Making Love To The Minor Poets Of Chicago

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Chicago, this is a story of science and poetry, manipulation and intrigue, and the lengths to which people will go for their passions. The Yucca Mountain Project deep in the Nevada desert is the first planned long-term nuclear storage facility. The project is designed to contain nuclear waste for ten-thousand years, the amount of time it will take for the waste to no longer be radioactive. It is an ambitious project, especially in light of the fact that in this century alone we lacked the foresight to anticipate Y2K. Given this daunting responsibility, the project employs an artist, a botanist and an architect to contribute visual warnings to the site, in a manner decipherable to future generations. Conrad imagines an influential poetry professor who insists that the project also include a poem, a great poem, an epic poem. It is this poem that brings us to the center of an extended circle of minor poets who are continually upstaging, back-stabbing and falling in and out of love with one another. "... Conrad’s novel recalls another comic first work: John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces." - Nashville Scene

Predicated upon the principles of political freedom, cultural openness, religious tolerance, individual self-reliance and ethnic diversity, the United States of America has been tempted recurrently by the lures of the secret. American Secrets explores this political, historical and cultural phenomenon from many, often surprisingly overlapping angles in these analyses of the literary and cultural uses and abuses of secrecy within a democratic culture. Through analyses of diverse literary works and cultural manifestations - from Twain's anti-imperialist prophecies to 9/11 conspiracy theories, from the traumas of the Vietnam war to the homophobia of the American military establishment, from the unresolved dilemmas of nuclear politics to the secret ecologies shunted aside by the exploitation of the environment, from the questionings of national identity from the ethnic and (trans)sexual margins to the confessional modes of poetry and the poetics of the unspeakable and unrepresentable - these essays reveal the politics within the poetics and, indissociably, the poetics fueling the politics of secrecy in its ambivalent deployment.

Within the past ten years, the field of contemporary American literary studies has changed significantly. Following the turn of the twenty-first century and mounting doubts about the continued explanatory power of the category of “postmodernism,” new organizations have emerged, book series have been launched, journals have been created, and new methodologies, periodizations, and thematics have redefined the field. Postmodern/Postwar—and After aims to be a field-defining book—a sourcebook for the new and emerging critical terrain—that explores the postmodern/postwar period and what comes after. The first section of essays returns to the category of the “post-modern” and argues for the usefulness of key concepts and themes from postmodernism to the study of contemporary literature, or reevaluates postmodernism in light of recent developments in the field and historical and economic changes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These essays take the contemporary abandonments of postmodernism as an occasion to assess the current states of postmodernity. After that, the essays move to address the critical shift away from postmodernism as a description of the present, and toward a new sense of postmodernism as just one category among many that scholars can use to describe the recent past. The final section looks forward and explores the question of what comes after the postwar/postmodern. Taken together, these essays from leading and emerging scholars on the state of twenty-first-century literary studies provide a number of frameworks for approaching contemporary literature as influenced by, yet distinct from, postmodernism. The result is an indispensable guide that seeks to represent and understand the major overhauling of postwar American literary studies that is currently underway.

The importance of Chicago in American culture has made the city's place in the American imagination a crucial topic for literary scholars and cultural historians. While databases of bibliographical information on Chicago-centered fiction are available, they are of little use to scholars researching works written before the 1980s. In The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide, James A. Kaser provides detailed synopses for more than 1,200 works of fiction significantly set in Chicago and published between 1852 and 1980. The synopses include plot summaries, names of major characters, and an indication of physical settings. An appendix provides bibliographical information for works dating from 1981 well into the 21st century, while a biographical section provides basic information about the authors, some of whom are obscure and would be difficult to find in other sources. Written to assist researchers in locating works of fiction for analysis, the plot summaries highlight ways in which the works touch on major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race). The book is also a useful reader advisory tool for librarians and readers who want to identify materials for leisure reading, particularly since genre, juvenile, and young adult fiction, as well as literary fiction, are included.

In this warm and witty story, a young woman gets swept up in the rivalries and love affairs of a dramatic group of writers.​ Carla is stuck. In her twenties and working for a landscaper, she’s been told she’s on the wrong path by everyone—from her mom, who wants her to work at the hospital, to her boyfriend, who is dropping not-so-subtle hints that she should be doing something that matters. ­Then she is hired for a job at the home of Viridian, a lauded and lovely aging poet who introduces Carla to an eccentric circle of writers. At first she is perplexed by their predilection for reciting lines in conversation, the stories of their many liaisons, their endless wine-soaked nights. Soon, though, she becomes enamored with this entire world: with Viridian, whose reputation has been defined by her infamous affair with a male poet, Mathias; with Viridian’s circle; and especially with the power of words, the “ache and hunger that can both be awakened and soothed by a poem,” a hunger that Carla feels sharply. When a fight emerges over a vital cache of poems that Mathias wrote about Viridian, Carla gets drawn in. But how much will she sacrifice for a group that may or may not see her as one of their own? A delightfully funny look at the art world—sometimes petty, sometimes transactional, sometimes transformative— ­The Poet’s House is also a refreshingly candid story of finding one’s way, with words as our lantern in the dark.

Vibrant interviews from the radio program, Open Books

Whether you’re searching for the perfect read for yourself or for a friend, More Book Lust offer eclectic recommendations unlike those in any other reading guide available. In this followup to the bestselling Book Lust, popular librarian, Nancy Pearl, offers a fresh collection of 1,000 reading recommendations in more than 120 thematic, intelligent and wholly entertaining reading lists. For the friend wanting to leave her job: "Living Your Dream" offers good armchair dreaming books about people who have left stodgy jobs to do what they love. Are you a budding chef? "Fiction For Foodies" includes books that sneak in a recipe or two along with a tantalizing plot. For the James Bond wannabe: "Crime is a Globetrotter" features crime novels set in various locations around the world such as Tibet, Sweden, and Sicily. In the book’s introduction, Pearl jokes, “If we were at a twelve-step meeting together, I would have to stand up and say, ‘Hi, I’m Nancy P., and I’m a readaholic.” Booklist magazine plays off this obsession while echoing a sentiment of Nancy Pearl’s fans everywhere: “A self-confessed ‘readaholic,’ Pearl lets us benefit from her addiction. May she never seek recovery.” Indeed.

As interest in environmental issues grows, many writers of fiction have embraced themes that explore the connections between humans and the natural world. Ecologically themed fiction ranges from profound philosophical meditations to action-packed entertainments. Where the Wild Books Are offers an overview of nearly 2,000 works of nature-oriented fiction. The author includes a discussion of the precursors and history of the genre, and of its expansion since the 1970s. He also considers its forms and themes, as well as the subgenres into which it has evolved, such as speculative fiction, ecodefense, animal stories, mysteries, ecofeminist novels, cautionary tales, and others. A brief summary and critical commentary of each title is included. Dwyer’s scope is broad and covers fiction by Native American writers as well as ecofiction from writers around the world. Far more than a mere listing of books, Where the Wild Books Are is a lively introduction to a vast universe of engaging, provocative writing. It can be used to develop book collections or curricula. It also serves as an introduction to one of the most fertile areas of contemporary fiction, presenting books that will offer enjoyable reading and new insights into the vexing environmental questions of our time.