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Archive for the 'Books and Authors' CategoryJune 15th, 2013 Super-prolific American novelist Joyce Carol Oates (them, 1969) is born in Lockport, N.Y. in 1938.
For the past twenty-five years, having won every other award, Oates has also been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. She thinks she will be chiefly remembered for two novels, them and Blonde, but all of her 40 novels, 8 novellas, and several dozen books of short stories are of a piece: strongly written, gripping, and deeply imagined. She will probably not be equalled again in her output, which also includes 14 plays, 9 books for children, 10 books of poetry, and 16 books of essays and memoirs. Suggested Reading Novels them, 1969. Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart, 1990. Blonde, 2000. Non-fiction The Profane Art: Essays & Reviews, 1983. On Boxing, 1987. George Bellows: American Artist, 1995. Where I’vc Been, And Where I’m Going: Essays, Reviews, and Prose, 1999. A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, 2011.
Posted by: The Editors Last Week in Literary HistoryJune 1st, 2013 English scholar and mystery novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, is born in Oxford in 1893. Dorothy L. Sayers, b. June 13, 1893, d. 1957
Suggested Reading Novels The Lord Peter Wimsey books, 1923-1939. Plays Busman’s Honeymoon, 1935. The Man Born to be King, 1941.
Posted by: The Editors June 2012 in Black LambVolume 10, Number 6 — June 2012June 1st, 2012 The Black Lamb Review of Books IX In this issue of Black Lamb, our ninth annual Black Lamb Review of Books, Terry Ross looks at books by Jaimy Gordon, Elizabeth Taylor, and Alan Hollinghurst, and then plunges into the world of detective fiction in Shamuses, horses, & queers — oh my! Brad Bigelow reports on a spate of translations of Germany’s greatest novelist before Thomas Mann, Theodor Fontane. John M. Daniel examines The disruptive world of Charles Baxter. In Knights errant, Ed Goldberg takes a close look at cops and detectives fighting burdens imposed upon them. Andi Diehn reports on how endless book reviewing killed her love of reading in Once I was a reader. In Apples & oranges, Toby Tompkins takes a look at T.C. Boyle and also at so-called genre fiction. M.A. Orthofer reviews Peter Ackroyd’s 1996 book Milton in America in What if …? Young Adult book writer Beren de Motier evaluates Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.
Posted by: The Editors June 2011 in Black LambVolume 9, Number 6 — June 2011June 1st, 2011 The Black Lamb Review of Books VIII In the cover story of this, our Eighth Black Lamb Review of Books, John M. Daniel urges a remake of the movie The Wizard of Oz that is more closely based on Baum’s ironic and imaginative novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Terry Ross discusses several books, old and new, in Spring reading. In Grandpa’s stories, Harvey Freedenberg reviews Tiá Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife.
Posted by: The Editors The lost wonder of Ozor, Notes for the remake of an American classicJune 1st, 2011 BY JOHN M. DANIEL It’s a common belief that if you have read the book first, and loved it, you’ll be disappointed by the movie. There are exceptions, of course, but I’ve found I agree with the cliché nearly always.
It is not the purpose of this essay to trash one of America’s cherished treasures. Yes, The Wizard of Oz is a wonderful movie, the Wonderful Movie of Oz. Because, because, because, because the music is great; the special effects were stunning for their time and still hold up; the joy and hope expressed were an antidote to the Depression-Era doldrums; and of course there’s Judy Garland, who deserves her tenure in American hagiography. Believe me, I like the movie. But it ain’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the Land of Oz, and it falls short of the book.
Posted by: The Editors July 2010 in Black LambVolume 8, Number 7 — July 2010July 1st, 2010 The Black Lamb Review of Books In this Black Lamb Review of Books, a seventh annual issue devoted entirely to books and reading, editor Terry Ross reflects on his springtime reading, which as included four novels by Frederick Buechner, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, two books by Jim Harrison, a Forties noir classic, and novels by Wallace Stegner, Edith Wharton, and Frederic Raphael. Greg Roberts reports on the autobiography of Isaac Stephenson, an honest politician vilified during his lifetime.
Posted by: The Editors June 2007 in Black LambVolume 5, Number 6 — June 2007June 1st, 2007 The Black Lamb Review of Books In our cover story Terry Ross wonders how people find time to read books and talks about the 14 books on his shelf waiting to be read. In our page 2 feature, Tales from the Crypt, Ed Goldberg reviews two books haunted by dead white American authors. In A Lot of Learning, William Bogert offers an appreciation of memoirs by Dick Francis and Anne Fadiman. Cate Garrison reviews The Bookseller of Kabul in We Believe Her. You Read It Here First: Terry Ross celebrates the reissue of Evelyn Waugh’s travel books, the 5-volume autobiography of Leonard Woolf, and Irene Handl’s wonderful The Sioux, published in 1965.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsApril 1st, 2007 BY BLACK LAMB Here, as always in this space, are new entries in what will become, later this year, The Ultimate Literary Calendar. We hope you find the following mini-guides with suggested bibliographies useful introductions to these two important figures from the world of books. John Braine, b. April 13, 1922, d. 1987
Suggested Reading Novels Room at the Top, 1957. The Vodi, 1959. Life at the Top, 1962. The Jealous God, 1964. Waiting for Sheila, 1976. The Two of Us, 1984.
Mortimer is celebrated for his creation of Horace Rumpole, the imperturbable barrister, and his wife Hilda, always referred to as She Who Must Be Obeyed. But he is also the writer of many other novels and plays, many of them superb. Our favorites are the Rapstone Chronicles, a trilogy of novels listed below after Rumpole, the autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage, the remarkable play A Voyage Round My Father, and two enchanting books of interviews with famous people (from Grahame Greene and Georges Simenon to Mick Jagger and Raquel Welch), In Character and Character Parts. Suggested Reading Novels & novellas Charade, 1947. The Rumpole Series (19 books), beginning with Rumpole of the Bailey, 1978, through Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, 2006. Paradise Postponed, 1985. Titmuss Regained, 1990. The Sound of Trumpets, 1998. Plays A Voyage Round My Father, 1971. Edwin and Other Plays, 1984. Non-fiction Clinging to the Wreckage, 1982. The Oxford Book of Villains, 1992. Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life, 1994. The Summer of the Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old. Interviews In Character, 1983. Character Parts, 1986.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsMarch 1st, 2006 BY BLACK LAMB As always in this space, we present new entries to the Black Lamb Literary Calendar, which will appear later this year. Here are your handy thumbnail guides, with selected bibliographies, to three preeminent figures of literary history.
Whatever his limitations, Strachey revolutionized the writing of biography in English with his book Eminent Victorians, in which he replaced the standard Victorian two-volume compendium of minuscule facts with shorter accounts. If his portrayals of Cardinal Manning, Dr. Thomas Arnold, Florence Nightingale, and General George Gordon reveal as much about the biographer as about the biographee, this only adds to the fun. Strachey went long steps further in the direction of tabloid journalism (elegant tabloid journalism, though) in his subsequent books; biography was never the same again. Biography Eminent Victorians, 1918. Queen Victoria, 1921. Elizabeth and Essex, 1928. Portraits in Miniature, 1931. Essays & Studies Landmarks in French Literature, 1912. Books and Characters, French and English, 1922. Characters and Commentaries, 1933.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsDecember 1st, 2004 BY BLACK LAMB December is a fertile month for artistic birthdays, from which we’ve chosen four Honorary Black Lambs to add to our accumulating Black Lamb Literary Calendar. Here are four short assessments and selected bibliographies, your capsule guides to some of literature’s great figures.
Conrad, born Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski in Poland, has often been praised for his mastery of his second language, but in fact he wrote in a strange un-Engish. After a couple of notable books he published his so-called masterpiece, Lord Jim, in 1900, then needed the help of Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford Madox Ford) on three subsequent novels. We confess to a weakness for The Nigger of the Narcissus, but then we’re soft on sea stories, which is probably why we tolerate Lord Jim so far as we do. Conrad’s is a bizarre and non-influential body of work. Novels The Nigger of the Narcissus, 1897. Lord Jim, 1900. Nostromo, 1904. The Secret Agent, 1907. Short stories & tales Typhoon, 1902. Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories, 1902. The Complete Short Stories of Joseph Conrad, 1933.
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