American literature and art in the 19th - early 20th centuries. American writers

The century before last became an interesting stage in the development of human history. The emergence of new technologies, faith in progress, the spread of enlightenment ideas, the development of new social relations, the emergence of a new bourgeois class, which became dominant in many European countries - all this was reflected in art. The literature of the 19th century reflected all the turning points in the development of society. All shocks and discoveries were reflected on the pages of novels by famous writers. Literature of the 19th century– multifaceted, varied and very interesting.

Literature of the 19th century as an indicator of social consciousness

The century began in the atmosphere of the Great French Revolution, the ideas of which captured all of Europe, America and Russia. Under the influence of these events, the greatest books of the 19th century appeared, a list of which you can find in this section. In Great Britain, with the coming to power of Queen Victoria, a new era of stability began, which was accompanied by national growth, the development of industry and art. Public peace produced the best books of the 19th century, written in every genre. In France, on the contrary, there was a lot of revolutionary unrest, accompanied by a change in the political system and the development of social thought. Of course, this also influenced 19th century books. The literary age ended with an era of decadence, characterized by gloomy and mystical moods and a bohemian lifestyle of representatives of art. Thus, the literature of the 19th century presented works that everyone needs to read.

Books of the 19th century on the KnigoPoisk website

If you are interested in 19th-century literature, the list of the KnigoPoisk website will help you find interesting novels. The rating is based on reviews from visitors to our resource. “Books of the 19th century” is a list that will not leave anyone indifferent.

1. “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy

A novel about the tragic love of a married lady Anna Karenina and a brilliant officer Vronsky against the backdrop of the happy family life of nobles Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. A large-scale picture of the morals and life of the noble environment of St. Petersburg and Moscow in the second half of the 19th century, combining the philosophical reflections of the author’s alter ego Levin with advanced psychological sketches in Russian literature, as well as scenes from the life of peasants.

2. “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert

The main character of the novel is Emma Bovary, a doctor's wife who lives beyond her means and starts extramarital affairs in the hope of getting rid of the emptiness and ordinariness of provincial life. Although the plot of the novel is quite simple and even banal, the true value of the novel lies in the details and forms of presentation of the plot. Flaubert as a writer was known for his desire to bring each work to perfection, always trying to find the right words.

3. “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy

An epic novel by Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, describing Russian society during the era of the wars against Napoleon in 1805-1812.

4. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn, who escaped from his cruel father, and the runaway black man Jim raft on the Mississippi River. After some time, they are joined by the rogues Duke and King, who eventually sell Jim into slavery. Huck and Tom Sawyer, who has joined him, organize the release of the prisoner. Nevertheless, Huck frees Jim from captivity in earnest, and Tom does it simply out of interest - he knows that Jim’s mistress has already given him freedom.

5. Stories by A.P. Chekhov

Over 25 years of creativity, Chekhov created about 900 different works (short humorous stories, serious stories, plays), many of which became classics of world literature. Particular attention was paid to “The Steppe”, “A Boring Story”, “Duel”, “Ward No. 6”, “The Story of an Unknown Man”, “Men” (1897), “The Man in a Case” (1898), “In the Ravine” , “Children”, “Drama on the Hunt”; from the plays: “Ivanov”, “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters”, “The Cherry Orchard”.

6. "Middlemarch" George Eliot

Middlemarch is the name of the provincial town in and around which the novel takes place. Many characters inhabit its pages, and their destinies are intertwined by the will of the author: these are the bigot and pedant Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke, the talented doctor and scientist Lydgate and the bourgeois Rosamond Vincey, the bigot and hypocrite banker Bulstrode, Pastor Farebrother, the talented but poor Will Ladislav and many, a lot others. Unsuccessful marriages and happy marital unions, dubious enrichment and fuss over inheritance, political ambitions and ambitious intrigues. Middlemarch is a town where many human vices and virtues are manifested.

7. "Moby Dick" Herman Melville

Moby Dick by Herman Melville is considered the greatest American novel of the 19th century. At the center of this unique work, written contrary to the laws of the genre, is the pursuit of the White Whale. A fascinating plot, epic sea scenes, descriptions of bright human characters in harmonious combination with the most universal philosophical generalizations make this book a true masterpiece of world literature.

8. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“The novel “Great Expectations” - one of Dickens’s last works, the pearl of his work - tells the life story of young Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip in childhood. Pip's dreams of a career, love and prosperity in the “world of gentlemen” are shattered in an instant, as soon as he learns the terrible secret of his unknown patron, who is being pursued by the police. Money, stained with blood and marked with the seal of crime, as Pip is convinced, cannot bring happiness. And what is it, this happiness? And where will his dreams and great hopes lead the hero?

9. “Crime and Punishment” Fyodor Dostoevsky

The plot revolves around the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, in whose head a theory of the crime is ripening. Raskolnikov himself is very poor; he cannot pay not only for his studies at the university, but also for his own accommodation. His mother and sister are also poor; he soon learns that his sister (Dunya Raskolnikova) is ready to marry a man she does not love for money to help her family. This was the last straw, and Raskolnikov commits the deliberate murder of the old pawnbroker and the forced murder of her sister, a witness. But Raskolnikov cannot use the stolen goods, he hides them. From this time on, the terrible life of a criminal begins.

The daughter of a wealthy landowner and a big dreamer, Emma tries to diversify her leisure time by organizing someone else's personal life. Confident that she will never get married, she acts as a matchmaker for her friends and acquaintances, but life gives her surprise after surprise.

Joseph Brodsky - “Democracy!”

Everyone knows Brodsky the poet, many know Brodsky the prose writer, but, for example, Brodsky is the playwright. "Democracy!" - a one-act play written at the turn of the 80s and 90s, on the eve of the demise of the Soviet Union. The action takes place in a fictional country, where the Minister of Internal Affairs is called Petrovich, the Minister of Finance is Gustav Adolfovich, and the Minister of Culture is Cecilia. The full text of the play was published only in the early 2000s.

Vladimir Nabokov – “Look at the Harlequins”

This novel is less famous than “Lolita” or “The Gift,” and yet it is the last that Nabokov managed to complete during his lifetime. The “memoirs” of the famous writer Vadim Vadimovich N. are called a parody of autobiography. The novel in seven parts describes his life in Russia, France, Italy and the USA, a series of loves and marriages, a trip to the USSR with a fake passport and his last love for his own daughter, who was the same age. The text contains many parallels with the real biography of Nabokov, and the chapters about the visit to the USSR are written based on the memories of his sister.

Charles Baudelaire – “The Poem of Hashish”

Few people know, but Baudelaire also wrote prose. Mainly about drugs (there is also his essay “Opiomaniac,” for example). In the “Poem” he describes in detail the process of obtaining hashish oil and the various effects of its use. Typically, the author does not advertise his own experience in this matter. As a result, he comes to the unexpected conclusion that cannabis is a universal evil and much more dangerous than opium. But what can we take from Baudelaire, even if doctors at the beginning of the last century treated cocaine addiction with heroin?

Boris Vian – “Dogs, Desire, Death”

This brilliant example of sadistic prose is famous mainly because, after a high-profile trial, the author was sentenced to prison for it. A short story from the perspective of a taxi driver sentenced to the electric chair. And no mimimi for you, as in “Foam of Days”. The story was adapted into the film “Mona” directed by Jean-François Perfetti.

Oscar Wilde – “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

A poem that Wilde wrote after serving a two-year sentence in said prison on charges of immorality. The author’s signature at the end is his camera number – C.3.3. It was based on the stories of real prisoners, and the last quatrain of the poem was used as an epitaph on the writer’s grave. The irony here is also that the name of the prison is consonant with the word reading.

Jerome David Salinger – “The Birthday Boy”

A six-page unpublished story, the typescript of which is housed in the University of Texas Library. Despite the fact that it was never officially published, copies of the illegally printed book appeared on the Internet, from which enthusiasts later completed a Russian translation. The hero of the story is 22-year-old Ray, who suffers from alcoholism. It is assumed that this story was not intended for prying eyes at all. Critics note that it stands apart from Salinger's works because "there is not a hint of enlightenment or redemption in the text."

Ivan Bunin – “Loopy Ears and Other Stories”

In addition to the famous “Dark Alleys,” Bunin has a lesser-known collection of stories, published posthumously in New York. The hero of the main one is “an unusually tall man” Adam Sokolovich, who explains to drunken sailors in a tavern that “geeks have ears in the shape of a loop, the loop with which they are crushed.” The heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the story makes it completely different from typical Bunin stories about unhappy love and broken destinies, where tragedy is still touched by romance.

8. AMERICAN PROSE POST-1945 REALISM AND EXPERIMENTATION

In the period after the Second World War, literary prose shuns generalizations: it is distinguished by its extreme diversity and versatility. It was reinvigorated by international literary movements such as European existentialism and Latin American magical realism, and the rapid development of electronic communications forced it to reckon with the phenomenon of a village the size of the Earth. Spoken language on television has revived the oral tradition. American prose began to be increasingly influenced by oral genres, the media, and popular culture.

In the past, elite culture influenced popular culture by its status and example; At present, the opposite appears to be the case. Serious writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Joyce Carol Oates, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Alice Walker, and E. L. Doctorow borrowed heavily from comic books, movies, fashion, songs, and oral histories of the past, which they drew upon in one way or another in their work.

By this I do not mean to say that American literature of the last fifty years has been mired in petty topics. In the United States, writers raise serious questions, many of which are metaphysical in nature. The work of prose writers exhibits highly innovative approaches and self-absorption, or “reflexivity.” Often modern authors find traditional methods of literary prose ineffective and want to enliven it with materials that are much more popular. In other words: American writers of recent decades have developed a postmodern sensibility. They are no longer content with the modernist re-interpretation of this or that point of view. In its place must be a renewal of the entire context of vision.

THE LEGACY OF REALISM AND THE END OF THE FORTY YEARS

In the artistic prose of the second half of the 20th century, the tendency that developed in its first half to reflect the characteristic features of each decade is preserved. At the end of the forties, the consequences of the Second World War were still felt, but the Cold War had already begun.

The Second World War provided excellent material for literary creativity. The two prose writers who used it best were Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead, 1948) and James Jones (From Here to Eternity, 1951). Both of them wrote in a realistic manner bordering on severe naturalism; both tried not to sugarcoat the war. The same can be said about Irwin Shaw, who wrote the novel The Young Lions (1948). Herman Wouk also showed in his Caine Mutiny (1951) that human weaknesses are no less evident in war than in peacetime. Later, Joseph Haller satirically depicted war, presenting it to the reader in an absurd manner (Catch-22, 1961). He expresses the idea that war is full of madness. With the help of sophisticated literary techniques, Thomas Pynchon perfectly realized his idea, parodying and debunking various versions of reality ("Gravity's Rainbow", 1973), and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., after the publication of his novel "Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade" (1969) became one of the most prominent representatives of the counterculture in the early 70s. This anti-war work describes the Allied incendiary bombing of the German city of Dresden during World War II. The author himself, who was then in a German prisoner of war camp, was an eyewitness to this bombing.

The forties saw the emergence of a remarkable new breed of writers, including the poet, novelist, and essayist Robert Penn Warren, the playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and the short story writers Katherine Anne Porter and Eudora Welty. All of them, except Miller, were natives of the South, all devoted their work to the study of the fate of an individual in a family or society, and all focused on the balance between the development of the human personality and its responsibility to a certain group of people.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)

Robert Penn Warren, one of the Southerners who centered around Fugitive magazine, enjoyed literary success throughout much of the 20th century. Throughout his life he showed interest in the formation of democratic values ​​in the process of historical development. His most famous work, which has stood the test of time, is the novel All the King's Men (1946). It uses the thinly veiled career of a southern state senator - the colorful and sinister Huey Long - to show the dark sides of the American dream.

Arthur Miller (b. 1915)

New York-born playwright, novelist, essayist and biographer Arthur Miller reached the pinnacle of personal success in 1949 with Death of a Salesman, an examination of a man's search for his place in life and how he comes to realize the futility of his attempts. The play takes place in the Loman family, in which the father does not get along with his son, and the wife does not get along with her husband. The play, like a mirror, reflects the literary trends of the forties - a rich combination of realistic techniques with an admixture of naturalism, careful depiction of the characters, completeness of images and a strong emphasis on the value of the individual, despite all his mistakes and failures. "Death of a Salesman" is a moving paean to the common man who, in the words of Willy Loman's widow, "needs to be noticed." At the same time, this smart and sad play is the story of a failed dream. As one of the characters in the play ironically remarks: “A traveling salesman can’t help but dream, my boy. It’s part of his job.”

Death of a Salesman, which played such a prominent role in Miller's work, is just one of a number of dramatic works he wrote over several decades, including the drama All My Sons (1947) and the folk chronicle The Ordeal (1953). G.). Both of the above plays are political in nature. One of them takes place in the present day, and the other during the period of colonization. In the first, the main character is an industrialist who, during the Second World War, deliberately supplied aircraft manufacturing companies with a batch of defective parts, which led to the death of his son and other people. "The Ordeal" depicts the trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in the 19th century, in which Puritan settlers were unjustly executed for allegedly engaging in witchcraft. Although a “witch hunt” in which innocent people become victims is completely unacceptable in a democratic society, the mood of this play was consonant with the time of its production on the stage - the period of the early fifties, when the crusade of the American senator Joseph McCarthy and a number of other anti-communist activists destroyed the lives of innocent people.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

A native of Mississippi, Tennessee, Williams was one of the most complex personalities in American literature of the mid-20th century. His work is mainly devoted to the confusion of feelings and the suppression of sexuality in the family, most often the family of southerners. Williams' works are characterized by the magic of endless repetition, the poetic manner of expressing feelings and thoughts, the unusual setting in which the action unfolds, and the Freudian exploration of sexual desire. As one of the first American writers to openly admit his homosexual orientation, Williams explained that the emphasized sexuality of his restless characters was an expression of their loneliness. The characters in this playwright's plays live an intense spiritual life and experience severe mental anguish.

Williams wrote more than 20 multi-act plays, many of which are autobiographical. He reached the pinnacle of his creativity relatively early - in the forties - in such dramatic works as The Glass Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). None of his works written over the next twenty years for more than a year, did not have the success and creative richness of the two above-mentioned plays.

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

The long life and career of Katherine Anne Porter spans several eras. Her first success was brought to her by the short story “The Judas Tree in Bloom” (1929), which takes place in Mexico during the revolution. The beautifully written stories for which Porter became famous provide a nuanced portrait of a person's personal life. So, for example, in the story “How Grandma Weatherall was Deceived,” the author very accurately conveys the most diverse manifestations of the human psyche. Porter often reveals the inner world of women and shows their dependence on men.

Porter learned a lot about nuance and nuance from New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Collections of Katherine Anne Porter's short stories include the following: The Judas Tree in Bloom (1930), Afternoon Wine (1937), Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), The Leaning Tower (1944) and Collected Stories (1965). In the early sixties, she wrote a long allegorical novel on one of the eternal themes - the responsibility of people to each other. The novel, which Porter gave the title Ship of Fools (1962), takes place in the late thirties on board a passenger ship carrying members of the German upper classes and German refugees.

Although not a particularly prolific writer, Porter nonetheless influenced a generation of writers, including her Southern colleagues Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor.

Eudora Welty (b. 1909)

Born into a family of northerners who moved to the South, Eudora Welty was influenced in her work by Warren and Porter. By the way, the latter wrote the preface to Welty's first collection of short stories. In "The Green Curtain" (1941), rich in nuances and shades, the writer imitated Porter, but the young author was more interested in the comic and grotesque. Like the late Flannery O'Connor, she often portrays strange, eccentric or exceptional characters.

Despite the presence of violence in Welty’s works, the writer’s wit is humane, life-affirming, as, for example, is clear from her often included in anthologies of American literature short story “Why I Work at the Post Office,” in which a stubborn and independent daughter leaves home and moves away to a tiny post office. The following collections of Welty's short stories were published: "The Wide Web" (1943), "Golden Apples" (1949), "The Bride of Innisfallen" (1955) and "Moon Lake" (1980). Welty also wrote novels such as Engagement in the Delta (1946), which is about a family living on a plantation in modern times, and The Optimist's Daughter (1972).

THE FIFties: ABUNDANCE LEADS TO ALIENATION FROM SOCIETY

The fifties saw the impact of modernization and technological development on everyday life. This process began in the twenties, but was interrupted by the Great Depression, and continued when the Second World War brought the United States out of it. In the fifties, the time of long-awaited material well-being arrived for most Americans. Corporate jobs seemed to provide a good life (usually for suburbanites) with the real and symbolic trappings of success—a house, a car, a television, and appliances—that came with it.

However, the predominant theme in the literature became the loneliness of the upper classes of society; the faceless company official in Sloan Wilson's wildly popular novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) came to personify a certain cultural stratum. Sociologist David Riesman, in his book The Lonely Crowd (1950), attempted to explain such a typical phenomenon of American life as the alienation of Americans from society. This book was followed by other popular works of more or less research character - from The Hidden Means of Persuasion (1957) and Vance Packard's Quest for Position to The Man Working for the Organization (1956). ) by William White and the higher intellectual works White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956) by C. Wright Mills. Economist and university professor John Kenneth Galbraith contributed to the study of this topic with The Welfare Society (1958). Most of these works advanced the idea that all Americans lead the same way of life. The studies were general in nature, criticizing US citizens for losing the individualism of the first settlers and excessive conformity (for example, Riesman and Mills) or advising Americans to become representatives of a “new class” formed as a result of technological progress and an abundance of free time (as Galbraith did in his writings). ).

Essentially, the fifties were a decade of subtle, pervasive stress. The novels of John O'Hara, John Cheever and John Updike show that stress is hidden under the guise of prosperity. The heroes of some of the best works are people who fail in the pursuit of success. We find similar heroes in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman and Saul's novella Bellow's "Seize the Day" (1956). Some writers went further and began to describe those who consciously placed themselves outside of society. This line of creativity was chosen by J.D. Salinger in "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951), Ralph Ellison in The Invisible Man (1952) and Jack Kerouac in On the Road (1957).As the decade wore on, Philip Roth emerged with a series of stories that reflected his alienation from his Jewish heritage ("Goodbye") , Columbus", 1959). The writer's psychological reflections fed his work until the nineties, providing food first for fictional prose and then autobiography.

The fiction of Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, among other Jewish American writers prominent in the fifties and beyond, represents a vibrant and worthy contribution to American literary history. The works of the three above-mentioned authors are primarily characterized by humor, increased attention to issues of ethics and morality, and descriptions of Jewish communities of the Old and New Worlds.

John O'Hara (1905-1970)

Having gone through a large journalistic school, John O'Hara is a very prolific writer. He has written numerous plays, stories and novels. He is a master of depicting individual carefully written and expressive details. O'Hara is best known for his realistic novels, written mainly in the fifties , about people who are outwardly successful, but in their souls they feel a sense of guilt or dissatisfaction, which makes them vulnerable. Such novels include Rendezvous in Samarra (1934), 10 North Frederick (1955), and A View from the Terrace (1958).

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

The works of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison reflect the African-American experience of the fifties. The heroes of their works suffer not from excessive ambition, but from a lack of individuality. Baldwin, the eldest of nine children born into a Harlem family, was the adopted son of a minister. In his younger years, he himself preached sermons in church from time to time. This experience contributed to the formation of such qualities of the writer’s prose as brightness and “orality”, most clearly manifested in his wonderful essays, such as “Letter from the Land of My Thoughts” from the collection “Tomorrow is a Fire” (1963). In this moving piece of nonfiction, Baldwin rails against the separation of races.

Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell Me from the Mountains (1953), which is autobiographical in nature, is perhaps the most popular. It is about a 14-year-old boy trying to discover himself and find religious faith while independently dealing with the painful questions of converting to Christianity in the church that occupies the premises located on the ground floor of the store. Baldwin's other significant works include In Another Country (1962), a novel exploring racial identity and homosexuality, and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), a collection of impassioned essays on racism and the purpose of the artist and literature.

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994)

Ralph Ellison was born in the Midwest, Oklahoma. He studied at Tuskegee Institute in the southern United States. Ellison's writing career is one of the strangest in American literature - he has only one novel to his credit that was a success with the reader and received high praise from critics. It is called "The Invisible Man" (1952) and is the story of a black American who voluntarily chose a dark dungeon as his habitat, illuminated by electricity stolen from a utility company. The book tells about the hero's fantastic experience, leading him to disappointment in life. When a black college awards the novel's hero a scholarship, he is humiliated by whites; Once he gets to college, he becomes convinced that the black president of this school does not care about the concerns of black Americans. Life is immoral even outside of college. Even religion brings no consolation: the preacher turns out to be a criminal. The novel indicts society for failing to provide its citizens - both white and black - with practical ideals and institutions capable of putting them into practice. This work shows the full depth of the racial problem, since the “invisible man” became such not on his own, but due to the fact that other people, blinded by prejudice, are unable to discern a human being in him.

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

Lupus took the life of Georgia native Flannery O'Connor early. However, this fatal disease did not make the writer sentimental, as evidenced by her humorous, but at the same time harsh and uncompromising stories. Unlike Porter, Welty and Hurston, O'Connor As a rule, he does not identify himself with his heroes, but looks at them from the outside, showing their inferiority and stupidity. The superstition and religious fanaticism of the uneducated southerners who populate her novels often lead to violence, as illustrated in O'Connor's novel Wise Blood (1952), which tells the story of a religious fanatic who founded his own church.

Sometimes the violence is motivated by prejudice, as in Displaced Person, where ignorant villagers kill an immigrant who has thwarted them through his hard work and unusual behavior. Often cruelty simply overtakes the characters, as in the story "Good Little People", in which a man seduces a girl only to steal her prosthetic leg.

O'Connor's dark humor connects her with the works of Nathaniel West and Joseph Haller. The writer's works include two collections of short stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) and "All Things Are Connected" (1965); the novel "The Kingdom" the heavenly is taken by force" (1960) and a collection of letters "Way of Life" (1979). In 1971, "The Complete Stories" of Flannery O'Connor was published.

Saul Bellow (b. 1915)

Russian-Jewish writer Saul Bellow was born in Canada and raised in Chicago. In college he studied anthropology and sociology, which still greatly influences his work today. Bellow himself claimed that he owed a lot to Theodore Dreiser, who significantly expanded his understanding of life and helped him spiritually perceive this accumulated experience. In 1976, the highly respected Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The writer's early, somewhat gritty existentialist novels include The Man Dangling in the Air (1944), a Kafkaesque exploration of the condition of a man awaiting conscription, and The Sacrifice (1947), which explores the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. In the fifties, Bellow's works became more humorous: in some cases, the writer resorted to energetic and exciting first-person narration. Bellow used this technique in The Adventures of Augie March (1953), where he created a Huck Finn-like character of an urban entrepreneur who becomes an underground trader in Europe, and in Henderson, the Rain King (1959), a wonderful, full-of-life tragicomic a novel about a middle-aged millionaire whose unfulfilled dreams lead him to Africa. Bellow's later works include Herzog (1964), about the troubled life of a neurotic English professor who explores the idea of ​​romanticizing the self; the novels Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift (1975), and the autobiographical novel Dean's December (1982).

Bellow's novella Seize the Day (1956) is a brilliant piece of literature that is often included in high school and college curricula as an example of mastery and brevity. The main character of the novel is the failed businessman Tommy Wilhelm, who is trying to pretend that everything is fine with him in order to thus hide his failure. The novella begins with irony: “When it was necessary to hide his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm knew how to do it no worse than anyone else. At least, he thought so...” Paradoxically, it was precisely such a waste of energy that contributed to his collapse. Tommy is so absorbed in the consciousness of his own inadequacy that the latter really takes on catastrophic proportions for him - he fails with women, work, cars and, finally, in the commodity market, where he loses all his money. Wilhelm is an example of what in Jewish folklore is called a shimel - a person to whom misfortunes always happen. The short story "Seize the Day" summarizes a trait common to many Americans - the fear of being a failure.

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)

Bernard Malamud was born in New York into a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In his second novel, “The Helper” (1957), he found themes characteristic of his work as a whole - the desire of man to survive at any cost and the moral and ethical principles of Jewish immigrants who had recently arrived in America.

Malamud's first published work was The Nugget (1952), which intertwines reality with fantasy in the mystical world of professional baseball. Among the writer's other novels are "New Life" (1961), "The Craftsman" (1966), "Fidelman's Pictures" (1969) and "Tenants" (1971). In addition, Malamud is a master of the small literary genre, having written many stories. In a number of them, presented in the collections “The Magic Barrel” (1958), “Idiots First” (1963) and “Rembrandt’s Hat” (1973), he managed better than other American-born writers to convey the past and present the life of Jews, giving it real and surreal features and combining fact with fiction.

Malamud's monumental work, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer and National Book Awards, is the novel "The Craftsman." The action in it takes place at the beginning of the 20th century. in Russia and represents only a thinly veiled allusion to the real event - the “Beilis case”, the fabricated accusation in 1913 of the Jew Mendel Beilis of the ritual murder of a Russian boy and the shameful trial that followed, one of the most vile anti-Semitic trials in modern history. In “The Master,” as in many of his other works, Malamud emphasizes the suffering of his hero Jacob Bok, who, in spite of everything, tries to withstand all the trials that befall him.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)

Nobel Prize winner, novelist and master of the short story Isaac Bashevis Singer - a native of Poland who emigrated to the United States in 1935 - was the son of the famous head of the rabbinical court in Warsaw. Throughout his life, Singer wrote in Yiddish, which is a mixture of German and Hebrew and has been the common language of European Jews for the past several centuries. Singer portrayed in his works two specific groups of Jewish residents of shtetls (villages) of the Old World and 20th-century emigrants who crossed the ocean before and after the Second World War in search of a better life. Singer's works cover the entire period of the Holocaust - the extermination of a significant part of European Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices. On the one hand, in such novels as "The Estate" (1967) and "The Estate" (1969), which take place in Russia in the 19th century, and in the story "The Moscat Family" (1950), about one from the families of Polish Jews between the world wars, Singer depicts the now defunct world of European Jews. On the other hand, this is complemented by the writer’s works related to post-war events, such as the novel “Enemies: A Love Story” (1972), dedicated to Jews who went through the Holocaust and are rebuilding their lives.

Vladimir Nabokov (1889-1977)

Like Singer, Vladimir Nabokov emigrated from Eastern Europe. He was born in Tsarist Russia into a wealthy family; moved to the United States in 1940 and received American citizenship five years later. From 1948 to 1959 he taught literature at Cornell University, located in upstate New York; in 1960 the writer moved permanently to Switzerland. Nabokov became famous for his novels, including the autobiographical work "Pnin" (1957) about an unadapted Russian emigrant professor, and "Lolita" (American edition 1958) about an educated middle-aged European who falls madly in love with an ignorant 12-year-old American girl. Another of Nabokov's successful novels, Pale Fire (1962), styled as a literary study, focuses on a long poem by an imaginary dead poet and the commentary on it by a critic whose writings suppress the poem and suddenly take on a life of their own.

Subtle stylistics, skillful satire and daring innovation in the field of form place Nabokov among the significant masters of words. His work, in particular, influenced the writer John Barth. Nabokov was aware of his role as an intermediary between Russian and American literature; he wrote a book about Gogol and translated the novel in verse by Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” into English. Nabokov's choice of bold, slightly expressionist themes, such as the strange love in Lolita, contributed to the penetration of expressionist movements that originated in 20th century Europe into the predominantly realistic tradition of American fiction. In addition, the satirical and nostalgic tone of the writer gave a new, tragicomic emotional coloring to his work. Later, other writers began to use this technique, for example, Pynchon, who combined contrasting tones of defiant wit and fear.

John Cheever (1912-1982)

John Cheever has often been called a "novelist." He is known for his elegant, thought-provoking stories that critically examine the New York business world and its impact on businessmen and their wives, children and friends. In the elegantly written stories in the Chekhovian spirit, presented in the collections "How Some People Live" (1943), "The Burglar of Shady Hill" (1958), "Some People, Places and Things That Won't Be in My Life" the next novel", (1961), "The Foreman and the Widow of the Golf Club" (1964) and "Apple World" (1973), one feels an underlying ironic, melancholic, but never fully satisfied and, judging by everything, a hopeless desire for passion or metaphysical certainty. The titles of Cheever's books reflect his lightheartedness, fun and irreverence, and also hint at the content of the writer's works. Cheever also published a number of novels - The Wapshot Scandal (1964), Bullet Park (1969) and Falconer (1977). The latter is largely autobiographical in nature.

John Updike (b. 1932)

Like John Updike's Cheever, with his interest in the lives of those who inhabit the wealthy suburbs, with his purely American themes, discussions of the boredom and melancholy of existence, with his thoughtfulness and especially with his constant descriptions of the same places located on the eastern coast of the ocean, in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, is also considered a writer of everyday life. Updike is best known for his four Rabbit books, which tell the story of the life of a man named Harry "Rabbit" Engstrom and his rise and fall over four decades of U.S. history against the backdrop of the socio-political development of American society. The novel “Rabbit, Run” (1960) reflected the mood of the fifties, in which Engstrom appears to the reader as a dissatisfied young head of the family who has no goals for himself. In The Healed Rabbit (1971), which focuses heavily on the counterculture of the sixties, Engstrom still has no purpose in life and does not know how to shake off the shackles of everyday life. In the third Engstrom novel, Rabbit Got Rich (1981), Harry receives an inheritance and becomes a wealthy man. The author depicts it against the backdrop of the events of the seventies, when the era of the Vietnam War was gradually fading away and an atmosphere of selfishness inherent in the wealthy strata of society reigned. In the last book in the series, "Rabbit at Rest" (1990), Engstrom comes to terms with life and the idea of ​​the inevitability of death. The general picture of the eighties serves as a kind of “artistic decoration” in the novel.

Updike also wrote the novels The Centaur (1963), The Married Couples (1968), and Beck: The Book (1970). Of all modern writers, he is the best stylist, and the stories of this master clearly show the wide possibilities and innovation of his style. The following collections of Updike's stories were published: "The Same Door" (1959), "Music School" (1966), "Museums and Women" (1972), "Too Far to Walk" (1979) and "Problems" (1979). In addition, Updike published several collections of his poetry and essays.

J.D. Salinger (b. 1919)

In his works, the harbinger of the phenomena of the sixties, J.D. Salinger, spoke about the attempts of individuals to place themselves outside of society. A native of New York, he achieved enormous success with his novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951), in which he portrayed the sensitive sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who runs away from an elite boarding school in order to quickly join the adult world, but becomes disillusioned with it. materialism, falsehood and spiritual emptiness.

When asked what he would like to be, Caulfield replies “catcher in the rye,” inaccurately quoting one of Burns’ poems. Holden considers himself a modern white knight, the sole guardian of innocence. In his imagination, he sees a field in which the rye grows so tall that the children playing on it cannot even see where they are running. Caulfield himself turns out to be the only adult among them. "I'm standing on the edge of a crazy cliff. My task is to catch everyone who steps into the abyss." Stepping into the abyss is identified with the loss of childhood and innocence (especially in the sexual sense) - a theme that was constantly touched upon in that era. Other editions of this prolific reclusive writer include Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and the New Yorker collection of short stories, Higher the Rafters, Carpenters. (1963). Since one of Salinger's stories, living in New Hampshire, was published in 1965, the writer has no longer appeared on the horizon of American literature.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Born into an impoverished French-Canadian family, Jack Kerouac also questioned middle-class values. As a final-year student at Columbia University in New York, he met the “broken” members of the literary underground. The writer’s fiction was greatly influenced by the work of the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who worked in the South, whose works are partly autobiographical in nature.

Kerouac's most famous novel, On the Road (1957), depicts the Beatniks roaming America in search of an impossible dream of community and beauty. Vagabonds in Search of Dharma (1958) also features wandering counterculture intellectuals and their fascination with Zen Buddhism. In addition to his novels, Kerouac wrote a book of poetry, Mexico City Blues (1959), and a memoir of his life with such beatniks as the experimental writer William Burroughs and the poet Allen Ginsberg.

THE STORMY BUT PRODUCTIVE SIXties

The alienation and stress that characterized the United States in the fifties found visible expression in the sixties in the civil rights movement, feminism, protests against war, the active struggle of national minorities for their rights and the emergence of a counterculture, the consequences of which are still felt in American society. Noteworthy social works of this era include the speeches of civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., feminist leader Betty Frieden's first book (The Mysterious Female Soul, 1963), and Norman Mailer's journalism, Armies of the Night (1968). g.) about one of the anti-war marches of 1967.

In the sixties, the line between fiction and documentary prose, between novel and reportage, was blurred - a process that continues to this day. Novelist Truman Capote, the "enfant terrible" of the late forties and throughout the fifties, who dazzled readers with the brilliance of his works such as Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), amazed the reading public with his non-fiction novel In Cold Blood (1966). A fascinating analysis of a brutal mass murder in the heartland of America that reads like a detective story. At the same time, the so-called “new journalism” appeared - entire volumes of documentary literature that combined journalistic techniques with the technique of fiction or often played with facts, reworking them in order to make the narrative more dramatic and spontaneity. Tom Wolfe's collection "Drug Test with an Electrified Cool Drink" (1968) celebrated the grimaces of novelist Ken Kesey's "counterculture" trip with a rock band, and the same author's book of essays, "Radical Chic and Cutting a Shoe on the Move" ( 1970) ridiculed many aspects of the mass political activity of the left. Wolfe later wrote the eloquent, life-affirming and intelligent history of the first phase of the US space program, "The Class Guys" (1979), and the novel "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987), which paints a broad picture of American society in the 1980s.

In the sixties, literature kept pace with the rapid development of the era. An ironic, humorous view of its events appeared, which was reflected in the fantastic approach to American reality on the part of some writers. Examples of this approach are found in Kesey's darkly humorous novel Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), which describes life in a mental hospital where the patients are much more normal than the medical staff, and in Richard Brautigan's novel Trout Fishing in America ( 1967). The use of a comic and fantastic approach led to the emergence of a new comic-metaphysical literary genre in the wonderful phantasmagorical novels of Thomas Pynchon "V" (1963) and "The Forty-Ninth Lot Cries Out" (1966), in John Barth's novel "Young Goat Giles" " (1966) and in the grotesque stories of Donald Barthelme, the first collection of which, Return, Doctor Caligari, was published in 1964.

In another literary genre - drama - Edward Albee created a number of unconventional psychological works - "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1962), "A Delicate Balance" (1966) and "Seascape" (1975) - reflecting the struggle taking place in the soul of the author himself, and his paradoxical approach to drama.

At the same time, this decade saw the emergence of the talent of one of the authors who had already crossed the forty-year mark - Walker Percy, a doctor by profession, who is the ideal embodiment of a southern aristocrat. In a number of his novels, Percy used his native land as a stage on which unique psychological plays were played out. His novels The Movie Lover (1961) and The Last Gentleman (1966) received especially high recognition.

Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)

Mysterious and shy of self-promotion and fame, Thomas Pynchon was born in New York and educated at Cornell University, where he was influenced by Vladimir Nabokov. There is no doubt that Pynchon's innovative fantasies used themes of solving puzzles, explaining games, and deciphering codes, which may well have originated in Nabokov's work. Pynchon has a wide range of emotional nuances that can turn paranoia into poetry.

All of this writer's fiction has the same structure. The plot of his novels, as a rule, does not concern at least one of the heroes, whose task is precisely to bring a certain order out of the chaos surrounding him and thus “decipher” the world. The implementation of such a plan, which is the essence of the work of a traditional artist, is transferred to the reader, who has to connect to this process and monitor the discovery of clues and comprehension of meanings. This paranoid vision extends to entire continents and spans time itself, as Pynchon resorts to the metaphor of entropy, that is, the gradual disappearance of the Universe. What is striking in his works is his masterful use of popular culture - especially science fiction and the detective genre.

Pynchon's novel "V" is loosely built around two characters - the loser Benny Profane, constantly embarking on aimless journeys and getting involved in dubious enterprises, and his antipode - the educated Herbert Stencil, looking for the mystical spy V (the words that define this character in English begin with this letter). mysterious woman - Venus, virgin, dummy). The short novel "Lot Forty-Nine Screams" describes a secret system related to the United States Postal Service. Gravity's Rainbow (1973) is set in London during the Second World War, when rockets are falling on the city, and revolves around a symbolic and farcical quest for Nazis and other shapeshifters trying to hide their true colors. The presence of violence, comedy and a penchant for innovation in the works of this writer inevitably connects him with the period of the sixties.

John Bart (b. 1930)

Maryland native John Barth was always less interested in the content of a story than in the nature of the story. However, if Pynchon tried to confuse the reader by leading him aside and asking him riddles, as is done in detective novels, Barthes lures the readership into a kind of funhouse, a kind of kingdom of distorting mirrors that exaggerate certain features of a person’s external and internal appearance and downplay other. Realism is alien to Barthes, who wrote "Lost in the Fun" (1968), a collection of 14 stories that constantly touch on the theme of the very process of writing and reading. Barthes strives to convince the reader of the artificiality of reading and writing and to prevent him from being so carried away by the story that he considers what is happening in it to be reality. Determined to dispel the illusion of realism, Barthes resorts to a whole range of reflective techniques to remind the reader that he is just busy reading.

Like the early works of Saul Bellow, Barthes's first novels are quest-based and marked by an existentialist worldview. They contain the theme of escape and aimless wandering, which was constantly raised in the fifties. In the novel "The Floating Opera" (1956), the hero intends to commit suicide. "End of the Journey" (1958) deals with a complicated love story. In Barthes's works of the sixties there is more humor and less realism. The Datura Merchant (1960) parodies the style of 18th-century picaresque novels, while Giles the Goat Boy (1966) is a parody of the world seen as a university. The book Chimera (1972) retells fairy tales from Greek mythology; in the epistolary novel Letters (1979), Bart appears as one of the characters, just as Norman Mailer does in his journalistic book Armies of the Night ". In the novel On Holiday (1982), Barthes resorts to the popular theme of espionage in fiction; This story is about a female university professor and her husband, a former secret agent turned writer.

Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

Everyone agrees that Norman Mailer is the most prominent representative of American literature of recent decades, capable of writing on a variety of topics and changing his literary style. This writer is reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway in his desire to acquire a wide range of experiences, his energetic style of writing and the contradictory nature of his personality. Mailer's ideas are bold and innovative. He is the complete opposite of writers like Barthes, for whom the topic is not so important, but the main thing is how it is presented. Unlike Pynchon, who prefers to remain in the shadows, Mailer constantly tries to be in the spotlight. A novelist, essayist, sometimes politician, a man who defends the rights of writers and from time to time acts as an actor, he is always in the public eye. From "New Journalism" exercises including "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" (1968), an analysis of the major party conventions of the 1968 presidential campaign, to a fascinating exploration of the history of the death penalty for a convicted murderer." The Executioner's Song (1979) Mailer went on to write such ambitious and monumental novels as Old Evenings (1983), set in ancient Egypt, and The Hooker's Shadow (1992), about the CIA. .

NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES

By the mid-seventies, an era of consolidation began. The conflict in Vietnam ended, and soon the United States recognized the People's Republic of China, and then came the celebration of America's 200th anniversary. A little more time passed, and the eighties came into their own - the so-called “era of selfishness,” when people began to care more about their personal needs and pay less attention to serious social problems.

In the field of literature, old trends have been preserved, but pure experimentation has greatly lost ground. New novelists emerged, such as John Gardner, John Irving (The World According to Garp, 1978), Paul Theroux (The Mosquito Coast, 1982), William Kennedy (The Iron Weeds, 1983) and Alice Walker (“The Color Scarlet”, 1982). They wrote novels with a beautiful style, telling the reader exciting stories about human destinies. Their careful attention to setting, character, and theme indicated that the work of these writers marked a return to realism. Realism, abandoned by experimental writers in the sixties, began to regain ground, often interspersed with bold, original elements. Examples of such innovation include such audacity as the construction of a literary work as a novel within a novel by John Gardner in his Autumn Light (1976), and the introduction of African-American dialect into the novel, which appears in Alice Walker's book Color scarlet". The flourishing of literature of national minorities began. The drama moved away from realism, acquired a more cinematic character and became much more dynamic. At the same time, however, the "decade of selfishness" produced new, assertive talent, including Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City, 1984), Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, 1985), Tama Janowitz ("Slaves of New York", 1986).

John Gardner (1933-1982)

Coming from a farming family living in New York State, John Gardner remained the most significant exponent of moral and ethical values ​​in American literature until the end of his days (he crashed on a motorcycle). He taught English and was a literary historian of the medieval period. Gardner's most popular novel is Grendel (1971), a stylized adaptation of the Old English epic Beowulf from the existentialist point of view of the monster. In this short, bright and often comical novel, the author very subtly opposes existentialism, which instills despair and cynicism in the main exponent of this philosophy.

A prolific and popular novelist, Gardner adopted a realistic approach to his work, but also used a variety of innovations such as breaking the sequence of action through flashbacks, narration within a narrative, retelling of myths and contrasting stories in order to reveal the truth in relationships between people. . The strengths of this writer’s work are the art of creating characters (he is especially good at portraying ordinary people full of sympathy) and the colorfulness of his style. Gardner's major works include: Resurrection (1966), Dialogues with the Sunny (1972), Nickel Mountain (1973), Autumn Light (1976) and Mickelson's Ghosts " (1982).

In his writings, Gardner preaches the beneficial power of fellowship and encourages the fulfillment of duty and family responsibilities. In this respect he is a deeply traditional and conservative author. Gardner tried to show that certain values ​​and actions lead to a full life. In his book “On the Moral Significance of Literature” (1978), he called for writing novels that affirm moral and ethical values, rather than blinding the reader with empty technical innovation. The book in question created a sensation mainly because Gardner openly criticized prominent contemporary authors in it for the lack of moral and ethical principles in their works.

Toni Morrison (b. 1931)

African-American writer Toni Morrison was born in Ohio into a religious family, studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and worked as a senior editor at one of the major Washington publishing houses, and also taught at a number of educational institutions in the country and in this enjoyed a certain reputation.

Morrison's rich and colorful prose has brought her international recognition. In her gripping, energetic novels, the writer takes a comprehensive look at the complex spiritual world of black Americans. In her early work, The Bluest Eye (1970), a strong-willed black girl tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, who manages to survive despite her cruel and abusive father. Pecola believes that her black eyes have somehow miraculously turned blue and that now she will be desired and loved. Morrison said that with this novel she tried to find her “I” and establish herself as a writer: “I was Pecola, and Claudia, and all the other heroes of my book.”

The novel "Sula" (1973) is dedicated to the friendship of two women. Morrison rejects stereotypes and portrays African-American women as unique, one-of-a-kind individuals. The writer's novel "Song of Solomon" was awarded several awards. This story describes a black man, Milkman Pomer, and his complex ties to his family and community. In the novel Tar Man (1981), Morrison depicts the relationships between white and black Americans. "The Darling" (1987) is a harrowing tale of a woman who kills her children to free them from a life of slavery. This novel uses the fantastical element inherent in magical realism, which allows the author to create the mysterious image of the Darling, who returns to live with her mother, who cut her throat.

Morrison argued that her novels, while being complete works of art, at the same time carry a political charge: “I’m not interested in delving into my own imagination ... yes, the work should be political.” In 1933, Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Alice Walker (b. 1944)

African-American writer Alice Walker was born in one of the agricultural regions of Georgia in the family of a sharecropper; She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, where her teachers included political activist and poet Muriel Rueckiser. Walker's work was also influenced by writers Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston.

Walker, a self-described "women's" writer, has been involved with the feminist movement for many years, representing black women within it. Like Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Cade Bambara, and other acclaimed black novelists, Walker embraces an emphatic lyrical realism to better convey the dreams and failures of a gullible and trustworthy people. Her works highlight the struggle for human dignity. Possessing the skill of a subtle stylist, especially clearly manifested in the epistolary novel “The Color Scarlet,” Walker strives for enlightenment in his work. In this way, she is reminiscent of the American novelist Ishmael Reed, whose satirical works draw attention to social and racial problems.

Walker's novel The Color Scarlet is a story about the love of two black sisters that continues unabated despite years of separation. This love story is interspersed with how, during the same period, a shy, ugly and uneducated sister discovers her inner strength thanks to the support of her friend. The theme of women supporting each other brings to mind Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), which celebrates the spiritual bond between mother and daughter, and the writings of white feminist Adrienne Rich. In the novel The Color Scarlet, men are portrayed as beings who are generally ignorant of the needs and conditions of women.

In the late eighties and early nineties, works by representatives of national minorities took a strong position in American literature. This applies to both drama and fiction. August Wilson, who continues to write a series of plays about the lives of black Americans in the 20th century (including the plays "Barriers", 1986 and "Music Lessons", 1989), stands on a par with such writers as Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman and Toni Morrison.

Asian Americans are also beginning to occupy a worthy place in American literature. Maxine Hong Kingston (The Woman Warrior, 1976) paved the way for her Asian colleagues, including Amy Tan, whose brilliant novels (The Joy Luck Club, 1989, and The Kitchen God's Wife, 1991) .) about Chinese life transferred to American conditions in the post-World War II period aroused great interest among readers. California-born son of Chinese immigrants, David Henry Hwang's plays F.O.B. (1981) and M. Butterfly (1986) left its mark on drama.

A relatively new group of Spanish-American writers has emerged on the American literary horizon, including Pulitzer Prize winners Oscar Hijuelos, the Cuban-born novelist and author of The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love (1989); the writer Sandra Cisneros with her collection of short stories, Women Who Scream at the top of their lungs, and Other Stories (1991); and Rudolph Anaya, who published Bless Me, Ultima (1972), which sold 300 copies 000 copies, mostly in the western US.

NEW REGIONALISM

There is nothing new in the regional tradition of American literature. It is as old as Indian legends, as unforgettable as the works of James Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte, and as widely known as the novels of William Faulkner and the plays of Tennessee Williams. However, for some time in the post-World War II era, this tradition seems to have faded into obscurity, unless urban fiction is considered a form of regionalism, which may well be true. However, the past decade or so has seen the triumphant return of regionalism to American literature, allowing readers to gain a sense of time and place and the presence of specific people. Regionalism dominates popular fiction, such as the detective genre, no less than classical novels, stories, short stories and drama.

This phenomenon is explained by several reasons. First, during the last generation, all art forms in America were decentralized. It seems that theatre, music and dance arts in cities located in the south, southwest and northwest of the United States are no less thriving than in the country's largest cities, such as New York and Chicago. Film companies produce films throughout the United States. Film groups travel to thousands of different places in the country. A similar situation is observed in the literature. Small fiction publishers are thriving outside of New York's "publishing row." Never before have writing workshops and conferences been so fashionable. Literature courses on college campuses are similarly popular across the country. It's no surprise that young talent can emerge anywhere. All you need is a pencil, paper and a point of view.

The most encouraging aspects of the new regionalism are its scope and diversity. He is winning more and more new supporters, spreading from east to west. In the field of literature, his path across the continent begins in the northeast, in Albany, New York, where the interests of his own son William Kennedy, who once worked as a journalist, concentrated, the same Kennedy whose novels written in Albany, including " Iron Weeds (1983) and Very Ancient Bones (1992), elegiacally and often poignantly captured the lives of the inhabitants of the streets and taverns of the capital of the state of New York.

Prolific novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist Joyce Carol Oates was also born in the northeastern United States. In her haunting works, obsessed characters make desperate attempts to find themselves in a grotesque environment, but this invariably leads them to self-destruction. Among the most striking works of the writer are stories collected in the collections “Wheel of Love” (1970) and “Where are you going, where have you been?” (1974). The hugely popular master of horror novels, Stephen King, usually chooses the state of Maine, located in the same region, as the setting for his works that keep the reader in constant suspense.

Further south, on the coast, near Baltimore, Maryland, Anne Tyler talks in laconic and measured language about the unusual lives of her amazing heroes. Novels such as Homesick Lunch (1982), The Accidental Traveler (1985), Breathless Lessons (1988) and Saint Maybe (1991) ), helped her gain a high reputation in literary circles and achieve popularity among the mass reader.

A short distance from Baltimore is the US capital Washington, which also has its own literary tradition. It may not be very visible since this city is mostly about politics. One of the novelists who vividly described the life of those. who stands at the helm of power is Ward Just, a former journalist specializing in international politics who changed his profession and became a writer to depict the world that no one knows better than him - the world of journalists, politicians, diplomats and soldiers. Just's novels "Nicholson at Large" (1975), which is a study of the journalist's activities during the presidency of John Kennedy and after his death, that is, in the early sixties; "In City of Fear" (1982), which recreates political activity in Washington during the Vietnam War, and "Jack Gans" (1989), a sober assessment of a Chicago politician and his path to the US Senate, are just a few from his impressive works. Susan Richards Shreve's 1979 novel Children of Power examines the personal lives of the children of government officials, and popular Maryland-based novelist Tom Clancy uses the military-political landscape of Washington as the launching pad for a series of epic literary works. keeping readers in constant suspense.

In the region south of Washington, Reynolds Price and Gil McCorkle attracted attention. In the 1970s, one critic described Price, who had been Tyler's mentor, as being in the position of "a full-time writer living in and writing about the South" that was becoming a thing of the past. This writer first attracted attention with his novel A Long, Happy Life (1962). It describes eastern North Carolina and its people, and in particular a young woman named Rosecoak Mastian. In subsequent years, Price continued to write about his fictional heroine and then moved on to other topics, but then again made one of the women the heroine of his highly acclaimed 1986 Kate Vaden, the writer's only novel written in the first person. Price's latest novel, Calhoun Blue (1992), tells the story of a passionate but hopeless love spanning decades of marriage.

Born in 1958 and therefore part of a new generation, McCorkle dedicates her novels and short stories - set in small towns in North Carolina - to the study of adolescent psychology (Cheer Captain, 1984), intergenerational connections (Going to Virginia", 1987) and some specific problems of the worldview of modern women of the South ("Strict Diet", 1992).

This region is also home to Pat Conroy, who wrote life-affirming autobiographical novels about his South Carolina upbringing and his abusive and tyrannical father (The Great Santini, 1976; The Prince of Tides, 1986). ). These pieces perfectly capture the natural beauty of the South Carolina lowlands. Born in Mississippi and living for many years in Memphis, Tennessee, Shelby Foote is a longtime chronicler of the South whose historical writing and fiction have taken him to television, where he has contributed to a series of programs covering the American Civil War.

There are a lot of talented writers in central America. That includes Jane Smiley, who teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. Smiley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1991 book A Thousand Acres, a setting of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear on a Midwestern farm where a family feud begins when an aging farmer decides to divide up his land. between three daughters.

Texas chronicler Larry McMurtry depicts his home state in a variety of historical periods and settings, from the defunct 19th-century West (Lonesome Dove, 1985; Anything for Billy, 1988) to the vanishing small towns of the post-war era ("The Last Session", 1966).

Cormac McCarthy, who explored the desert in the southwestern United States and reflected what he saw in his novels Blood Meridian (1985), Horses, Horses (1992) and The Crossing (1994), is a writer an imaginative hermit who is only just beginning to get his due. Regarded as a worthy heir to the Southern Gothic tradition, McCarthy is equally fascinated by the rugged terrain and the wildness and unpredictability of human nature.

Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko's novel "Ceremony" (1977), set against the backdrop of the amazing landscape of the author's home state of New Mexico, won a wide readership. Like N. Scott Mo-made's 1969 book The Path to Rainy Mountain, it is a "song-novel" modeled on Indian healing rituals. Silko's 1991 novel Almanac of the Dead provides a panorama of the southwestern United States, from the migration of tribes to today's drug dealers and corrupt developers profiting from the misuse of land. Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, describes the same region in his works - the southwestern part of the United States. The heroes of his detective stories are two modest, hard-working police officers - Navajo Indians.

North of this region, in Montana, the poet James Welsh in his short, almost flawless novels Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim Lowney (1979), Ful's Crow (1986) .) and "The Indian Lawyer" (1990) details how Indians try to find themselves in the difficult conditions of life on a reservation, where they suffer from poverty and alcoholism. Thomas McGuane also lives in Montana, who wrote the novels “Ninety-Two in the Shadows” (1973) and “No Change” (1989), clearly aimed at a male readership and reflecting the dream of getting rid of restlessness, finding refuge and establishing connections with society. In neighboring North Dakota, Louise Erdrich, with Chippewa blood in her veins, wrote a number of impressive works. In her 1984 novel Love Potion, she skillfully combines stoicism with adversity and humor in depicting the complex lives of dysfunctional Indian families on reservations.

At one time, two writers exemplified the literature of the Far West. One of them was the late Wallace Stegner, who was born in the Midwest in 1909 and died in an automobile accident in 1993. Stegner spent almost his entire life in a variety of small communities in the West and acquired a regional worldview long before it entered the mainstream. fashion. His first major work, The Big Candy Mountain (1943), chronicles the wanderings of a family chasing the American dream in the West as the frontier disappears. This book covers the American territory, stretching from Minnesota to Washington state, and, in Stegner's words, contains a description of "that indescribably beautiful region that forced the whole country to move westward." His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Time to Think (1971), a portrait of the illustrator and writer's spirit in the Old West, is also imbued with the spirit of the region. In fact, Stegner's strengths as a writer lie in his ability to verbalize and describe a character, as well as to convey the harshness of life in the western part of the country.

Joan Didion, who is equal parts journalist and writer, has significantly expanded her creative horizons in recent years, with a collection of her journalism, Stumbling to Bethlehem (1968) and a deep and powerful novel about the meaningless life in Hollywood, Play It Like It. (1970) made us look at modern California in a new way.

The Pacific Northwest, which in the early nineties was one of the richest artistic areas in the overall cultural background of the United States, gave this country, among other cultural and artistic figures, the remarkable master of the short story Raymond Carver. He died tragically at the age of 50 shortly after making a name for himself in American literature. Reflecting in his work the worldview of the inhabitants of this region, in his collections of stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1974) and “Where I’m Calling You From” (1986), he depicted his characters against a picturesque background of mostly still virgin the nature of these places.

One of the greatest achievements of the regional theater movement - non-profit, state-funded or sponsored theater troupes that have become centers of modern culture in many cities throughout the country - is that since the early sixties it has managed to educate a galaxy of young playwrights who have become one one of the brightest imagists on the theater stage. It is no longer possible to imagine American theater and American literature without the brilliant, fragmented society and turbulent relationships of the characters present in the dramatic works of Sam Shepard (Buried Child, 1979 and A Trick of the Mind, 1985); without the amoral characters of Chicago playwright David Mamet's plays and their highly shocking, crisp, clipped dialogue (American Buffalo, 1976 and Glengarry Glenn Ross, 1982); without the intrusion of traditional values ​​into the lives and concerns of Midwesterners, reflected in the dramas of Lanford Wilson ("The 5th of July", 1978 and "Tolly's Folly", 1979) and without the inherent eccentricities of the Southerners in the plays of Beth Hanley ( "Criminal Thoughts", 1979).

American literature has traveled a long and winding path from the pre-colonial period to the present day. Socio-historical development and technological progress have had a significant impact on it. However, it invariably contains one component - people with all their advantages and disadvantages, traditions and aspirations for the future.

American Tragedy (Abridged Retelling)

"An American Tragedy" is the most famous novel by the classic of American literature Theodore Dreiser. The book tells the story of the tragic fate of the talented young man Clyde Griffiths. Between sincere love and big money, he chooses the latter, passionately wanting to fulfill his cherished “American” dream - at any cost to make his way from a low social stratum to the elite of society.

And on the way to achieving this goal, Clyde stops at nothing - he goes to kill the girl he loves.

Little men

The private school for boys does not have strict rules of conduct. However, this is where real men grow up. Wise and loving mentors instill in their students honesty, courage, hard work and self-confidence. The story was written by the world famous American writer Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888).

Essays

Washington Irving (1783–1859), called the “Father of American Literature,” was the first great master of mystical storytelling in American history. This book contains one of the central stories from his first book, “History of New York” (1809) - “The Remarkable Deeds of Peter Hardhead”, the writer’s most famous short story “Rip Van Winkle” (1819), as well as the novel “The Life of the Prophet Muhammad” ( 1850), which has remained for many years one of the best biographies of the founder of Islam written by Christians.

Irving’s work successfully embodied a combination of fantastic and realistic principles, soft transitions from the magical world to the world of everyday life. Many of his works, decorated with majestic descriptions of nature and unusual characteristics of the heroes, rethink already known ancient and medieval plots, introducing novelty and mystery into them.

Maksimka

This is a story about the touching friendship of a sailor on the military steam clipper “Zabiyaka” - Ivan Luchkin and a black boy from the American ship “Betsy”, whom the sailors picked up in the open ocean and named Maksimka Zabiyakin. Read by: Alexander Kotov ©℗ IP Vorobiev ©℗ Publishing House SOYUZ.

The most terrible troops

An American instructor at the Marine Corps training center explains to recruits: “The Russians have such an airborne assault force.” One of their airborne paratroopers can handle three of you without weapons. But that is not all. The Russians also have a naval landing force. These are complete scumbags.

One of their marines will kill five of you, without weapons, like babies. But this is not the worst thing. They have such a construction battalion. These are such animals that they are generally afraid to give them weapons.

An inconspicuous bachelor

A young British gentleman decides to invest money in the production of a play, the success of which should surpass even the masterpieces of Hollywood... A rake and womanizer suddenly finds himself at the center of a sensational story of kidnapping and robbery... Tormented by a grumpy wife, an American tycoon tries to flee to England - but he is drawn into a whirlpool of intrigue and blackmail ... Any other writer would have turned such stories into dramas, detective stories and even thrillers.

Wisdom of the Heart (collection)

The most prominent representative of the experimental trend in American prose of the 20th century, a daring innovator whose best works were banned for a long time in his homeland, Henry Miller became famous not only for his confessional-autobiographical novels, but also for his memoirs and journalistic essays, in which he continues to talk about many of his friends and acquaintances, without whom it is impossible to imagine contemporary art and literature.

We present to your attention one of the collections of his stories and essays, “Wisdom of the Heart,” translated into Russian for the first time. The book also includes the polemical story “The World of Sex,” presented in a new edition, in which Miller proves that the contradiction between his “scandalous” and “philosophical” works is only apparent...

Little Princess. The Adventures of Sarah Crewe

The heroine of the story by the famous American writer Frances Burnett was orphaned early, she was excommunicated from home and generally deprived of human love. But despite everything, Sarah Crewe easily endures the rough treatment of children in the boarding house. The girl believes that the “princess,” as she is mockingly called, “should be polite.”

This “princess” forgives offenders a lot. Because she is courageous, endowed with a pure and generous heart, and besides, she dreams of her crystal slipper. Is her dream destined to come true? Read this wonderful book and then you will find out for yourself.

The Great Gatsby

“The Great Gatsby” is the most famous novel by Francis Fitzgerald, which became a symbol of the “Jazz Age”. America, 1925, the time of Prohibition and gang wars, bright lights and vibrant life. But for Jay Gatsby, the embodiment of the American dream turned into a real tragedy.

And the path to the top, despite fame and wealth, led to total collapse. After all, each of us primarily strives not for material wealth, but for love, true and eternal...

Moonlight

For the first time in Russian - the latest novel by the recognized master of modern American prose, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of such international bestsellers as “The Incredible Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”, “The Union of Jewish Policemen”, “Pittsburgh Mysteries”, “Wunderkinds”, etc.

This is a novel about truth and lies, about great love, about family legends and about a great existential adventure. Chabon's hero pursues Wernher von Braun in the last days of World War II and hunts in Florida for a giant python that ate the cat of a retired neighbor, mines a bridge near Washington, builds models of rockets and a lunar city and hides from his wife, known to television viewers as the Night Witch Nevermore, old tarot deck...

One Million Pound Bank Note

We present to your attention an audio recording of the book by the classic of world literature, American writer Mark Twain (1835-1910) “A Bank Note for One Million Pounds Sterling” performed by People's Artist of the Russian Federation Valery Garkalin. The young American Henry Adams, as a result of an unfortunate combination of circumstances, found himself on the other side of the Atlantic penniless.

Wandering around London, he caught the eye of two eccentric brothers who had recently made a very unusual bet, and after feeding him, they gave him an envelope with money. The only problem was that what was in the envelope was not money in the usual sense, and it was impossible to exchange or buy anything with this bank note.

Moon Valley

The novel by the famous American writer J. London (1876–1916) “Valley of the Moon” is the story of a young worker defeated by the “iron heel” of the industrial octopus city and finding peace and joy in a life close to nature on a California ranch.

Tropic of Capricorn

Henry Miller is the most prominent representative of the experimental trend in American prose of the 20th century, a daring innovator whose best works were banned for a long time in his homeland, a master of the confessional-autobiographical genre. The trilogy composed of the novels “Tropic of Cancer”, “Black Spring” and “Tropic of Capricorn” brought him scandalous fame: it was these books that reached the general reader for decades, overcoming court injunctions and censorship slingshots.

“Tropic of Capricorn” is a story of love and hate, the story of an incorrigible romantic, always balancing between animal instinct and a powerful spiritual principle, it is a reflection of the philosophical quest of the writer, who, in his own words, was a “philosopher from the cradle”...

Stories, humoresques. Volume 1

The first volume of the complete works of the great Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov includes his early humorous stories and humoresques, published under the pseudonym Antosha Chekhonte. Contents In the carriage Meeting of spring (discussion) The sinner from Toledo Additional questions for personal statistical census cards proposed by Antosha Chekhonte Wives of artists Life in questions and exclamations You chase two hares, you won’t catch either For the apples Forgot!!! Problems of a mad mathematician Green braid (to a drawing by the artist Chekhov) And this and that - letters and telegrams And that and that - poetry and prose Confession, or Olya, Zhenya, Zoya (letter) Alarm clock calendar for 1882.

March-April Vacation work of schoolgirl Nadenka N Comic advertisements and announcements (Reported by Antosha Chekhonte) Announcement office of Antosha Ch. My anniversary At the wolf cage Dad Before the wedding Peter's Day Letter to a learned neighbor In American style Salon de variety shows Temperaments Court A thousand and one passions What is most common found in novels, stories, etc.

Humor stories. Humorous stories

The collection includes humorous stories by famous English and American writers Robert Charles BENCHLEY, James Grover THURBER, Alexander Humphreys WOOLCOTT, Stephen Butler LEACOCK. The text of the stories was read in English and Russian.

The audiobook will be of interest to anyone who knows the basics of English and is improving their skills in it. 1. Robert Charles Benchley – Kiddie-Kar Travel 2. James Grover Thurber – The Spreading “You Know” 3. Alexander Humphreys Woollcott – Capsule Criticism 4.

Stephen Butler Leacock – Mrs Newrich Buys Antiques 5. Robert Charles Benchley – Travel is not like a child 6. James Grover Thurber – That ubiquitous “you know” 7. Alexander Humphreys Woolcott – Mini review 8. Stephen Butler Leacock – Mrs Nouveau Riche Buys Antiques .

Adventures of the Little Lord

'The Adventures of the Little Lord' is a wonderful work by one of the greatest American children's writers, Frances Eliza Burnet. We can repeat many times about the significance of the works of this famous writer, who, in her own words, tried with all the strength of her soul to “make the world happier,” but let’s just say that Burnet’s works were republished many dozens of times, repeatedly filmed, and exhibited in the Central Park of New York statues of characters from her children's books.

Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)

Ernest Hemingway's debut novel Fiesta was first published in 1926 in the USA. And who knows, if Hemingway had not written his “Fiesta,” perhaps the feast of Saint Fermin, taking place from July 6 to 14 in Pamplona, ​​would not have become such a popular event as it is today.

Paris 20s of the last century. American journalist Jake Barnes spends every night with friends in a bar on the Boulevard Montparnasse, hoping that alcohol will help him heal the mental and physical wounds inflicted by the First World War. This continues until he gets to a fiesta in Pamplona, ​​Spain... Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner`s Sons Copyright renewed © 1954 by Ernest Hemingway © Translation by V.

Topper (heirs) ©&℗ IP Vorobyov V. A. ©&℗ ID SOYUZ Publication producer: Vladimir Vorobyov.

Stringer. Russians forever. Action-packed prose

The owner of a car repair shop in San Francisco, Oleg Kupriyanov, worked in the criminal investigation department in his previous, pre-American life. With the light hand of stringer journalist Denis Grebsky, helping him in his investigations, Kupriyanov received a private detective's license... The kidnapped American husband of a young Russian woman, kidnappers who suddenly spoke Russian, missing 3 million dollars and accusations of their theft.

This is what Oleg has to face when he takes on his first big case as a detective.

All new fairy tales (collection)

These are not the good Christmas stories that are so good to read to children at night. These are scary stories about the darkness that stands behind the threshold and waits for you to take one wrong step, about strange and creepy creatures that wander outside the window and sometimes peer into your soul.

Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio have collected the best stories in the genre of horror and suspense, written by recognized masters of American prose (Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Moorcock, Walter Mosley, Michael Swanwick...). Before you is a collection of smart, subtle, exquisitely intelligent, exciting and truly scary stories: the door through which the Abyss peers into a person.

Binding

A young British gentleman decides to invest money in the production of a play, the success of which should surpass even the masterpieces of Hollywood... A rake and womanizer suddenly finds himself at the center of a sensational story of kidnapping and robbery... Tormented by a grumpy wife, an American tycoon tries to flee to England - but he is drawn into a whirlpool of intrigue and blackmail ... Any other writer would have turned such stories into dramas, detective stories and even thrillers.

But if Pelham G. Woodhouse gets down to business, then we are talking about sparkling, unparalleled humor!

Responsible task

On instructions from the US leadership and the President personally, in the context of the outbreak of the global economic crisis, the famous American journalist Diana Rose goes to Russia with the goal of finding out what Russian indifference is. In the Russian outback, events of incredible intensity happen to her; in a remote province, she meets very extraordinary people.

The main events unfold in the village of Bolshaya Lobotryasovka, famous for its desperate indifference...

Jim from Piccadilly

The magnificent Jimmy Crocker, a young American heir obsessed with the desire to turn into a British aristocrat, is forced to admit that in the elegant Piccadilly, unlike his native Broadway, nothing but trouble awaits him...

Gene Webster Children's prose Absent

Jean Webster (Alice Jane Chandler) is an American writer and great-niece of Mark Twain. She lived only forty years and died during childbirth. Her stories in letters brought her worldwide fame. The play based on these works was staged on Broadway and the film versions created over the years were a resounding success.

In the first film adaptation, the role of the heroine was played by the famous silent film actress Mary Pickford. "Daddy Long Legs" is a very famous work by Jean Webster. Who is he, Daddy Long Legs? The young college girl saw him only once, from behind.

He got her into college on the condition that she would write letters to him without expecting an answer. And he disappeared from her life... Trying to unravel the mystery of Daddy Long Legs, in reality, a teenage girl discovers the world and her own soul. This touching work, full of humor, leaves a feeling of freshness and warmth.

Webster's easy and accessible language makes the book attractive even to those who are just beginning to learn English.

Women in love

David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was an English novelist, poet, and essayist, whose work evoked polar opinions among readers, critics, and the public. His novels "Lady Chatterley's Lover", "Sons and Lovers", "Rainbow" and "Women in Love" were included in the list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

They were read and at the same time condemned as obscene. The novel "Women in Love" was published in 1920 in a limited edition. The story of two passionate sisters Gudrun and Ursula and their beloved men Gerald and Rupert, disillusioned with life and love for women, caused a flurry of indignation among the conservative part of English society.

In 1922, a high-profile censorship process took place. Subsequently, the novel was filmed by the famous American director Ken Russell. The lead actress, Glenda Jackson, was awarded an Oscar in 1970. The novel was first published in Russian in 2006 by the Institute of Soitology together with the ABC-Classics publishing house.

Martin Eden

The famous novel by the outstanding American writer Jack London (1876-1916) “Martin Eden”. In many ways, autobiographical, which is one of the most widely read works of the writer, the novel tells about the life of a man from the very bottom who became a famous writer.

Having achieved a lot in life, Martin Eden decides to die...

Stories of the fairyland of Mo and its magical king

We bring to the attention of young readers a book translated into Russian for the first time by the greatest American storyteller, Lyman Frank Baum, better known to us as the author of The Wizard of Oz. The book about the incredible country of Mo was written a year before The Wizard and did not receive as much popularity.

It is known mainly in English-speaking countries. This happened because the book turned out to be too difficult to translate - it is all filled with puns, its characters are too phantasmagorical and too unreal to take them seriously.

Martin Eden

The twenty-first volume of The Complete Works of the outstanding American writer Jack London (1876-1916) includes the novel Martin Eden. In many ways, the autobiographical novel, which is one of the most widely read works of the writer, tells about the life of a man from the very bottom who became a talented and even famous writer.

Having achieved a lot in life, Martin Eden decides to die... Martin struggled in the darkness, without light, without approval, already beginning to experience despair. Even Gertrude began to look askance at him; at first she, like a good sister, encouraged it; which seemed to her childish nonsense; but then she, again like a good sister, began to worry.

It began to seem to her that childish stupidity was already turning into madness. Martin, noticing her anxious glances, suffered from them even more than from Mr. Higginbotham's rude and outright ridicule. He continued to believe in himself, but he was alone in his faith.

Books in my life (collection)

Henry Miller is the most prominent representative of the experimental trend in American prose of the 20th century, a daring innovator whose best works were banned for a long time in his homeland, a master of the confessional-autobiographical novel. All of his books represent a kind of polemic, a conversation on equal terms with those whom he considered his teachers, and nowhere is this felt more clearly than in the works included in this collection - “Books in My Life” and “The Time of Assassins: Sketch about Rimbaud."

“This book... aims to complete the story of my life,” Miller writes in the preface. – Books are considered here as life experiences... When seeking knowledge or wisdom, it is always better to go straight to the source. The source is not a scientist or philosopher, not a master, saint or teacher, but life itself - the direct experience of life.”

And even today the novel has not lost its relevance: oligarchs, terrorists, secret agents... They say that sooner or later the truth always comes out. I kind of doubt it. Nineteen years have passed now, and despite all our efforts, we have not been able to discover who threw the bomb.

Without a doubt, this was some protege of the Iron Heel, but he somehow surprisingly managed to evade the searches of our secret agents. They never picked up his trail. And now, when so much time has passed, there is nothing left to do but classify this incident as one of the unsolved mysteries of history.

Henry Miller Counterculture Rose of the Crucifixion

Henry Miller is the most prominent representative of the experimental trend in American prose of the 20th century, a daring innovator whose best works were banned for a long time in his homeland, a master of the confessional-autobiographical genre. The "Paris Trilogy" - "Tropic of Cancer", "Black Spring", "Tropic of Capricorn" - brought him scandalous fame; These books reached the general reader for decades, overcoming court injunctions and censorship slingshots.

Miller's next largest work was the trilogy “The Crucifixion of the Rose,” which began with the novel “Sexus,” continued with “Plexus,” and ended with “Nexus.” Yes, before these books shocked, but now, when the scandal has long subsided, what remains is the power of words, the power of genuine feeling, the power of insight, the power of enormous talent.

In the novel, which became Miller's last major work, the modern classic explores his favorite themes with new fervor: friends and people as living books, Dostoevsky, Hamsun, Rimbaud, painting, criticism of consumer society, the contrast between the USA and Europe, love and art on the eve of leaving for Paris... Contains obscene language.

Life on borrowed time

The novel was first published in 1959 in the illustrated edition “Crystal” as a “novel with a continuation.” In 1961, after revisions and editing by the author, a longer version of the novel was published in an American translation, but under the title “Heaven has no favorites.”

The German version of the novel, Der Himmel kennt keine Gunstlinge, was a great success among readers in Germany, but received negative criticism. Remarque was accused of sentimentality and lack of style. And yet, despite all the complaints and comments, the same critics could not help but note that “the novel is exciting and impossible to tear yourself away from.”

Early 50s. Race car driver Klerfe comes to visit his old friend at the Montana sanatorium. There he meets a terminally ill girl, Lillian. Tired of the strict rules of the sanatorium, of routine and monotony, she decides to run away with Clarfe to where there is another life, a life that speaks the language of books, paintings and music, a life that beckons and arouses anxiety.

Both fugitives, despite all their differences, have one thing in common - a lack of confidence in the future. Clairefe lives from race to race, and Lilian knows that her disease is progressing and she has very little time left to live. Their romance is developing very rapidly, they love each other on the verge of doom, as only people can love, whose every step is accompanied by the shadow of death... The publication was carried out within the framework of an agreement with the Late Paulette Remarque Foundation c/o Morbooks Literary Agency and Synopsis Literary Agency © E.

Edgar Allan Poe Classic prose Missing No data

Edgar Alan Poe is a legend of American literature. It seems that all its genres and directions grew out of his work. It is his dark, mysterious figure that runs through all the masterpieces born in the New World. His own works are full of darkness and mysticism. Mysterious dead people, mysterious animals, the Sphinx, King Pestilence and the Devil himself - these are his favorite heroes.

But no, no, let his kind, sly smile peek through all this devilry. Such is the mysterious creator of the “Golden Bug”! The Golden Beetle King Plague A Few Words with the Mummy The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade The Stolen Letter Four Beasts in One.

Best american stories

The best stories of American writers Mark Twain, Jack London and O. Henry are heard in English, performed by native speakers. For ease of perception, the disc contains the texts of the stories: you can not only listen to the text, but also read it. Each story is accompanied by listening exercises that will help the listener check how well he perceives the text.

Texts and exercises are adapted for Intermediate level. Mark Twain. The ?1,000,000 Bank-Note Mark Twain. The Million Pound Bank Note A humorous account of the adventures of a poor young man with a million pounds in his pocket.

Jack London. Brown Wolf Jack London. Brown Wolf The story of a dog who came from the vast expanses of Alaska to a rich house in California. O.Henry. While the Auto Waits O. Henry. While the car is waiting A story about love, illusions and desires, written in typical O.

Henry in a romantic-ironic manner.

Freeze like a hummingbird (compilation)

The most prominent representative of the experimental trend in American prose of the 20th century, a daring innovator, whose best works were banned for a long time in his homeland, Henry Miller became famous not only for his confessional-autobiographical novels, but also for his memoirs and journalistic essays, in which he continues to talk about many of his friends and acquaintances, without whom it is impossible to imagine contemporary art and literature.

We present to your attention one of the collections of his documentary stories and artistic essays, “Freeze Like a Hummingbird,” translated into Russian for the first time. The book also includes two stories presented in a new edition: “A Smile at the Foot of a Rope Ladder,” written by order of the famous artist Fernand Léger and intended to accompany a collection of his works on the theme of the circus, and “Insomnia, or the Devil on the Loose,” a love story of an already elderly man. Miller to his last wife, a Japanese film actress and jazz singer.

Iron steam

Pavel Krusanov is a prose writer, a native St. Petersburger, in his youth he played rock and roll, in adulthood he became one of the leaders of the “St. Petersburg fundamentalists”, the author of the books “Angel Bite”, “American Hole”, “Bom-Bom”, “Dead Language” , "King of the Head". Finalist of the National Bestseller Award.

The heroes of the new novel “Iron Steam” are twin brothers. One is a restorer of ancient books, obsessed with the idea of ​​​​breeding a new, sinless human breed. In order to interest the powers that be in his project, he needs to bind his treatise using miraculous material, the natural elements of which can only be obtained in Tajikistan, in the burning mines of the Yagnob Valley.

His brother will help him bring these ideas to life: he assembles an expedition and sets off on a journey that will change their destinies, and, perhaps, all of humanity...

American short stories

The collection presents the works of three famous American writers who have made significant contributions to world literature. It will be of interest to people who know the basics of English and are improving their skills in it. Frank Norris. The ship that saw a ghost Jack London.

To build a fire Edgar Allan Poe. The pit and the pendulum NORRIS Benjamin Franklin was an American writer and journalist of the Progressive Era, one of the first to bring French naturalism to American literature. LONDON Jack is an American writer of adventure stories and novels.

The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North

Jack London (real name John Griffith) is an American writer. In his youth, he changed many random professions, traveled and even spent a month in prison for vagrancy. In northern stories, London contrasts civilization with a world of untouched nature, but, believing in the beneficent nature, it never ceases to admire the technical and cultural achievements of civilization.

In his works, life is simple and cruel, requiring from people endurance, courage, willpower and endurance. The writer poetizes the right of the strong, admires the manifestations of the anarchic principle in his heroes. The audiobook was read by professional American actor Adam Maskin in English.

Sister Kerry

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) was an outstanding American writer and public figure. The trilogy “Titan”, “Stoic” and “Financier” brought him worldwide fame, and the pinnacle of his creativity was “American Tragedy”. “Sister Carrie” (1900) is Dreiser’s first novel.

The book tells the story of how the notorious “American Dream” is actually realized, when a person from the bottom of society, overcoming obstacles, moves towards his goal and reaches the heights of success. The main character of the novel is Caroline (Kerry) Mieber, an eighteen-year-old provincial girl from a poor family.

Arriving to visit her older sister in Chicago, she is forced to take a hard, low-paid job in a factory: they won’t hire her anywhere else. Exhausting poverty pushes a fragile girl onto the path of a kept woman - the mistress of successful men who manipulate her, seducing her with false promises.

Meanwhile, Kerry dreams of becoming an actress. You will find out whether her dream will come true by listening to the audio version of the novel. © & ℗ OOO "1C-Publishing" Translation - Mark Volosov Music - Vyacheslav Tupichenko.