Long sought by scholars as the Holy Grail of world literature, and masquerading under the censor's makeshift title, "The second maiden's tragedy," this lost play was discovered by Charles Hamilton, a forensic document examiner and literary historian.
Monhegan Island, Maine has historically attracted a number of different visitors and workers, each with their own unique reasons for being there. The natural beauty of Monhegan Island has continuously attracted generations of artists, day-trippers, and summer sojourners. White Head, Pulpit Rock, and Cathedral Woods are names that resonate throughout New England and beyond. Long before the first ferry full of seasonal visitors arrived, the Monhegan Island fishermen had established a permanent community on the island, scratching out an existence on a remote offshore outpost. As early as 1890, prominent artists Robert Henri and George Bellows, followed by Rockwell Kent and Jamie Wyeth, captured the magnificence of Monhegan. They shared the cliffs and coves with the lighthouse keepers, carpenters, lobstermen, and the island people.
Remember "Humpy," the talking camel? You'll find him in this book, along with a host of other legendary characters from Alice in Wonderland through the Mysterious Mr Wong to Wild Bill Hickok. Movie stars featured include Lon Chaney, Kay Francis, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Constance Bennett, Adolphe Menjou and Will Rogers. Directors include John Ford, Cecil B. DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch and Fred Zinnemann. It all adds up to many hours of pleasure for classic movie fans who can thumb through details of award-winning films, popular pictures, and little-known masterpieces that deserve wider recognition. Yes, there are famous "B" movies too, like "Sleepers West" and its re-make, "The Narrow Margin.
In this collection of his essays and a sampling of his letters, John Jay Chapman (1862-1933) embraces the world at large. Predicting the depersonalization of twentieth-century society, Chapman argues that a civilization based upon a commerce which is in all its parts corruptly managed will present a social life which is unintelligent and mediocre, made up of people afraid of each other, whose ideas are shopworn, whose manners are self-conscious. Chapman should be studied more carefully and at full length, Edmund Wilson wrote in 1929, but in the meantime, what is most important is to have his essays made accessible.... If his books were reprinted and read, we should recognize that we possess in John Jay Chapman -- by reason of the intensity of the spirit, the brilliance of the literary gift and the continuity of the thought which they embody -- an American classic. Jacques Barzun has observed, We have produced very few great critics, but John Jay Chapman equals any of his foreign contemporaries. An American original, Chapman is a tonic to cynicism and an antidote to a society gone flaccid and complacent.
Interviews with: Doris Betts Fred Chappell Shelby Foote Jesse Hill Ford George Garrett Larry L. King Marion Montgomery Willie Morris Guy Owen Walker Percy Reynolds Price James Whitehead What does it mean to be a Southern writer in the 1970s? What is the nature of today’s South and what prospects does it offer a writer? These twelve interviews with writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction elicit some thoughtful and revealing answers. Because the interviews were taped, there is a spontaneity that brings forth the personality of each writer and provides a text that is interesting and entertaining as well as instructive. In the first interview with Shelby Foote to appear since the early 1950s, the Mississippi novelist discusses his fiction and extensive writing on Civil War history. A thoughtful conversation with Walker Percy ranges over his three novels and reveals their philosophical roots. Marion Montgomery speaks perceptively about his fiction and poetry as ceremonial efforts “to reconcile the private act with the public act.” A two-part interview with Reynolds Price suggests the nature of one novelist’s mind as he chronicles a world beneath the one other people perceive, “that world which seems to impinge upon, to color, to shape, the daily world we inhabit.” Willie Morris tells about growing up in Mississippi, about going home to Yazoo, and about the effect of New York on his Southernness, while Larry L. King speaks of race relations, literature, and Texas and talks frankly about how he and Morris came to resign from Harper’s. The short story is Doris Betts’ forte, and she comments significantly on the form which allows her to “speak briefly on long subjects.” The business of writing is as irrational as kite-flying, observes George Garrett in a candid discussion of the publishing world, his own ups and downs as a writer, and his latest novel, The Death of the Fox. Jesse Hill Ford, talking about his fiction and his writing career, speaks up proudly for the South: “Nest to a bulldozer blade a magnolia is probably the hardest damned thing in the world.” Both the mountain country of North Carolina and the fantastic landscapes of his imagination have influenced Fred Chappell, who remarks on the grotesque in his novels and poetry. Guy Owen tells about his interacting roles as fiction writer, poet, editor, and teacher; his compelling interest in the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina; and his experience with Hollywood. Poetry, the novel, football, and a passion for teaching are the subjects of a provocative and free-wheeling conversation with James Whitehead. “Have you ever stopped to think that for the first time there have been no rational rewards for writing in the way that there were in the past. . . Nowadays, it’s about as rational as saying, ‘What do you do for a living?’ ‘Well, I’m a kite-flyer.’ I mean there’s not a great demand for kite-flyers around. There may be a few who draw a little money. Therefore, today, writing appeals to a different mentality. A Shakespeare today might be doing something else that’s more rational. Now the other thing is that because this is true, fundamentally writing doesn’t matter in the world of commerce. It has a certain kind of—I wouldn’t say purity, but freedom that is never had.”—George Garrett
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