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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
Archive for the 'Books and Authors' CategoryThis Week in Literary HistoryJanuary 1st, 2012 American short story writer and novelist John O’Hara (Appointment in Samarra, 1934) is born in 1905 in Pottsville, Pa.
O’Hara began his career as a short story writer; he published more than 200 in The New Yorker, starting in 1928. Brendan Gill thought him “among the greatest short-story writers in English.” He successfully turned his hand to novels with Appointment in Samarra in 1934, but thereafter his standing among critics fell, partly due to his defensive, abrasive personality. A master all the same. Suggested Reading Short stories 14 collections, 1935-74. Novels Appointment in Samarra, 1934. BUtterfield 8, 1935. Pal Joey, 1940. Ten North Frederick, 1955.
Posted by: The Editors Last Week in Literary HistoryJanuary 1st, 2012 Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1959) is born in 1931 in Montréal. Mordecai Richler, b. January 27, 1931, d. 2001
Suggested Reading Novels The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1959. Cocksure, 1968. The Street, 1969. St. Urbain’s Horseman, 1971. Joshua Then and Now, 1980. Travel Images of Spain, 1977. This Year in Jerusalem, 1994. Nonfiction On Snooker: The Game and the Characters Who Play It, 2001.
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.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsSeptember 1st, 2003 BY BLACK LAMB September is not specially striking for its supply of literary birthdays, but it makes up in quality whatever it may lack in quantity. Perhaps most notable of the notables is Señor Alcala de Henares, better known as Miguel de Cervantes, who was born on or about September 29 in 1547. His El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, sometimes called the first novel, was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615. Cervantes died in 1616 on the same day as Shakespeare, who was his younger contemporary.
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