Essays category: 9344 books

A National Book Critics Circle Finalist for Criticism A deeply Malcolmian volume on painters, photographers, writers, and critics. Janet Malcolm's In the Freud Archives and The Journalist and the Murderer, as well as her books about Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein, are canonical in the...

From the essay "Of Study": "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." According to Wikipedia:...

A New York Review Books Original An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning...

A collection of dazzling and thought-provoking essays from lauded author Mary Gordon Much acclaimed for her novels, Mary Gordon is also a brilliant and wide-ranging essayist. Gathering together twenty-eight of her forays into nonfiction, Good Boys and Dead Girls provides a richly autobiographical...

Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body...

The legendary author’s essays and interviews explore how fellow writers from Milan Kundera to Edna O’Brien are influenced by time, place, and politics. Writers are often deeply influenced by the time and place in which they live and write. In Shop Talk, Philip Roth, winner of a National...

A new collection of critical and personal essays on writing, obsession, and inspiration from National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates. "Why do we write?" With this question, Joyce Carol Oates begins an imaginative exploration of the writing...

Stories, essays, poems, and personal reminiscences from the sage of Lake Wobegon When, at thirteen, he caught on as a sportswriter for the Anoka Herald, Garrison Keillor set out to become a professional writer, and so he has done—a storyteller, sometime comedian, essayist, newspaper columnist,...

Description **How much of our past does our face betray? What future fortune can you read in the lines and skin? What trace is left by other lips and fingers and fists? In this beautiful, boisterous account, by turns soul-searching and erotic, acclaimed Chicano and Native American poet Jimmy...

Zombies, demons, psychotic killers, ravenous predators, vengeful teenagers--all the scariest characters from horror fiction show up in this collection of essays and reviews, an opinionated meditation on how the horror genre has been getting in our faces lately. Evan Gillespie is never shy about telling...

William Gaddis published only four novels during his lifetime, but with those works he earned himself a reputation as one of America's greatest novelists. Less well known is Gaddis's body of excellent critical writings. Here is a wide range of his original essays, some published for the first time....

It looks straightforward from the outside, doesn’t it? Write an amazing book, get an agent, get a book deal, and voila! Fame and fortune! As you will see in these essays, however, a writer is vastly more likely to follow a complex, switch-backing trail than a straightforward path, one strewn...

Inspiration and insight for writers. Includes: "Getting Out There", "Staying Put", "Step By Step", "Endings", "On Exercise", "Reality Check", "The New Hack Writers", and "The Lepers of Literature".

Turning Point is a collection of religious essays that will not only inspire you in your spiritual walk, but will give you helpful points to carry you through the journey of life. It will also encourage your walk with the Lord and bring you closer in your relationship with Him. The plain and simple essays may not turn the world upside down, but they will bring some joy to your heart.