Reading the twelve major novels of Lawrence Durrell, this study argues for their consideration as a single major project, an opus, marked by themes of liminality and betweenness. As major texts of mid-twentieth-century literature, repeatedly earning nominations for the Nobel Prize, Durrell’s work has attracted renewed critical attention since his centenary in 2012. This study shows the thematic unity of the opus in five areas. First, by disrupting expectations of love and death and by fashioning plural narrators, works in the opus blend notions of the subject and the object. Second, in their use of metafictional elements, the texts present themselves as neither fiction nor reality. Third, their approach to place and identity offers something between the naturalistic and the human-centric. Fourth, though the texts’ initial concerns are engaged with understanding the past and preparing for a future, they all resolve in something like the present. And fifth, though the novels reject many aspects of modernism, they reside nevertheless between the poles of modernism and postmodernism. Shared with other writers, including T.S. Eliot and Henry Miller, as early as the 1940s, Durrell’s plans for his major works of fiction remained consistent through the publication of the last novel in 1985, and these plans show the need to consider the twelve major works as a unitary whole.
Reading the twelve major novels of Lawrence Durrell, this study argues for their consideration as a single major project, an opus, marked by themes of liminality and betweenness. As major texts of mid-twentieth-century literature, repeatedly earning nominations for the Nobel Prize, Durrell’s work has attracted renewed critical attention since his centenary in 2012. This study shows the thematic unity of the opus in five areas. First, by disrupting expectations of love and death and by fashioning plural narrators, works in the opus blend notions of the subject and the object. Second, in their use of metafictional elements, the texts present themselves as neither fiction nor reality. Third, their approach to place and identity offers something between the naturalistic and the human-centric. Fourth, though the texts’ initial concerns are engaged with understanding the past and preparing for a future, they all resolve in something like the present. And fifth, though the novels reject many aspects of modernism, they reside nevertheless between the poles of modernism and postmodernism. Shared with other writers, including T.S. Eliot and Henry Miller, as early as the 1940s, Durrell’s plans for his major works of fiction remained consistent through the publication of the last novel in 1985, and these plans show the need to consider the twelve major works as a unitary whole.
Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is an exotic species that appeared in North America in the late nineteenth century and has since become a dominant plant in the arid and semiarid rangelands between the Sierra Nevadas, Cascades, and Rocky Mountains. It is the first grass to appear after the region's long, cold winters and thus has become an important forage plant for livestock and wildlife. Cheatgrass is also a major environmental hazard in the sagebrush plant communities where it has established itself, providing highly combustible fuel for the wildfires that have ravaged so much of the Great Basin since the mid-twentieth century. Cheatgrass is the first comprehensive study of this highly invasive plant that has changed the ecology of millions of acres of western rangeland. Authors Young and Clements have researched the biology and impact of cheatgrass for four decades. Their book addresses the subject from several perspectives: the history of the invasion; the origins and biology of cheatgrass; its genetic variations, breeding systems, and patterns of distribution; its impact on grazing management; and the role it plays, both positive and negative, in the lives of high desert wildlife.
For a city like no other comes a book like no other. The New York Chronology tells the epic story of how a remote trading outpost and fishing village grew into the "world's capital" as we know it today. In tens of thousands of chronological entries, James Trager marches year by year through both the defining and incidental moments in the city's history, from the arrival of Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 to the sad closing of Ratner's Delicatessen on the Lower East Side "after 97 years of serving blintzes, kasha, latkes, and matzoh brei." With impeccable scholarship, humor, and an astonishing level of detail, Trager's information-packed entries straddle 32 separate categories that define this great metropolis. Turn to any year and you'll get a vivid sense of what life was like for New Yorkers at that time -- the political and financial developments that shaped their lives; the books, magazines, and newspapers they read; the restaurants, nightclubs, shows, and sporting events that entertained them; the fitful progress of their neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, public works, transportation systems, and so much more. Of course, New Yorkers themselves hold center stage, and The New York Chronology is loaded with eye-opening and colorful stories about its famous, infamous, and long-forgotten inhabitants. From society events and publicity stunts to scandals and murders, here are scores of offbeat tidbits that you simply won't find in a more conventional history. Handsomely illustrated with more than 130 photographs and drawings, it is an entertainingand essential book for New York lovers -- a homage as grand as the city itself.
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