September Roses

Bitter-sweet story of an aging French novelist, his astute wife, and a beautiful Peruvian actress.

The centennial of Andre Maurois's birth in 1885 has made this a most appropriate moment to produce a comprehensive work assessing his role as one of the leading literary figures in the Western world. Jack Kolbert's The Worlds of Andre Maurois draws heavily from his close personal association with Maurois as well as from painstaking analyses of each of Maurois' published works and of many of his unpublished and private papers. Maurois had the virtue of serving as a supreme communicator - a writer who could transform the most complex subject matter into readable, tidily organized, and above all lucid works of prose narrative. Unchallenged as the foremost biographer of 20th century literary figures, he also produced well-written and accurate histories of the three nations he knew best: France, England and the United States. For decades his novels and short stories enjoyed worldwide popularity. Climats may well be regarded as a novelistic classic and his science fiction continues to attract many readers. With a warm spirit of appreciation Jack Kolbert's monograph covers all of the major aspects of this fascinating literary figure: his human characteristics, his presence in French and international society, the persons who peopled his private and public worlds, his great biographies, novels, short stories, histories, essays, and articles of criticism. Kolbert's study on Maurois is probably the most comprehensive work on this subject to date.

On September 11, 2001, two sisters from South Africa find a good use for the roses they have grown when the flower show in New York City is canceled due to the attack on the World Trade Center.

On September 11, 2001, two sisters from South Africa find a good use for the roses they have grown when the flower show in New York City is canceled due to the attack on the World Trade Center.

This book offers an exploration of the comprehensive impact of the events of September 11, 2001, on every aspect of American culture and society. On Thanksgiving day after September 11, 2001, comic strip creators directed readers to donate money in their artwork, generating $50,000 in relief funds. The world's largest radio network, Clear Channel, sent a memo to all of its affiliated stations recommending 150 songs that should be eliminated from airplay because of assumptions that their lyrics would be perceived as offensive in light of the events of 9/11. On the first anniversary of September 11th, choirs around the world performed Mozart's Requiem at 8:46 am in each time zone, the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center. These examples are just three of the ways the world—but especially the United States—responded to the events of September 11, 2001. Each chapter in this book contains a chronological overview of the sea of changes in everyday life, literature, entertainment, news and media, and visual culture after September 11. Shorter essays focus on specific books, TV shows, songs, and films.

The War on Terror and American Popular Culture is a collection of original essays by academics and researchers from around the world that examines the complex interrelation between the Bush administration's "War on Terror" and American popular culture. Written by experts in the fields of literature, film, and cultural studies, this book examines in detail how popular culture reflects concerns and anxieties about the September 11 attacks and the war those attacks generated, how it interrogates the individual and collective impacts that war has wrought, how it might challenge or critique current policy, and how it might reinforce or endorse the war and its sociopolitical paradigms.

What does it mean to "fail" in performance? How might staging failure reveal theatre’s potential to expand our understanding of social, political and everyday reality? What can we learn from performances that expose and then celebrate their ability to fail? In Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure, Sara Jane Bailes begins with Samuel Beckett and considers failure in performance as a hopeful strategy. She examines the work of internationally acclaimed UK and US experimental theatre companies Forced Entertainment, Goat Island and Elevator Repair Service, addressing accepted narratives about artistic and cultural value in contemporary theatre-making. Her discussion draws on examples where misfire, the accidental and the intentionally amateur challenge our perception of skill and virtuosity in such diverse modes of performance as slapstick and punk. Detailed rehearsal and performance analysis are used to engage theory and contextualise practice, extending the dialogue between theatre arts, live art and postmodern dance. The result is a critical account of performance theatre that offers essential reading for practitioners, scholars and students of Performance, Theatre and Dance Studies.

Goat Island are one of the world’s leading contemporary performance ensembles. Their intimate, low-tech, intensely physical performances represent a unique hybrid of strategies and techniques drawn from live art, experimental theatre and postmodern dance. Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology and Goat Island, is the first book to document and critique the company’s performances, processes, politics, aesthetics, and philosophies. It reflects on the company’s work through the critical lens of ecology – an emerging and urgent concern in performance studies and elsewhere. This collage text combines and juxtaposes writing by company members and arts commentators, to look in detail at Goat Island’s distinctive collaborative processes and the reception of their work in performance. The book includes a section of practical workshop exercises and thoughts on teaching drawn from the company’s extensive experience, providing an invaluable classroom resource. By documenting the creative processes of this extraordinary company, this book will make an important contribution to the critical debates surrounding contemporary performance practices. In so doing, it pays compelling tribute to committed art-making, creativity, collaboration, and the nature of the possible.