Penn State Books

This is an amazing book. It is hard to write about one's own family and make it interesting. To go further and make it not only interesting, but relevant to others, takes a writer of rare talent. Penn is clearly such a writer, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the creative and original approach taken in this work. The author draws thought-provoking parallels and connections between his own mixblood Indian family's dreams, visions, failures and successes, and those of other families, in particular other native and mixed-blood families, including exploration of the writing of many historical native American figures. This is a creative and very original book, highly recommended.

There's nothing like talking about the universe of the DeLillo. It's nice even uttering a few superficial lines about it. Let alone going fully crazy into the magnitude of textual depth that is possible, and even necessary, in a book-length rave.

I cannot say enough about DeLillo. Apparently, Osteen feels the same way. I would characterize the book as 'critical'. Not just abstractly critical, like 'this is some literary criticism'. But fully critical, like 'there are some extremely serious things happening, happened, will happen. And we need to talk, have talked, about them at a very serious level'. By serious I mean what DeLillo means when he says it took him a few books written to realize how serious we have to be about writing. Serious as in life-and-death struggle. There is nothing more important than life. The closer to consciousness things get, the more meaningful they are. We like to dive in to the flow of DeLillo-dreaming and let it wash over us as we bathe in it and drink it's revealing purity of intention/reality.

We're taking about DeLillo! For this we do not want un-inspire-ing people around. People who think his characters all talk the same, or his books aren't very emotion-causing. We simply want people like us, who-like-us, we want people, like I mean people whose visual resolution is high. Who can really see. Who are fully awake to what death has to take away. Yes, we'll be dead soon. Before then, please do not make me feel like I'm wasting my time. With the things you might say.

American Magic and Dread--a fairly suggestive title. Because DeLillo is american. That doesn't mean limited. It means the center, the solar furnace of the elements with which he designs life-forms, happens to be here, the richest nation ever, the nation at the swirling epic-center of the riskiest, most audacious project to control nature that people-kind has ever known. We're talking about total destruction, nukes on hair-trigger alert, never-ending. So, the apocalypse hasn't happened yet. Like the big media's haven't documented the literal hell-on-earth that is existence for most of the souls who live, animals trapped in the plot of human exploitation and abuse. Apparently DeLillo eats hamburgers. Maybe he's researching. He feels he needs to taste death in order to write books filled with torturers. Maybe he just doesn't care. Whatever the case, I'm not going to police his thoughts--I won't refuse to read him until he goes vegan. Zappa was a murderer. He smoked cigarettes. (Killing yourself is murder just as bad as killing someone else). And I listen to him whole-heartedly.

Smith says "Too much truth is a prescription for failure". He was talking about why DeLillo was not read as much as his total perfection of intelligent artistry called for with respect to size of readership. So, lots of people bought Underworld. But how many people read it? It's nice to imagine that there are multitudes of souls out there "real" enough to appreciate DeLillo. After all, if I can see his text's "burning light", why can't others? As Smith also says, "There is no such thing as a leaf--there are only leaves".

Osteen's work is the full deal. When reading it, I'll quit, becuase it's too good to read. Meaning, I can only integrate so much goodness at any one time. Sometimes I max out, and have to save stimuli for later. It's about how dense text is. How much meaning happens per alphabetic character. There has to be a limit. We know that DeLillo has flirted with this limit. Osteen does what he does fairly well. It may be wrong to say that fiction is better than criticism. Platonic. Ideals and whatnot. They're just things for different modes of you. Modes can be pretty demanding. Often I will be fully unable to deal w text. But like now i'll be textual. Lines will be life. Writing/reading will do it for me. I'll have things to say, I'll be willing to listen to writers' sayings. The question is, does Osteen do justice to D? Meaning D(eLillo) is so twisted and godly and surprising and new--does Osteen come close to whatever in the world kind of things we should be telling each other about D? With this book, do we reach conditions of remembrance of D-text that are equal more or less to the conditions we can reach in our own private ruminations? Does O let us trip? What is the quality of his dream-logic? Does he bring us down, or trip us out? Does he like it? Can he make his book sing? How far can he take us? Is it worth it, walking along with him for some of the times of our lives? With the things he might say? Text is drug. Is the drug mind-expanding? Is the book informational? Do we learn more reading it than we'd learn never reading it? In short, should we read American Magic and Dread? I wouldn't know. As Rilke says, "All critical intention is beyond me".

I just want to you to acquire some sensations feelings and thoughts. I care for you, because if I were you, I'd be you. I'd do what you're doing. I know you want to come and join in song. I know life is not long. It all depends, on how you'll make it through, the things you do, whether true, or too few. Please, give us a chance. Let us tell you things. Do not turn away--our song is not very long. You've come this far. Choose life, and not death. This may be a (difficult) problem. Or it may be effortless, like true love sometimes is. Only you can tell what's true. You shall decide what to let live. No matter what you do, the end will just be you. The life of love, it may take us far. Make your life reach the magic of love itself.

Ben Franklin recalls his earlier life from a later vantage point in this skillfully-written walk back in time. As is often the case when reading the words of those from other ages, this most human and brilliant of Founding Fathers seems simultaneously utterly modern and distinctly Colonial as he tells about his life as a printer and inventor in 18th-century Philadelphia. It is the small moments that grant this book so much flavor. Franklin's description of chasing a "whirlwind" is a prime example of that. This is history at its most approachable, penned by a man whose wit and self-confidence make him fine company for the duration of a most enjoyable read.

In Brother to Dragons, Robert Penn Warren, former poet laureate and twice winner of the Pulitzer, combined the historical elements of the New Madrid earthquake and the murder of a slave by two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews with his love of poetry. This book has various "voices" relating the brutal events in verse, but history is only a vehicle for exploring the nature of evil and Jefferson's dream of the perfectability of mankind.

This is a marvelous rather experimental volume; it is both novel, play, and poem. It is grim; it is disturbing; it is absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend this work.

Camp William Penn (Images of America: Pennsylvania)
Outstanding account of a forgotten chapter of American Civil War history. A must read for those interested in all histories--American, civil war, military and African-American. Excellent source of information for school students that includes rare pictures and detailed captions. Topics cover Camp William Penn's formation, personal accounts of officers, battles fought, abolitionists associated with the Camp (Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, Lucretia Mott, William Still), Underground Railroad, Medal of Honor winners and others. Located just outside of Philadelphia, Camp William Penn's story is nothing less than fascinating.

This slender casebook of an academic search represents the first authoritative text of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper since it was originally published in 1892. It includes book reviews and excerpts of literary and social commentaries that reflect the story's critical reception; it publishes lists of editorial emendations and variants of the story in important editions since 1892 and it gives a listing of textual sources for more than one hundred reprintings of the story in anthologies and textbooks.

The enterprise, itself, deserves recognition for its prodigious and painstaking scholarship and meticulous editing. A product of an undergraduate course on scholarly editing, Julie Bates Dock gave her class a "simple collation exercise" on Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper. Students and teacher alike became more and more enthused as they searched for relationships among various editions of the story. This enthusiasm resulted in a collaborative publication by Julie Bates Dock and three of her students.

In a chapter entitled The Legend of The Yellow Wall-Paper, Dock not only recounts how the story has become one of literature's perennial bestsellers, but also warn us that "in its twenty-five-year odyssey of rediscovery by literary critics...the story has picked up along the way an assortment of blemishes and distortions, from textual anomalies to skewed accounts of its publication history to misinformation about its contemporary reception." This should be enough to make any academic want to research its history.

The evidence of casual distortions that change the import of original texts as shown in the present case emphasizes the importance of textual criticism and traditional modes of criticism. Dock says, "...the use of documents is affected by critical trends and by critics' biases and expectations...The feminist critics of the early 1970s, intent on establishing women authors in the American literary canon, had a stake in portraying the story as a victimized piece of literature. The notion that Gilman suffered condemnation from editors and readers outside the story tidily echoed the narrator's victimization within the story." Dock then goes on to cite two examples where major feminist critics came to unexamined and hasty conclusions about the publication of the story.

Dock also provides evidence to argue that omission of a few words distorts Gilman's focus. For example, the words, "in marriage," in the sentence, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that (in marriage)." Gilman was against the institution of marriage, but not necessarily against men in general!

Legends that Gilman had to struggle to get her story published, that most readers thought of it as a "ghost story," that it received an especially distasteful reception from the male medical community are also put to rest, as evidence simply does not support these beliefs.

Dock also points out discrepancies in Gioman's own accounts as well, such as her inaccurate and varying dates and titles as well as her claim that Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, her own physician, altered his treatment of neurasthenia after reading The Yellow Wall-Paper. This is, as Dock points out, a case of "he says/she says conundrums."

The book is wonderfully embellished with photographs of Charlotte Perkins Stetson, W.D. Howells, Horace E. Scudder and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, as well as with other visuals.

The book also cites interesting excerpts from Gilman's autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Correspondence. It explains or compiles painstaking commentaries on textual matters, selection of copy, publication history, authorial practice and preference, editorial emendations and many other publication matters as well as reviews of the story which appeared in various magazines. The Appendix provides a history of the printing of The Yellow Wall-Paper from 1892 until 1997.

This is a scholarly book, to be sure, but it is one that is also extremely interesting. In addition to learning the history of The Yellow Wall-Paper, we also learn much about Gilman's motivations, her aesthetics of writing and her own views on both marriage and men.

Most of the pictures were great, some were just lame- like they took a bunch of pictures indiscriminately and threw the book together. But I got the book supercheap and my uncle loves it.

A New Critic to her core, Gordon's discipline, control, and craftsmanship shine through in her short stories. This collection should show anyone why she was such a tremendous influence on Flannery O'Connor. As a master of the short story, Gordon deserves the recognition accorded O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty. I hope someone will reissue Gordon's anthology 'The House of Fiction.'

This book explores the central developments in African American history since 1939.

The first part (about 90 pages) provides a concise and compelling historical narrative broken into five time periods. It begins with a discussion of the various approaches to interpreting black history post-1939, including revisionist, vindicationist, Afrocentric, integrationist, nationalist and multidimensional approaches. The authors take a multidimensional approach, demonstrating that "The Movement" was/is not a united front, but rather a struggle waged on many different fronts in different ways with different objectives - sometimes at cross purposes. Also, things which seemed like progress at the time (e.g. school desegregation) are now being reexamined.

The second part examines seven "key themes" including business, music, military service, sports, and literature, plus the answer to a question which has cropped up numerous times on my listservs lately: why and when did we become Negro/black/African American, who prefers which term, and why is self-designation important?

The third part provides a chronology, the fourth A-Z entries with a paragraph or two about key persons and organizations.

The final section (about 70 pages) is a substantial Resource Guide to textbooks, general references, military records, manuscript collections, film, video and recordings, and more. The various bibliographies are annotated, but the listings of Libraries/Museums/Historical Sites, Newspapers/Periodicals/Journals, and Web Sites are not, and that's the only weakness I found here. (Note: I have an extensive annotated listing of libraries/museums/historical sites by state at AfroAmericanHeritage dot com.)

This book belongs on every library shelf - public, academic and high school. For general readers, it provides a clear and compelling introduction to a complex era. For students and instructors, it provides a valuable framework and many tools for further exploration and research. I'm sure it will spark many people to dig deeper and for that, I highly recommend it.

I didn't know a thing about Conrad Richter when I started reading this book. I had read and enjoyed his book, "The Light in the Forest" when I was a kid, and I knew he had lived in New Mexico, my home state, but I had no idea of the interesting life he lived, of the unusual theories that haunted his work, of the hardships he experienced from the Great Depression and from his wife's ill health, of his fear and anxieties over speaking and being in public, or of the great significance of his novels.
This book filled me in.
This is a book that expertly portrays a human life, that makes that life fascinating, and that suggests that maybe all people might be just as intriguing.
Or they might not be: Conrad Richter was a unique individual with a unique story...and "A Writer's Life" tells it wonderfully. The author is evidently a fan of Richter's, but never a sycophant, and obviously knows how to do research, and how to write.
The book is also a wonderful slice of local history for anyone interested in Cedar Crest or Sandia Park in New Mexico, the Sandia Mountains, or Depression-era Albuquerque. It has many historic photos, and has a gripping narrative with Richter's life as its backbone. It kept me up nights reading it, and in the future I plan to be kept awake by Richter's own writings.
If his life was as facinating as this book portrays, I have little doubt that his own work will be as well.