…e somehow never suit and his many endings are always inexplicable to him. “Salter renders the first blushes of Bowman’s loves exquisitely—their giddiness, occasional illicitness, eroticism—and his bewilderment after the relationships fail feels achingly real. By way of counterpoint, the author illustrates the happy but tragic marriage of a close friend, which parallels rather than intersects, since Bowman fails to connect with anyone… “Salter meas…
Read more ›…hey could not bear the pretty weight of so much heart, I snipped their dew-sopped blooms; stuffed them in vases in every room like tissue-boxes already teary with self-pity. Excerpt from A PHONE CALL TO THE FUTURE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS © 2008 by Mary Jo Salter. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from…
Read more ›…ves as a more eloquent introduction than we could provide, is from Mary Jo Salter’s first book, Henry Purcell in Japan, published in 1985. It also appears in her recent selected poems, A Phone Call to the Future. Welcome to Hiroshima is what you first see, stepping off the train: a billboard brought to you in living English by Toshiba Electric. While a channel silent in the TV of the brain projects those flickering re-runs of a cloud that brims it…
Read more ›…on, A Silence Opens, published in 1994 (she died later that year). Mary Jo Salter, in an illuminating introduction to the new Selected Poems, explains of Clampitt’s verse, “You couldn’t be sure where her thought was going; instead, you were invited to participate in her well-phrased wonder at where you both arrived. Hers was not a logical but an associative mind…Her genius was to stir unlikely figures, themes, and sounds into each other boldly, ev…
Read more ›…th a thoughtful, personalized gift that he’ll love. All That Is by James Salter The eagerly-anticipated novel from PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter, his first in over thirty years, is the perfect gift for the father who loves literary fiction. All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. Philip Bowman returns to America from the battlefields of Okinawa and finds success in the competetive world of publishing in postwa…
Read more ›…here to learn more about Alexander Neubauer’s Poetry in Person and Amy Clampitt’s Selected Poems, edited by Mary Jo Salter….
Read more ›…tory of everything Hemingway loved in life, and lost. “Enthralling” (James Salter, New York Review of Books). Read an Excerpt Hat Box Written by Stephen Sondheim The collected lyrics, comments, anecdotes, and miscellany from “theater’s finest living songwriter” (New York Times). Bringing together Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, this is fascinating, devourable, and essential reading for any fan of the theater or this great man’s work. The…
Read more ›…Death Comes to Pemberley Written by P. D. James One of our most admired mystery writers, P. D. James, draws the characters of Pride and Prejudice into a delicious tale of murder and emotional mayhem and “does so with a charm that will beguile even the most demanding Janeite” (Evening Standard). “A glorious plum pudding of a whodunit” —NPR’s Fresh Air Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Powell’s | Random House | Buy the eBook:…
Read more ›…volved around his beloved boat, Pilar. It has already been hailed by James Salter in The New York Review of Books as “Rich and enthralling.” And Maureen Dowd writes in her New York Times column, ”Paul Hendrickson has written a captivating book called Hemingway’s Boat, about Ernest’s 27-year love affair with Pilar, his mahogany cabin cruiser that outlasted three of his wives ‘and all his ruin.’” Hendrickson is a distinguished writer and journalist…
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