Bücher veröffentlicht von Counterpoint

Margaret Rose is a talented but nervous violinist given to bouts of stage fright and unrequited love; Webster Hale is a biologist who, on principle, refuses to kill animals in order to study them. In Angels Go Naked, a novel told in stories, Cornelia Nixon, a writer whose gift is apparent on every page, follows this vexed love story and the collision course they call their life together.Their connection is never in doubt, though Webster is appalled by the urban underbelly of Chicago, which Margy calls home. He refuses to have children because the earth is overrun with humans, and Margy feels compelled to expiate an early abortion by having a live child. Websters gloomy view of global disaster threatens to triumph in the final story, as their close friend Calvin is dying of AIDS beside a moribund Lake Michigan. Meanwhile, the one child Webster has agreed to conceive appears destined for stillbirth because Margy herself was poisoned as a fetus by misguided medical intervention.At the end of this sad, funny, moving tale, there may be hope, as life and love prove unexpectedly resilient, even in the twenty-first century.

Everyone has a face that they show to the outside world—but our thoughts, fears, and perversions lie just beneath.“Referred pain” describes the sensation of pain, not at the actual point of injury, but somewhere else in the body. This disorientation of the senses is felt, in one way or another, by many of the characters in this collection from Lynne Sharon Schwartz, one of America’s foremost chroniclers of contemporary life.In the title novella, a son of Holocaust survivors circumvents his discomfort over his parents’ history through a Kafkaesque series of dental procedures. In another story, a professor’s sexual attraction to one of his students leads him down a twisted path of misplaced identity. Laced with Schwartz’s satirical, acidly intelligent wit, Referred Pain displays the peak of her ability.

In Unsuspecting Souls, Barry Sanders examines modern societys indifference to the individual. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, when care for human beings began to disappear slowly, and ending with the modern era, when societal events require less person-to-person interaction and introduce radical changes in common attitudes toward death and life, Sanders laments that what makes us most human is slowly dying. Our days are filled with a continuous bombardment of information that demands our attention and brings us out of our world and into a sterile one of inhumanity and abstraction.Weve also lost the original sense of a collective consciousness. This loss has been culminating for two centuries now, dating back to the rise of European powers and worldwide colonization. We pick our poisons among several forms of radical fundamentalisms, each one not only a threat to the other but a threat to humanity itself. From references of Edgar Allan Poe to Abu Ghraib, this is a fascinating and worrisome story, impeccably researched and compellingly written.

"Full of fascinating observations and eminently dependable information--terrific!"--Peter Matthiessen "George Schaller is one of those rather rare human beings--a painstaking and meticulous scientist who has also the spirit of the early naturalist-explorer. He is a brilliant conservationist."--Jane Goodall "[P]olitics and science are only two of Schaller's realms--the other is the transcendent connection between humans and other animals."--Bill McKibben "George Schaller is one of the great explorer-naturalists, and he would so rank in whatever era he lived. It is a pleasure to read this account from his own pen of his many adventures and scientific discoveries."--Edward O. Wilson

In print, FW, the unnamed freelance Food Writer of Nancy Spiller's sardonic debut novel, "Entertaining Disasters, " lives high on the food chain in the heady realm of L.A.'s culinary journalism scene. She waxes poetic about her hip home gatherings, thinly veiling the identities of her Hollywood guest list. But in reality, FW's been inventing the dinner parties she writes about because social paralysis sets in at the very thought of a real guest in her fabulous--or is it shabby?--hillside home. Enter the glossy food magazine editor, new in town, who wants an invitation to one of her bashes, and the panic-stricken journey from fantasy hostess to reality bites is on."Entertaining Disasters"--at turns whimsical and deeply affecting--chronicles the struggle FW faces in the week before she hosts her first real dinner party in ages. At the same time, her estranged sister threatens to drop by, her husband takes off, and her house implodes. In the way of Nora Ephron's "Heartburn, " Spiller's book is filled with the fabulous culinary lore and delicious-sounding recipes that have made FW's writing such popular foodie mania. Now all she has to do is somehow bring this fantasy world into workaday reality.

One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long–lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them. Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1991, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's biographer and an important editor of his papers, has selected the most significant correspondence from this long friendship. The letters themselves paint the biographical and poetic portraits of two of America's most important—and most fascinating—poets. Robert Hass' insightful introduction discusses the lives of these two major poets and their enriching and moving relationship.

Although best known today for his singular, stunning "anti-novels" dazzlingly conjured from anecdotes, quotes, and small thoughts, in his early days David Markson paid the rent by writing punchy, highly dramatic fictions. On the heels of a new double edition of his steamy noirs "Epitaph for a Tramp" and "Epitaph for a Deadbeat" comes a new edition of his 1965 classic "The Ballad of Dingus Magee, " whose subtitle -- "Immortal True Saga of the Most Notorious and Desperate Bad Man of the Olden Days, his Blood-Shedding, his Ruination of Poor Helpless Females, & Cetera" -- gives readers a hint of the raucous sensibility at work here. Brimming with blasphemy, bullets, and bordellos, this hilarious tale, which inspired the Frank Sinatra movie "Dirty Dingus McGee, " shows the early Markson at his outrageous best, taking down, as "Playboy" put it, "the breeches of the Old West and blast[ing] what's exposed with buckshot."

"Ceremonial time" is the moment when past, present and future can be perceived simultaneously. In this, John Mitchell's most magical book, first published in 1984, he traces the life in a single spot in New England from the last ice age, through years of Indians, shamans, and bears to the colonists, witches, and farmers, and now computer hackers. Illustrated.

In 1958, Doris Muscatine's husband, a medieval scholar, got a Fulbright for a year of research in Italy. They lived in Rome and almost immediately became hopeless Italophiles. The Vinegar of Spilamberto is the enchanting story of their experiences. The couple returned often, staying in various apartments—a house in Venice, a medieval tower in Tuscany, and a villa on the Appia Antica with its own catacombs.From such small places as Populonia and Rovescala to bigger ones like Riace and Dozza, the family immersed themselves in the Italy off the typical tourist tracks. Muscatine describes the extreme cultural differences everywhere, but most notable in Sicily, and delights in various foods—including Il Ranocchio, dall'antipasto al dolce (The Frog, from antipasto to dessert)—and the wines that went with them. Chapters are devoted to the Italian appreciation of slow food and of special products such as truffles and balsamic vinegar.

Unlike David Markson's most recent works in experimental writing, Going Down is a more traditional effort, a dark and masterfully plotted narrative of passion and violence set in Mexico in the 1960s. Three Americans, a man and two women, are living together in obvious intimacy. Their habits, strange to the Mexicans, are strangest of all to themselves.When Fern Winters' attention is caught by movement behind a window in a run-down Greenwich Village apartment building, she can't suspect that her encounter with the apartment's occupant will eventually lead her to an abandoned chapel, in a tiny mountain village-clutching the bloody machete with which one of the three has been murdered.Going Down is a rarity among novels-brilliantly and poetically written, faultlessly constructed, centered on fully realized people-completely uninhibited in its depiction of startling eroticism.

In this collection of twenty-three essays, Robert Aitken retraces the origins of American Zen Buddhism and provides readings of influential texts. Reflecting on death, on marriage, and on Zen practice, Aitken always points out the path to pleasure in the everyday "dewdrop" world.

From the late novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald, a collection of essays-almost all of them unknown to her countless American admirers-on books, travel, and her own life and work.. A good book, wrote John Milton, is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. In this generous posthumous collection of her literary essays and reviews, Penelope Fitzgerald celebrates the life beyond life of dozens of master-spirits--their afterlife not only in the pages of their works but in the minds of their readers, critics, and biographers. Here are Fitzgerald's brilliant introductions to the classics-Jane Austen's Emma, George Eliot's Middlemarch, the works of Mrs. Oliphant-as well as considerations of recent novels by Barbara Pym, Carol Shields, Roddy Doyle, and Amy Tan. Here too are reviews of several late-twentieth-century literary biographies, including Richard Holmes's Coleridge, A. N. Wilson's C. S. Lewis, and Martin Stannard's Evelyn Waugh-reviews that together form a memorable criticism both of life and the art of life-writing. And here especially are extended explorations of minor figures, the creators of modest,

In this lyrical and highly visual modern-day fable, a man travels to Antarctica where he finds Isabella, a dinosaur, below a sheet of ice.

"Originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1956."--T.p. verso.

How do young black fathers relate to their children, as well as to their own fathers? How do they see -- and play -- their roles in both family and community? These are some of the big questions this timely, accessible book addresses. Written by both popular commentators and those who have experienced the issues firsthand, "Be a Father to Your Child" begins with a frank discussion of how family formation has changed since the 1960s, especially for communities of color. Individual selections then flesh out historical, sociological, and cultural contexts, examining the impact of welfare, child support, criminal justice, and employment policies on young men of color. In addition to this analytical material, the book presents more personal, anecdotal pieces -- including poems and lyrics, short stories, and interviews -- that form a powerful composite portrait of the challenges facing modern communities of color, and how to overcome them.

Frederick Crews has always considered himself a skeptic. Forty years ago he thought he had found a tradition of thought -- Freudian psychoanalytic theory -- that had skepticism built into it. He gradually realized, however, that true skepticism is an attitude of continual questioning. The more closely Crews examined the logical structure and institutional history of psychoanalysis, the more clearly he realized that Freud's system of thought lacked empirical rigor. Indeed, he came to see Freudian theory as the very model of a modern pseudoscience. Crews has had the mantle of contrarian thrust upon him. "Follies of the Wise contains his best writing of the past fifteen years, including such controversial and widely quoted pieces as "The Unknown Freud" and "The Revenge of the Repressed." These essays effects still reverberate today. In addition, his topics range from "Intelligent Design" creationism to theosophy, from psychological testing to UFO zaniness, from American Buddhism to the current state of literary criticism. A single theme animates his bracing and witty discussions: the temptation to reach for deep wisdom without attending to the little voice that asks, "Could I, by any chance, be deceiving myself here?"

"Anxious Pleasures" takes Franz Kafka's profoundly haunting and sad comic novella, "The Metamorphosis, " and reanimates it through the vantage points of those who surrounded Gregor Samsa during his plight. All the familiar characters are here, including the hysterical mother, stern father, faithless sister, and the pragmatic household cook. But we are also introduced to, among others, the would-be author downstairs who daydreams of the narrative he may someday compose and a young woman in contemporary London reading Kafka's slim book for the first time.Or do they all comprise a few of the disturbing dreams from which Gregor is about to snap awake one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin? In the tradition of Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" and John Gardner's "Grendel, " Olsen's novel not only represents a collaboration with a ghost, but, too, a celebration, augmentation, complication, and devoted unwriting of a momentously influential text.

Provocatively blurring the lines between autobiography, short fiction, and essay, Greg Bottoms presents a series of fifteen honest and beautifully spare tales of class, poverty, violence, and racism set in the margins of the urban and suburban New South.An ode to Pulitzer–nominee Breece D'J Pancake's life and untimely death, the title story deftly interweaves Bottoms's personal history to insightful result. In the transformative "The Metaphor," the narrator proclaims, "when the world looks like every little promise has been lanced and bled out, you need a story to tell yourself." So we move seamlessly between the lives of people both real and imagined and the life of the author, and what emerges is not only a composite of sharply drawn and revealing moments, but also a book–length meditation on the nature of, and necessity for, storytelling itself. Including three new stories — "Sam at the Gun Show," "Strangers and Dreams," and "Heroism #2" — this revised edition announces an understated, arresting new voice in literature.

At thirty-four, piano soloist Max Randal has hit a wall. It's been four years since his last live performance, and his manager is intent on revitalizing his career with a big concert at Carnegie Hall. As if that wouldn't be enough for Max to worry about, as he struggles to prepare, the ghosts of his failed relationships have come to haunt him -- his first ex-wife is dying, his second ex-wife wants to get back together, the mother of his child has taken off for Europe and unexpectedly left him to care for their nine-year-old, and his present girlfriend now wants to get serious. Believe it or not, the plot only gets thicker.Merging dozens of characters and events into a seamless narrative, gifted novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher delivers a compelling tale. Like an exhilarating performance, "The Soloist" takes you on a brilliant adventure that resonates even once it's over.