New Depths Of Deadpan

Poetry. Should the two masks that represent Comedy and Tragedy pass through each other (imagine a total eclipse), might not their overlapping intersection be an expression of deadpan? And what about Janus, that janitor in January? Do his back-to-back facial characteristics suggest anything more than the infinite, noncommittal gaze of beginnings and endings? Or does the almost reckless declarativeness of these poems show a mind's weathering both the antic and the intimate, both merriment and distress? Michael Gizzi's previous books include MY TERZA RIMA, CURED IN THE GOING BEBOP, and CONTINENTAL HARMONY, all available from SPD.

This collection reimagines Melville as both a theorist and a writer, approaching his works as philosophical forms in their own right.

Literary Nonfiction. Art. In SEEING OUT LOUD, Saltz critically engages with notable works of art by over 100 notable artists ranging from Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol to Matthew Barney, Gerhard Richter, and Chris Ofili. These reviews appeared in the Village Voice between November 1998 and winter 2003. "Jerry Saltz is the best informed and hair-trigger liveliest of contemporary art critics, tracking pleasure and jump-starting intelligence on the fly. Jerry's fast takes usually stand up better in retrospect than other people's long views"---Peter Schjedahl. "Jerry Saltz looks at art from the perspective of the viewer, the ignorant, the lover, and the enemy. His writing is overwhelmingly passionate, yet without sentimentality. His words pierce the content and beauty of each work of art to test its endurance in time and memory"---Francesco Bonami, Curator, 2003 Venice Biennale.

CHRIS PRATT is now one of the world's most sought-after actors. As the breakout star of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie (two of 2014's biggest box-office hits), as well as landing the lead role in the 2015 Jurassic Park franchise re-boot, Jurassic World, his meteoric rise to fame is proof that anything is possible in Hollywood.Chris's journey to the movie-star A-list may just make him the ultimate 'zero to hero', but it certainly wasn't an overnight success story. A chance encounter transformed Chris's life from living in a van and waiting tables to make enough money to survive, to the bright lights of Los Angeles and his first tentative steps into the acting world.After years as a supporting player in both comedy and dramatic roles, on television (Everwood, Parks and Recreation) and in movies (The Five-Year Engagement, Delivery Man), Chris finally started to attract superstar buzz after appearing in three Best Picture Oscar-nominated films between 2011 and 2013. Along the way he's shown that nice guys don't always finish last, juggling a successful movie career and life as a devoted family man, and somehow finding time to develop killer abs along the way.

The first book on Virginia O'Brien, the most unique talent under contract to Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

In the closing decade of the twentieth century, Don DeLillo emerged from the privileged status of a writer's writer to become by any measure - productivity, influence, scope, gravitas - the dominant novelist of fin-de-millennium America. Beginning in 1982 with The Names and continuing with White Noise and Underworld, DeLillo defined himself as a provocative, articulate anatomist of American culture. Dewey offers an astute assessment of this daunting yet important writer's four-decade cultural critique. Dewey finds DeLillo's concerns to be organized around three rubrics that mark the writer's own creative evolution: the love of the street, the embrace of the word, and the celebration of the soul. Dewey takes the reader through the novelist's hip avant-garde satires of the mid-1960s, his dense interrogations of the power of language and the spell of narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, and his recent efforts to transcend the immediate. Dewey explores DeLillo's fascination with Eastern philosophies, interest in Native American traditions, passion for jazz, and deep roots in Catholicism.

The commentaries of other critics are taken into account, but the author also presents her own explications based on her close reading and wide knowledge of literature."--BOOK JACKET.

This book examines the multi-media explosion of contemporary political satire. Rooted in 18th century Augustan practice, satire’s indelible link with politics underlies today’s universal disgust with the ways of elected politicians. This study interrogates the impact of British and American satirical media on political life, with a special focus on political cartoons and the levelling humour of Australasian satirists.