The first publication in English of an indispensable work on poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

The first publication in English of an indispensable work on poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

"Immensely readable...a significant piece of scholarship."—Fred Volkmer, New York Sun He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she a muse of Europe's fin-de-siècle thinkers and artists. In this collection of letters, a finalist for the PEN USA translation award, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé, a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior, pen a relationship that spans thirty years and shifting boundaries: as lovers, as mentor and protégé, and as deep personal and literary allies.

This English translation of Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken offers a rare, intimate view of the philosopher by Lou Salomé, a free-thinking, Russian-born intellectual to whom Nietzsche proposed marriage at only their second meeting. Published in 1894 as its subject languished in madness, Salomé's book rode the crest of a surge of interest in Nietzsche's iconoclastic philosophy. She discusses his writings and such biographical events as his break with Wagner, attempting to ferret out the man in the midst of his works. Salomé's provocative conclusion -- that Nietzsche's madness was the inevitable result of his philosophical views -- generated considerable controversy. Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, dismissed the book as a work of fantasy. Yet the philosopher's longtime acquaintance Erwin Rohde wrote, "Nothing better or more deeply experienced or perceived has ever been written about Nietzsche." Siegfried Mandel's extensive introduction examines the circumstances that brought Lou Salomé and Nietzsche together and the ideological conflicts that drove them apart.

In this delightful memoir, the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air reflects on her life as a professional reader. Maureen Corrigan takes us from her unpretentious girlhood in working-class Queens, to her bemused years in an Ivy League Ph.D. program, from the whirl of falling in love and marrying (a fellow bookworm, of course), to the ordeal of adopting a baby overseas, always with a book at her side. Along the way, she reveals which books and authors have shaped her own life—from classic works of English literature to hard-boiled detective novels, and everything in between. And in her explorations of the heroes and heroines throughout literary history, Corrigan’s love for a good story shines.

The daughter of an illustrious Russian general, Lou von Salome left her home in the heart of Tsarist Russia to conquer intellectual Europe at the tender age of 18. Eventually settling in Germany, she became a best-selling novelist, a groundbreaking essayist, and a well-known literary critic. In addition to all this, Salome was a real-life muse for some of the most brilliant men of her time. This biography tells the story of Salome's entire life and career, focusing on her young adulthood; celibate marriage with linguistics scholar Carl Friedrich Andreas; rumored affairs with Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainier Maria Rilke, and several other authors and poets; and her relationship with Sigmund Freud, which was marked most notably by their contrasting views of psychoanalysis.

Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.

Essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rainer Maria Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse, these ten letters of correspondence between Rilke and a young aspiring poet reveal elements from the inner workings of his own poetic identity. The letters coincided with an important stage of his artistic development and readers can trace many of the themes that later emerge in his best works to these messages—Rilke himself stated these letters contained part of his creative genius.

Death visited our family early in my youth, taking my father without warning, exacting its toll of loss and grief on me, my mom, and four siblings, leaving us all emotionally scarred. We loved Dad and grieved bitterly, surviving with feelings of desolation and sorrow as our strong family circle was forever broken; my sister, ten years old, was unable to comprehend "why Dad left her." God's Angel of Death would visit my family, inflicting the pain of sorrow and loss repeatedly, and in the years to come I would lose my mother, sister, and two younger brothers. I would later become estranged from my own family through divorce, and relocation would sever relationships, uprooting me from my career, the old familiar places and faces, plunging me back into sadness and loneliness, grim reminders of loss from the not distant past. In the middle of the storms I lost my auditory senses and had to adapt to an entirely new world that introduced fear and rejection, and at one point of my life I became fearful of dying suddenly. I realized, too much later, that I never really was ever alone; God was always with me and he was keeping me here, carrying, guiding, strengthening me through every storm, giving my life direction again, restoring me full-circle to his purpose for me--writing to tell of his love. It took a while for me to understand God's grace, how he led me through the years of stormy darkness to a relationship with him through love and mercy that is unsurpassed; and, while I am still working on life, a great part of its purpose is to share my hope and faith and attest to God's love and grace, but most of all to bear witness to the triumphant, peaceful joy of walking, talking with, and listening to God along the valleys and mountaintops of life.

A celebrated biography of probably the greatest lyric poet of this century. Prater draws on recent documentary evidence to provide a compelling account of this most complex of lives.