Dark, comic, raw, disturbing, and often redemptive, these fifteen tales will take you from the 1950s to the present, along with a repeating cast of heroes and lunatics. The characters span the breadth and the depths of human qualities and capacities. The same person, in one story, may materialize as a hero and a god, and in another, as a lunatic and a demon. While the author roughs up the people in his stories with the hand of terror, he simultaneously views them with the eyes of love. Martignetti spares no one, and to his credit, particularly not himself. For one who confesses so much fear, he is fearlessly self-revealing. After reading this memoir collection, you will come to know these characters, and the author, intimately. Not that you d necessarily want to, it s just the way things will turn out. About the author: C. Anthony Martignetti, Ph.D., is a writer and psychotherapist in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife, Laura, and their Border Terrier, Piper. In the late 1960s, as a high school graduation gift, his mother tried to nominate him for a Pulitzer Prize, but the panel refused to accept her recommendation since nobody had heard of either him or her... and all he had ever written were assignments for an English class in which he received a solid B. He got a set of Samsonite luggage as a graduation gift instead. As a result of that event he has remained, to this day, defiantly unpublished. "

From the master of Story, Dialogue, and Character, ACTION offers writers the keys to propulsive storytelling. ACTION explores the ways that a modern-day writer can successfully tell an action story that not only stands apart, but wins the war on clichés. Teaming up with the former co-host of The Story Toolkit, Bassim El-Wakil, legendary story lecturer Robert McKee guides writers to award-winning originality by deconstructing the action genre, illuminating the challenges, and, more importantly, demonstrating how to master the demands of plot with surprising beats of innovation and ingenuity. Topics include: Understanding the Four Core Elements of Action Creating the Action Cast Hook, Hold, Pay Off: Design in Action The Action Macguffin Action Set Pieces The Sixteen Action Subgenres A must-add to the McKee storytelling library, ACTION illustrates the principles of narrative drive with precision and clarity by referencing the most popular action movies of our time including: Die Hard, The Star Wars Saga, Dark Knight, The Matrix, and Avengers: Endgame.

Searingly hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter, the ancestral estate of the Golovlyov family is the end of the road. There Anna Petrovna rules with an iron hand over her servants and family-until she loses power to the relentless scheming of her hypocritical son Judas. One of the great books of Russian literature, The Golovlyov Family is a vivid picture of a condemned and isolated outpost of civilization that, for contemporary readers, will recall the otherwordly reality of Macondo in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

An old man—poet, playwright, essayist, and scholar—sifts through the broken fragments of his memory as he recounts what it was like to grow up in Warsaw during the German occupation of World War II. The result is Kinderszenen, a searing and controversial memoir by a major post-war Polish writer that has evoked both debate and praise, now translated into English for the first time. The book’s title comes from the suite of piano pieces by Robert Schumann which evoke the innocence and joy of childhood—thus providing a wrenching counterpoint to the violence, destruction, and madness that characterize Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz’s coming of age. While the scenes of his youth are depicted in vivid detail, from his boyish encounters with cats, horses, and turtles up to the shocking brutality of murder and mayhem witnessed at first hand, what really sets Kinderszenen apart is its extended meditation on the nature of war, oppression, and fanatical nationalism, and the possibility—however doomed it may seem—of human resistance to those forces. Here is an enduring testimony that remains starkly relevant to our own time.

In this revised edition of a volume originally published in 1989, Lawrence Broer extends his comprehensive critique of the body of writing by Kurt Vonnegut. Broer offers a broad psychoanalytic study of Vonnegut’s works from Player Piano to Hocus Pocus, taking a decisively new approach to the work of one of America’s most important, yet often misinterpreted writers. A compelling and original analysis, Sanity Plea, explores how Vonnegut incorporates his personal experiences into an art that is not defeatist, but rather creatively therapeutic and life-affirming.

Margaret Bedrosian's pioneering interdisciplinary study examines the continuing effect of Armenian history on Armenian-American writing. Using the work of ten Armenian-American poets and fiction and non-fiction writers, she shows the continuing impact on Armenian Americans of cultural symbols, myths, and attitudes carried over from the Old World, and explores the ways in which two cultures meet, conflict, and become integrated in the imagination. Through analysis of writers' actual or fictionalized experience, The Magical Pine Ring provides an understanding of the Armenians' specific concerns as Armenians and as immigrants, the effect of their self-awareness as Armenians on their adaptation to America, the typical and stereotypical situations and personalities that emerged with time, and the key values and beliefs that endured even as names were changed and assimilation blurred physical and social demeanor. Bedrosian also explores the directions Armenian-American writers have taken in portraying group history and the nature of their self-discovery as Armenian Americans. For the most part, this literature is not a direct outgrowth of the mainstream of Armenian literature. The relationship of the writer discussed here is one of spirit, of ancestral sympathies, burdens, and responsibilities. These writers register the pain of exile and alienation as they weave images of yearning and loss, celebration and futuristic vision into their writing. Through their crossroads identity in America, these writers add to our understanding of the Armenian diaspora.

Rock star, crowdfunding pioneer, and TED speaker Amanda Palmer knows all about asking. Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter. Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of The Art of Asking. Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. The Art of Asking will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

Explore queer themes in films from Hong Kong gangster flicks to Bollywood melodramas! Although Asian films have reached a new height in popularity worldwide, Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade is the first full-length book in English solely devoted to examining the aesthetics and politics of homosexuality in Asian films. This unique book presents multiple points of view on the portrayal of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people in film throughout Asia. From the subversive sadomasochism of Japan's ”pink films” to the hard-boiled world of Hong Kong's gangster movies, Queer Asian Cinema analyzes and discusses attitudes toward homosexuality in the full spectrum of Asian film. In addition to studies of the representation of identified gay men, lesbians, and transgendered individuals, it reveals the hidden homoerotic subtext of otherwise conventional films. Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade examines diverse aspects of Asian films, including: the political and psychological links between feudal and sadomasochist hierarchies the inevitable punishment of homoerotic bonds in gangster films the integration of the homosexual couple into the Confucian family structure in Korean films the complexities of cross-gender casting the differences between transvestism and cross-dressing the definition of male genitalia as obscene Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade brings together experts in both film-making and movie criticism, providing a balanced viewpoint to unite the worlds of academic and popular perceptions on this subject. It opens an exciting discussion of this important and largely neglected area of cinematic discourse.

"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."--Cynthia Ozick Following the collection The Broken Estate--which established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation--The Irresponsible Self confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of contemporary novels. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches, he effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally earnest and appreciative view of the most discussed authors writing today, including Franzen, Pynchon, Rushdie, DeLillo, Naipaul, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith. This collection includes Wood's famous and controversial attack on "hysterical realism", and his sensitive but unsparing examinations of White Teeth and Brick Lane. The Irresponsible Self is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about modern fiction.

This first book-length study on the black humor in Raymond Carver's work includes valuable interpretations of Carver's aesthetics as well as the psycho-social implications of his short fiction. The presence of an indeterminate «menace» in the oppressive situations of black humor in Carver - as compared to a European tradition of existentialist writing and his American predecessors including Twain, Heller, Barth and others - is mitigated through humor so it is not dominant. As a result, a subtle promise emerges in the characters' lives.