Part consoling sourcebook, part cultural commentary, and part wry self-help manual, this gloriously uncynical handbook provides advice for creatives struggling in a career world awash in bottom-line thinking. With an appealing blend of sound counsel, good humor, and vivid historical and literary anecdotes, M. Allen Cunningham offers solidarity to any writer or artist working against the grain of the times, and reminds us that obscurity, rather than being cause for shame, is a time-honored condition of the serious, committed artist. Readers will laugh aloud at the e-mails received by Henry David Thoreau's literary agent in response to his "bloated and incoherent" book Walden, and will underline and annotate the margins in such pieces as "In the Absence of Yes," Cunningham's bracing perspective on endless rejection. Hailed by Cynthia Ozick as "ingenious...important...inspiring and inspiriting," this unique handbook is unlike any volume on creativity you have read before. It is packed with insights -- both practical and philosophical -- that will appeal to every creative person you know.

The Honorable Obscurity Handbook: Solidarity & Sound Advice for Writers and Artists (Samizdat Series)

Arts & Photography

Cunningham, M. Allen

Business of Art

Atelier26 Books

A provocative casebook for our digital times, this book is designed to jumpstart an in-depth dialogue about the historical, cultural, civic, and scientific implications of a mass shift in reading methods. Each chapter is broken down in a visual way through bullet points, bolding, and illustrations combined with descriptive paragraphs that both engage and inform the reader. This small volume weaves together some of the most cogent thought of the past 50 years, urging readers to consider anew the many questions about our "technological revolution" that remain far from settled. The chapters include: “The Technology of Individualism,” “Technology &amp; Ideology,” and “Neuroplasticity.”

The Flickering Page: The Reading Experience in Digital Times (Samizdat Series)

History

The author of the much-acclaimed #1 Indie Next Pick The Green Age of Asher Witherow returns with a masterful new work, epic in scope and yet intimate in its emotional power, about a family shaped as much by tumultuous world events as by each of its members' long-kept secrets. Benjamin Lorn, sensitive son of an embittered Civil War veteran, comes of age in the tiny Iowa town of Perpetua where, in a single summer, he mourns the recent loss of his mother, falls in love, and uncovers a shameful family secret that sends him fleeing west. Tormented with this new knowledge, Benjamin seeks transcendence through the telegraph wires that have enchanted him since boyhood. Meanwhile the weight of a dark duty grows more and more pressing. Thus begins Perpetua's Kin, M. Allen Cunningham's enthralling multi-generational mystery, reworking of Hamlet, and profoundly contemporary exploration of the American experience as one family embodies it. Spanning much of North America over more than a century, from the 1820s Midwest through the American south of the Civil War, to World War II San Francisco, Cunningham's novel is a powerful portrait of this nation's violent heritage, our vulnerability to the vastness of our own geography, our chronic restlessness and desire for regeneration through technology, and the impossibility of escaping the history that forms us and, always, demands a reckoning.

Perpetua's Kin

Literature & Fiction

United States

We Are Guests of Ancient Time: Essays & Variations (Samizdat)

Essays & Correspondence

Atelier26

In this powerful debut from a young writer of stunning talent, M. Allen Cunningham takes us into a time and place at once gritty and magical, when the future seems filled with promise but where the day’s labor is bone breaking, numbing and always dangerous. Gorgeously written, historically authentic, The Green Age of Asher Witherow is a novel of tested loyalties, of condemnation and redemption. The characters’ deep emotional lives are complex and vivid, fluctuating from the doomed to the transcendent. As he unpacks his heart, Asher comes to realize that all his early traumas have somehow bonded him to the land surrounding Mount Diablo and infused his life with an inward wealtha treasure at which we can only wonder.

The Green Age of Asher Witherow

Contemporary

Unbridled Books

Supplying a quarter of San Francisco’s coal, Nortonville of the 1860s-70s is a flourishing empire in small, seeming to promise unending prosperity and a better future. But beneath the vibrant work ethic of its Welch citizens lies an insidious network of superstitions. A missing boy first brings these dark undercurrents to light. Then young Asher Witherow falls under the spell of an unorthodox apprentice minister, stirring a whirlpool of suspicion and outrage. Soon Asher finds himself trapped in a nightmarish crucible, all the more excruciating because he himself could end it if he could only find the strength of will. This is a lesson the missing boy has taught him, and what he understands instinctively from the alluring Anna Flood, new to Nortonville, who with her raw sensuality and independence seems to offer some hope of redemption or even escape. In this powerful debut from a young writer of stunning talent, M. Allen Cunningham takes us into a time and place at once gritty and magical, when the future seems filled with promise but where the day’s labor is bone breaking, numbing and always dangerous. Gorgeously written, historically authentic, The Green Age of Asher Witherow is a novel of tested loyalties, of condemnation and redemption. The characters’ deep emotional lives are complex and vivid, fluctuating from the doomed to the transcendent. As he unpacks his heart, Asher comes to realize that all his early traumas have somehow bonded him to the land surrounding Mount Diablo and infused his life with an inward wealtha treasure at which we can only wonder.

Spanning western Europe from 1875 to 1917 and presenting a gothic historical Paris that subverts our old assumptions regarding the City of Light, M. Allen Cunningham’s new novel brings a brooding atmosphere and human complexity to an intimate and imaginative portrait of one of the most uniquely sensitive artists of his time, a poet whose odd childhood and difficult early life will both fascinate and perhaps help explain his determination to stay true to his artistic vision at almost any cost. Here is Rainer Maria Rilke in the grip of his greatest artistic struggle: life itself. Rilke’s gripping emotional drama as child, lover, husband, father, protégé, misfit soldier, and wanderer is framed by a haunted young figure, a researcher who, a century later, feels compelled to trace Rilke’s itinerant footsteps and those of Rilke’s fictional alter ego, the bewitched poet Malte Laurids Brigge. The result is an exploration of the forever imperfect loyalties we face in work and life, the seemingly immeasurable distances that can separate life and art, and the generational tensions between masters and admirers.

Lost Son

Spanning western Europe from 1875 to 1917 and presenting a gothic historical Paris that subverts our old assumptions regarding the City of Light, M. Allen Cunningham’s new novel brings a brooding atmosphere and human complexity to an intimate and imaginative portrait of one of the most uniquely sensitive artists of his time, a poet whose odd childhood and difficult early life will both fascinate and perhaps help explain his determination to stay true to his artistic vision at almost any cost. Here is Rainer Maria Rilke in the grip of his greatest artistic struggle: life itself. Rilke’s gripping emotional drama as child, lover, husband, father, protégé, misfit soldier, and wanderer is framed by a haunted young figure, a researcher who, a century later, feels compelled to trace Rilke’s itinerant footsteps and those of Rilke’s fictional alter ego, the bewitched poet Malte Laurids Brigge. The result is an exploration of the forever imperfect loyalties we face in work and life, the seemingly immeasurable distances that can separate life and art, and the generational tensions between masters and admirers.

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

Books by Cunningham, M. Allen

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

The Honorable Obscurity Handbook: Solidarity & Sound Advice for Writers and Artists (Samizdat Series)

The Flickering Page: The Reading Experience in Digital Times (Samizdat Series)

Perpetua's Kin

We Are Guests of Ancient Time: Essays & Variations (Samizdat)

The Green Age of Asher Witherow

The Green Age of Asher Witherow

Lost Son

Lost Son