1967-HB/no DC-like new for its age-text/unmarked--xlibr/all stamps removed-b569

H.G. Wells

Costa, Richard Hauer

Twayne Pub

Praised for her wit, psychological insight, and incisive assessment of the complexities of modern life, Alison Lurie has been hailed as the contemporary counterpart of both Jane Austen and Henry James. In such novels as The War between the Tates and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Foreign Affairs, Lurie has plied her elegant prose style to explore the dynamics of marriage, loneliness, self-delusion, and self-discovery with a vivid awareness of the surrounding social climate--be it the tumultuousness of the 1960s or the self-absorption of the 1980s. Richard Hauer Costa's Alison Lurie is the first book-length study to appraise Lurie's major works of adult fiction and nonfiction. Beginning with her memoir of poet and playwright V. R. Lang, first published in 1959, Costa traces the evolution of Lurie's writings as she expands the boundaries of her imaginative and intellectual territories while retaining her capacity to investigate them with a relentless, unflinching pursuit of the truth. Nowhere is this pursuit more evident than in Lurie's fiction or better expressed than by the protagonist of her most recent novel, The Truth about Lorin Jones, whose goal it is "to write a book that would tell the whole contusing contradictory truth...let the devil take the hindmost." Nearly all of Lurie's protagonists are women, and Costa takes as one of his major themes the author's desire to unmask them. In a process of liberation often catalyzed by a passionate sexual relationship, each woman's true character is exposed as Lurie leads her to genuine self-knowledge, something that, Costa argues, Lurie values above all else and at almost any cost. Costa links the themes of Lurie's major nonfiction works, The Language of Clothes and Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Literature, with her fiction. The ideas in The Language of Clothes, a study of the conscious and unconscious use of clothing as a means of self-expression, inform many of Lurie's novels, he writes, where dress often "sends out an unspoken signal from one character to another." The sentiment of Don't Tell the Grown-ups, in which Lurie praises those children's books that "express ideas and emotions not generally approved of" and that "view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness," is in good keeping with the satirical sensibility conveyed in Lurie's novels. Lurie's impatience with artifice and self-deception, Costa writes, is evident throughout her work. Alison Lurie also includes an overview of the critical assessment of Lurie's writings, and Costa addresses the viewpoints of both detractors and admirers. Critics have been unanimous, however, in their appreciation for Lurie's lucid prose style and her acute powers of observation. She is among the most gifted American novelists writing today.

Alison Lurie (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Recounts the literary critic's final years at his home in upstate New York, and his views on literature, politics, and life in general.

Edmund Wilson: Our Neighbor from Talcottville (New York State Series)

Reference

Syracuse University Press

A down-to-earth autobiography reveals the domestic side, the on-the-road side, the kids' side, and a wife's perspective of what it is like when family life revolves around the game of baseball

Safe at Home: A Baseball Wife's Story

Hargrove, Sharon

Biographies & Memoirs

Texas A&M University Press

Pleasure has not ruled all aspects of Richard Costa's world, but books and their writers have brought innumerable hours of it to his thought-filled years. In this insightful journey through a life suffused with literature, he introduces readers to the literary figures whose paths crossed his: Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, Conrad Aiken, Edmund Wilson, Kingsley Amis, Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and others. In these pages lie answers to questions, and questions for many answers. What did Wells fear more than the bombs during the London Blitz? What is Edmund Wilson's favorite of all his books? What writer, after declaring his walking-stick unbreakable, watched as Ernest Hemingway broke the stick over his own head? Why is it impossible to "discover" a new book today? Readers who accompany Costa on his journey of the mind and heart will have the opportunity to experience the vicarious pleasures of a tea, a chat, and a good read in the light of literary stars.

An Appointment with Somerset Maugham: And Other Literary Encounters

An Appointment With Somerset Maugham: And Other Literary Encounters

Pleasure has not ruled all aspects of Richard Costa's world, but books and their writers have brought innumerable hours of it to his thought-filled years. In this insightful journey through a life suffused with literature, he introduces readers to the literary figures whose paths crossed his: Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, Conrad Aiken, Edmund Wilson, Kingsley Amis, Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and others. In these pages lie answers to questions, and questions for many answers. What did Wells fear more than the bombs during the London Blitz? What is Edmund Wilson's favorite of all his books? What writer, after declaring his walking-stick unbreakable, watched as Ernest Hemingway broke the stick over his own head? Why is it impossible to "discover" a new book today? Readers who accompany Costa on his journey of the mind and heart will have the opportunity to experience the vicarious pleasures of a tea, a chat, and a good read in the light of literary stars.

A down-to-earth autobiography reveals the domestic side, the on-the-road side, the kids' side, and a wife's perspective of what it is like when family life revolves around the game of baseball

Community & Culture

Texas A & M Univ Pr

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

Books by Costa, Richard Hauer

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

H.G. Wells

Alison Lurie (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

Edmund Wilson: Our Neighbor from Talcottville (New York State Series)

Safe at Home: A Baseball Wife's Story

An Appointment with Somerset Maugham: And Other Literary Encounters

An Appointment with Somerset Maugham: And Other Literary Encounters

Safe at Home: A Baseball Wife's Story