“[Terry Castle is] the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today.” —Susan Sontag 
From one of America’s most brilliant critics and cultural commentators, Terry Castle, comes The Professor and Other Writings: a collection of startling, gorgeously-written autobiographical essays and a new, long-form piece about the devastation and beauty of early love. James Wolcott, contributing writer to Vanity Fair, calls Terry Castle a “Jedi knight of literary exploration and lesbian scholarship,” and The Professor and Other Writings “a greatest-hits package of show-stopping monologues and offhand-genius riffs.” The Professor and Other Writings is a hilarious and heartbreaking exploration of gender, identity, and sexuality in the grand tradition of such feminist luminaries as Susan Sontag, Camille Paglia, and Joan Didion.

The Professor and Other Writings

Literature & Fiction

Castle, Terry

United States

Harper

From Terry Castle, the brilliant cultural commentator whom Susan Sontag called "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today," comes a long-awaited collection of captivating personal essays. The title piece at the heart of the anthologyCastle's candid, wry, and rueful retelling of her romantic involvement with a female professor during graduate schoolis a pitch-perfect recollection of the fiascoes of youth. Here, also, are classic Castle short works, including "Desperately Seeking Susan," a droll and bittersweet account of her friendship with Sontag; "My Heroin Christmas," a darkly humorous examination of addiction, her family and stepsiblings, and the late, great saxophonist Art Pepper; and the picaresque "Travels with My Mother," a rollicking tour through lesbianism, art, and the difficult yet transcendent paintings of Agnes Martin. The Professor is Terry Castle at her best: utterly distinctive, wise, frank, and fearless.

The Professor: A Sentimental Education

Harper-perennial

The work of leading scholar Terry Castle, called by the New York Times "always engaging...consistently fascinating," has helped to revolutionize eighteenth-century studies. The Female Thermometer collects Castle's essays on phantasmagoria in eighteenth-century literature and culture. Taking as her emblem the fanciful "female thermometer," an imaginary instrument invented by eighteenth-century satirists to measure levels of female sexual arousal, Castle explores the ways in which the rationalist imperatives of the age paradoxically worked to produce what Freud called the uncanny and what she calls the "impinging strangeness" of the eighteenth-century imagination.

The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Ideologies of Desire)

History

Europe

Oxford University Press

The work of leading scholar Terry Castle, called by the New York Times "always engaging...consistently fascinating," has helped to revolutionize eighteenth-century studies. The Female Thermometer brings together Castle's essays on the phantasmagoric side of eighteenth-century literature and culture. Taking as her emblem the fanciful "female thermometer," an imaginary instrument invented by eighteenth-century satirists to measure levels of female sexual arousal, Castle explores what she calls the "impinging strangeness" of the eighteenth-century imagination--the ways in which the rationalist imperatives of the age paradoxically worked to produce what Freud would later call the uncanny. In essays on doubling and fantasy in the novels of Defoe and Richardson, sexual impersonators and the dream-like world of the eighteenth-century masquerade, magic-lantern shows, automata, and other surreal inventions of Enlightenment science, and the hallucinatory obsessions of Gothic fiction, Castle offers a haunting portrait of a remarkable epoch. Her collection explores the links between material culture, gender, and the rise of modern forms and formulas of subjectivity, effectively rewriting the cultural history of modern Europe from a materialist and feminist perspective.

British & Irish

Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist government collapsed in 1949 despite United States support for the regime during the anti-Communist civil war. American policymakers were then forced to choose between rescuing the Nationalists or coming to terms with China's Communist government. The Truman Administration, caught up in the calculations of cold war diplomacy, refused to make a rash decision. Secretary of State Dean Acheson likened the Nationalist collapse to a tree falling in the forest--the United States would have to wait for the dust settled before it could see ahead clearly. Patterns in the Dust is a fresh look at a period overwhelmed by later events. Drawing on many previously unavailable sources, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker assesses the factors that influenced Washington policymakers during the critical few months in which the thirty-year estrangement between the two countries began. She examines the government's assessment of the chances for accommodation with the Chinese Communists, the careful efforts to ascertain American public opinion, and the effects of the Korean War which brought reasoned dialogue to an abrupt end. Patterns in the Dust highlights the flexibility that Dean Acheson retained in American policy toward China. Acheson emerges as a highly pragmatic man determined to preserve contacts with China simply because, as events have proved, that was the realistic way to conduct international relations.

The Apparitional Lesbian

Americas

Columbia University Press

In literary images of lesbianism from Defoe and Diderot to Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes, noted author Castle traces the history of the "apparitional lesbian" and the evolution of lesbian sensibility from 1750 to the present, showing that a "real" lesbian can be identified in culture, history, and literature before the modern era. 30 illustrations.

The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (Culture & Gender)

Self-Help

Columbia Univ. Pr.

In essays on literary images of lesbianism from Defoe and Diderot to Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes, on the homosexual reputation of Marie Antoinette, on the lesbian writings of Anne Lister, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Janet Flanner, and on Henry James's The Bostonians, Castle shows how a lesbian presence can be identified in the literature, history, and culture of the past three centuries.

History & Criticism

At first glance, it seems difficult to imagine two more different literary personalities than Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall. Coward's writing is playful, sarcastic, absurd; Hall's is brooding and melancholic, rife with misery and suffering. Where she throws her head back in despair, he merely lifts an eyebrow. Yet as Terry Castle displays in her provocative new study, the two had much more in common than critics have been willing to concede. The first look at the literary and biographical link between these influential contemporaries, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall recounts a forgotten literary friendship and shows that Coward and Hall even make subtle, "ghostly" appearances in each others' works. This captivating tale is brought to life in a series of 45 illustrations, including photographs of Hall, Coward, and others in their social circle, along with cartoon renditions of the two from the popular press. Through its imaginative juxtaposition of two major literary figures, this provocative work illuminates how traditional ideas of the differences between male and female homosexuals shield from view a vast arena of cultural understanding. Castle pushes past stale definitions - the tragic lesbian and the witty, urbane gay man - to present a broader picture. In the process, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall provides a rich critical vocabulary for bridging the experiences of gays and lesbians in history, casting light upon deep-rooted stereotypes that have long separated the two.

Noël Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

This Norton Critical Edition includes: * The 1952 novel along with-for comparative reading-Patricia Highsmith's two Afterwords (1984 and 1990). * Editorial matter by Terry Castle. * Background materials on The Price of Salt's textual history and genesis (1948-52). * An unusually rich Criticism section, thematically arranged to promote classroom discussion. Letters to Patricia Highsmith (1952-65)-never before published-allow today's readers to understand something of this novel's deeply personal power, while reviews of the 1952, 1984, and 1991 editions trace the novel's critical reception in a changing world. Other topics include lesbian pulp fiction, a brief history of lesbianism in the 1950s and Carol, the 2014 film adaptation of The Price of Salt. * A Selected Bibliography.

The Price of Salt: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA

Literary

W.W.Norton&Company

Boss Ladies, Watch Out!: Essays on Women, Sex and Writing

A new collection of essays on literature and sexuality by one of the wittiest and most iconoclastic critics writing today.

Routledge

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Books by Castle, Terry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Castle, Terry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Professor and Other Writings

The Professor: A Sentimental Education

The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Ideologies of Desire)

The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Ideologies of Desire)

The Apparitional Lesbian

The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (Culture & Gender)

The Apparitional Lesbian

Noël Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits

The Price of Salt: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

Boss Ladies, Watch Out!: Essays on Women, Sex and Writing