love story with Regine Olsen and made use of his reflections on this and other topics.

Emily Morris got her happily-ever-after earlier than most. Married at a young age to a man she loved passionately, she was building the life she always wanted. But when enormous stress threatened her marriage, Emily made some rash decisions. That’s when she fell in love with someone else. That’s when she got pregnant. Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily’s plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open on 9/11. It’s amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, as she leaves New York City to start a new life. It’s not easy, but Emily---now Connie Prynne―forges a new happily-ever-after in California. But when a life-threatening diagnosis upends her life, she is forced to rethink her life for the good of her thirteen-year-old daughter. A riveting debut in which a woman must confront her own past in order to secure the future of her daughter, Kim Hooper's People Who Knew Me asks: “What would you do?”

With her outsize personality, Julia Child is known around the world by her first name alone. But despite that familiarity, how much do we really know of the inner Julia? Now more than 200 letters exchanged between Julia and Avis DeVoto, her friend and unofficial literary agent memorably introduced in the hit movie Julie & Julia, open the window on Julia’s deepest thoughts and feelings. This riveting correspondence, in print for the first time, chronicles the blossoming of a unique and lifelong friendship between the two women and the turbulent process of Julia’s creation of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, one of the most influential cookbooks ever written. Frank, bawdy, funny, exuberant, and occasionally agonized, these letters show Julia, first as a new bride in Paris, then becoming increasingly worldly and adventuresome as she follows her diplomat husband in his postings to Nice, Germany, and Norway. With commentary by the noted food historian Joan Reardon, and covering topics as diverse as the lack of good wine in the United States, McCarthyism, and sexual mores, these astonishing letters show America on the verge of political, social, and gastronomic transformation.