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Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard. New York. 1970. Knopf. Translated From The German By Richard & Clara Winston. 209 pages. Jacket illustration by Brad Holland. Jacket design by R. Scudellari.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Thomas Bernhard is a writer who has received in rapid succession three of the most coveted German literary awards. GARGOYLES is his first novel to be translated into English. In it the uncompromising vision of life associated with Kafka, Musil, Beckett is given a further twist of intensity. The landscape is Austrian-a mountainous countryside, where the local doctor is taking his son, a student mining engineer, with him on his daily rounds. In a tavern a gratuitous killing has taken place. In a cottage a mad boy-a musical prodigy-is caged up. In a dilapidated hunting lodge from which he conducts his far-flung empire, a powerful industrialist-living, incestuously perhaps, alone with his sister-works on a momentous book, tearing it up as he writes it. On the miller’s land some exotic birds have been murdered, their plumage left perfectly intact. In house after house the doctor and his son find a curious succession of solitaries and shut-ins filling their lives with feverish brooding and activity. The last of the ‘patients’ is the district’s great landowner, Prince Saurau, who walks his visitors along the ramparts of his mountaintop castle. As they look down on the valley from which they have just ascended, astonished by its beauty, they listen to the prince’s brilliantly resonant monologue: his life and his ancient domain are crumbling; indeed, his son, who will inherit everything, is sure to destroy what took centuries to create. As the prince pours out his fears and indecisions, his fascinating mixture of acute perceptions and ominous confusions, the young man in particular feels that he is witnessing the very process of a man’s mind stretching beyond its utmost and being rent asunder in an effort to accommodate an unacceptable, tortuous reality. Bernhard’s vision seems to pierce through all the sharply delineated layers of observed reality to the secret hot core of consciousness itself, casting off the dead slag of its own decay as it suffers the birth pangs of new light.

Thomas Bernhard (born Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard, February 9, 1931 – February 12, 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called ‘the most significant literary achievement since World War II,’ is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era. Thomas Bernhard was born in 1931 in Heerlen, Netherlands as an illegitimate child to Herta Fabjan (née Herta Bernhard, 1904–1950) and the carpenter Alois Zuckerstätter (1905–1940). The next year his mother returned to Austria, where Bernhard spent much of his early childhood with his maternal grandparents in Vienna and Seekirchen am Wallersee north of Salzburg. His mother's subsequent marriage in 1936 occasioned a move to Traunstein in Bavaria. Bernhard's natural father died in Berlin from gas poisoning; Thomas had never met him. Bernhard's grandfather, the author Johannes Freumbichler, pushed for an artistic education for the boy, including musical instruction. Bernhard went to elementary school in Seekirchen and later attended various schools in Salzburg including the Johanneum which he left in 1947 to start an apprenticeship with a grocer. Bernhard's Lebensmensch (companion for life), whom he cared for alone in her dying days, was Hedwig Stavianicek (1894–1984), a woman more than thirty-seven years his senior, whom he met in 1950, the year of his mother's death and one year after the death of his beloved grandfather. She was the major support in his life and greatly furthered his literary career. The extent or nature of his relationships with women is obscure. Thomas Bernhard's public persona was asexual. Suffering throughout his youth from an intractable lung disease (tuberculosis), Bernhard spent the years 1949 to 1951 at the sanatorium Grafenhof, in Sankt Veit im Pongau. He trained as an actor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (1955–1957) and was always profoundly interested in music: his lung condition, however, made a career as a singer impossible. After that he began work briefly as a journalist, then as a full-time writer. Bernhard died in 1989 in Gmunden, Upper Austria. His attractive house in Ohlsdorf-Obernathal 2 where he had moved in 1965 is now a museum and centre for the study and performance of Bernhard's work. In his will, which aroused great controversy on publication, Bernhard prohibited any new stagings of his plays and publication of his unpublished work in Austria. His death was announced only after his funeral. Often criticized in Austria as a Nestbeschmutzer (one who dirties his own nest) for his critical views, Bernhard was highly acclaimed abroad. His work is most influenced by the feeling of being abandoned (in his childhood and youth) and by his incurable illness, which caused him to see death as the ultimate essence of existence. His work typically features loners' monologues explaining, to a rather silent listener, his views on the state of the world, often with reference to a concrete situation. This is true for his plays as well as for his prose, where the monologues are then reported second hand by the listener. His main protagonists, often scholars or, as he calls them, Geistesmenschen, denounce everything that matters to the Austrian in tirades against the ‘stupid populace’ that are full of contumely. He also attacks the state (often called ‘Catholic-National-Socialist’), generally respected institutions such as Vienna's Burgtheater, and much-loved artists. His work also continually deals with the isolation and self-destruction of people striving for an unreachable perfection, since this same perfection would mean stagnancy and therefore death. Anti-Catholic rhetoric is not uncommon. ‘Es ist alles lächerlich, wenn man an den Tod denkt’ (Everything is ridiculous, when one thinks of Death) was his comment when he received a minor Austrian national award in 1968, which resulted in one of the many public scandals he caused over the years and which became part of his fame. His novel Holzfällen (1984), for instance, could not be published for years due to a defamation claim by a former friend. Many of his plays—above all Heldenplatz (1988)—were met with criticism from many Austrians, who claimed they sullied Austria's reputation. One of the more controversial lines called Austria ‘a brutal and stupid nation … a mindless, cultureless sewer which spreads its penetrating stench all over Europe.’ Heldenplatz, as well as the other plays Bernhard wrote in these years, were staged at Vienna's famous Burgtheater by the controversial director Claus Peymann. Even in death Bernhard caused disturbance by his, as he supposedly called it, posthumous literary emigration, by disallowing all publication and stagings of his work within Austria's borders. The International Thomas Bernhard Foundation, established by his executor and half-brother Dr. Peter Fabjan, has subsequently made exceptions, although the German firm of Suhrkamp remains his principal publisher. The correspondence between Bernhard and his publisher Siegfried Unseld from 1961 to 1989 – about 500 letters – was published in December 2009 at Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany.

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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. London/Dar es Salaam. 1973. Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications/Tanzania Publishing House. 316 pages.

A classic in the history of Europe's exploitation of Africa.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA is a major challenge to all of us. It shows a direct correlation between the development of Europe and the underdevelopment of Africa. This book, which is written with the simplicity and clarity characteristic of Rodney's writings, is compulsory reading. This wide-reaching volume shows how Africa developed before the coming of the Europeans up to the 15th century, and shows Africa's contribution to European capitalist development in the pre-colonial period. Colonialism is then shown as a system for under developing Africa. is among the most insightful analysis of the reasons behind the underdevelopment of the African continent. The book is written in a Marxist context. The author demonstrates exceptional analytical depth and critical research into how European colonialism and capitalism were a double edged sword in creating deep rooted underdevelopment of the continent which has been very difficult to uproot. Other publications of the author include A HISTORY OF THE UPPER GUINEA COAST 1545 TO 1800 (The Clarendon Press, London), THE GROUNDINGS WITH MY BROTHERS (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, London) and a number of papers in international journals and reviews of African history.

Walter Rodney (March 23, 1942 – June 13, 1980) was a prominent Guyanese historian and political figure. Born to a working class family, Rodney was a bright student, attending Queen's College in Guyana and then attending university on a scholarship at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, graduating in 1963. Walter Rodney earned his PhD in 1966 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, England. His dissertation focused on the slave trade on the upper Guinea coast. The paper was published in 1970 under the name, A HISTORY OF THE UPPER GUINEA COAST, 1545-1800 and it was widely acclaimed for its originality in challenging the conventional wisdom on the area. He traveled widely and became very well known around the world as an activist and scholar. He taught for a time in Tanzania after graduating, and later in Jamaica at his alma mater - UWI Mona. Rodney was sharply critical of the middle class for its role in the post-independence Caribbean. When the Jamaican government, led by prime minister Hugh Shearer, banned him, in October 1968, from ever returning to the country, because of his advocacy for the working poor in that country, riots broke out, eventually claiming the lives of several people and causing millions of dollars in damages. These riots, which started on October 16, 1968, are now known as the Rodney Riots, and they triggered an increase in political awareness across the Caribbean, especially among the Afrocentric Rastafarian sector of Jamaica, documented in his book, THE GROUNDINGS WITH MY BROTHERS. Rodney became a prominent Pan-Africanist, and was important in the Black Power movement in the Caribbean and North America. While living in Dar es Salaam he was influential in developing a new centre of African learning and discussion. Rodney's most influential book was HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA, published in 1972. In it he described an Africa which had been consciously exploited by European imperialists, leading directly to the modern underdevelopment of most of the continent. The book became enormously influential as well as controversial. In 1974 Rodney returned to Guyana from Tanzania. He was supposed to take a position as a professor at the University of Guyana but the government prevented his appointment. He became increasingly active in politics, forming the Working People's Alliance, against the PNC government. In 1979 he was arrested and charged with arson after two government offices were burned. In 1980, Rodney was killed by a bomb in his car while running for office in Guyanese elections. Rodney was survived by his wife, Pat, and three children. Walter's brother, Donald, who was injured in the explosion, said that a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force named Gregory Smith had given Rodney the bomb that killed him. Smith fled to French Guiana after the killing, where he died in 2002. Rodney's death was commemorated in a poem by Martin Carter entitled ‘For Walter Rodney’. In 2004, his widow, Patricia, and children donated his papers to the Robert L. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center. Since 2004, an annual Walter Rodney Symposium has been held each 23 March (Rodney's birthday) at the Center under the sponsorship of the Library and the Political Science Department of Clark Atlanta University, and under the patronage of the Rodney family.

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 The Egyptologists by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest. New York. 1966. Random House. 247 pages.

A very funny story about male subterfuge and the war between the sexes, precisely the kind of story that Kingsley Amis, this time with the help of Robert Conquest, tells so well. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Every Thursday night in certain parts of London, husbands kiss their wives and then hurry off to attend the weekly meeting of a certain exclusive learned society. Jekyll-like, these men shed their air of scholarly absorption as they near headquarters-a building situated at a specially selected hard-to-find address, where a plaque, inscribed in specially designed hard-to-decipher lettering, reads: METROPOLITAN EGYPTOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Should the reader be at first in some doubt as to the real nature of the activities of the Egyptologists, it is only to be expected. The members' expertise in camouflage and deception has baffled the most perceptive people, and at various times the Society has been suspected of engaging in espionage, in drug-smuggling, in the activity implied by its all-male membership-and even in Egyptology. Why does the Society protect itself so vigilantly against inquiring outsiders? What is the significance of the safeguards listed in Article 22 of its Constitution? And what goes on behind the locked doors of its Isis Room? Hint: if even a fraction of the lecherous males of the world adopted the brilliant masquerade conceived by the authors in this engaging farce, learned societies would proliferate by the thousands.

 Kingsley Amis, born in London in 1922, was educated at the City of London School and St. John's College, Oxford. During World II he was a lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals. From 1949 to 1961 he was Lecturer in English at various universities in Great Britain, and also fulfilled an appointment as Visiting Lecturer at Princeton in 1958-59. Mr. Amis won immediate attention with his first novel, Lucky Jim, and has since written four others, as well as a collection of short stories, two books of poetry and a critical survey of science fiction.

 Born in 1917, Robert Conquest was educated at Winchester and Oxford, served in a line regiment in World War II and afterward in the British Diplomatic Service, Since 1956 he has interspersed free-lance writing with academic appointments at the London School of Economics and the Columbia University Russian Institute, among others, He has also been the Literary Editor of the Spectator. Mr. Conquest is the author of two books of poems, a science-fiction novel, five works of Soviet political and literary themes, and, with Kingsley Amis, has edited the science-fiction 'Spectrum' anthologies.

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Greedy Greeny by Jack Gantos and Nicole Rubel. New York. 1979. Doubleday. 32 pages. Cover illustration by Nicole Rubel. 038514685x. Illustrated by Nicole Rubel.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   A little monster, having disobeyed his mother by eating the watermelon intended for the family's dessert, suffers for his greed in a subsequent dream.

Jack Gantos has written novels for adults, young adults, and middle grade readers, as well as over twenty books for primary readers, including twelve titles chronicling the misadventures of Rotten Ralph. He lives in Santa Fe, NM.

Nicole Rubel is an author/illustrator known for her uniquely colorful illustrations and charming stories. She has over fifty books to her credit and is the co-creator of the popular Rotten Ralph series. Raised in Coral Gables, Florida, Ms. Rubel received a Bachelor of Science in Art Teaching from the Boston Museum School in association with Tufts University. Ms. Rubel's debut book, Rotten Ralph, earned her the Children's Book Showcase Award for Outstanding Graphic Design. She has since received awards from The American Books Association, The American Institute of Graphic Arts, and American Booksellers. She is a finalist for the Oregon Book award for No More Vegetables 20003. Twice as Nice has won a 2005 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Book Award and will be featured in the 13th edition of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, and on their web site www. toyportfolio. com. Her first novel for ages 10 and up, ‘It's Hot and Cold in Miami,’ was received with glowing reviews in 2007. Ms. Rubel's books It Came From The Swamp, Pirate Jupiter and the Moondogs, and Goldie have been adapted for CD-ROM by Vtech and IBM. Her Rotten Ralph books are the basis of a new television series, which began airing on Fox Family channel in 1999. Ms. Rubel's art style was inspired by the paintings of Henri Matisse and the art deco architecture of her hometown of Miami. Her imaginative, poignant and sometimes comical storylines are often derived from growing up with her identical twin sister, Bonnie. As a child she let her sister speak for her. Through the encouragement of an insightful teacher, Ms. Rubel learned to speak and write for herself. Therefore, a significant theme in her stories is finding oneself and learning to express one's feelings and thoughts. She currently resides with her husband on a farm in Aurora, Oregon. Cougar the cat, Fang the dog, their horses Dancer and Hippo and their sheep Lilly and Pansy keep them busy with mischief.

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The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall. Boston. 2001. Houghton Mifflin. 210 pages. Jacket design by Michaela Sullivan. 061810450x.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   In a brilliant rejoinder and an inspired act of literary invention, Alice Randall explodes the world created in Margaret Mitchell’s famous 1936 novel, the work that more than any other has defined our image of the antebellum South. Imagine simply that the black characters peopling that world were completely different, not egregious, one-dimensional stereotypes but fully alive, complex human beings. And then imagine, quite plausibly, that at the center of this world moves an illegitimate mulatto woman, and that this woman, Cynara, Cinnamon, or Cindy -- beautiful and brown -- gets to tell her story. Cindy is born into a world in which she is unacknowledged by her plantation-owning father and passed over by her mother in favor of her white charges. Sold off like so much used furniture, she eventually makes her way back to Atlanta to take up with a prominent white businessman, only to leave him for an aspiring politician of her own color. Moving from the Deep South to the exhilarating freedom of Reconstruction Washington, with its thriving black citizenry of statesmen, professionals, and strivers of every persuasion, Cindy experiences firsthand the promise of the new era at its dizzying peak, just before it begins to slip away. Alluding to events in Mitchell’s novel but ingeniously and ironically transforming them, THE WIND DONE GONE is an exquisitely written, emotionally complex story of a strong, resourceful black woman breaking away from the damaging world of the Old South to emerge into her own, a person capable of not only receiving but giving love, as daughter, lover, and mother. A passionate love story, a wrenching portrait of a tangled mother-daughter relationship, and a book that gives a voice to those history has silenced, THE WIND DONE GONE is an elegant literary achievement of significant political force and a novel whose time has finally come.

Alice Randall is an American author and songwriter of African-American descent. She is perhaps best known for her novel The Wind Done Gone, a reinterpretation and parody of the popular 1936 novel Gone with the Wind.

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The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, A Bilingual Anthology by Mark Weiss. Berkeley. 2009. University Of California Press. 624 pages. 9780520258945. November 2009.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

  Cuba's cultural influence throughout the Western Hemisphere, and especially in the United States, has been disproportionally large for so small a country. This landmark volume is the first comprehensive overview of poetry written over the past sixty years. Presented in a beautiful Spanish-English en face edition, The Whole Island makes available the astonishing achievement of a wide range of Cuban poets, including such well-known figures as Nicolás Guillén, José Lezama Lima, and Nancy Morejón, but also poets widely read in Spanish who remain almost unknown to the English-speaking world-among them Fina García Marruz, José Kozer, Raúl Hernández Novás, and çngel Escobar-and poets born since the Revolution, like Rogelio Saunders, Omar Pérez, Alessandra Molina, and Javier Marimón. The translations, almost all of them new, convey the intensity and beauty of the accompanying Spanish originals. With their work deeply rooted in Cuban culture, many of these poets-both on and off the island-have been at the center of the political and social changes of this tempestuous period. The poems offered here constitute an essential source for understanding the literature and culture of Cuba, its diaspora, and the Caribbean at large, and provide an unparalleled perspective on what it means to be Cuban. CONTENTS – INTRODUCTION; Cuban Tightrope: Public and Private Lives of the Poets; A Note on the Text; NICOLÁS GUILLÉN - de El gran zoo|from The Great Zoo; El caribe|The Carib; Guitarra|Guitar; La pajarita de papel|Little Paper Bird; La Osa Mayor|Ursa Major; El Aconcagua|Aconcagua; Los ríos|The Rivers; Señora|Lady; La sed|Thirst; El hambre|Hunger; Las nubes|Clouds; Los vientos|The Winds; El tigre|The Tiger; Ciclón|Hurricane; Ave-Fénix|Phoenix; Lynch|Lynching; KKK|KKK; Las águilas|The Eagles; Luna|Moon; Tenor|Tenor; Reloj|Clock; Aviso|Announcement; EUGENIO FLORIT - Los poetas solos de Manhattan|Poets Alone in Manhattan; Juego|Game; Brujas|Bruges; El eterno|The Eternal; La niebla|The Fog; JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA - Pensamientos en la Habana|Thoughts in Havana; Oda a Julián del Casal|Ode to Julián del Casal; Atraviesan la noche|They Pass Through the Night; Las siete alegorías|The Seven Allegories; VIRGILIO PIÑERA - Los muertos de la Patria|The Fatherland's Dead; Nunca los dejaré|I Will Never Leave Them; En la puerta de mi vecino. |On my neighbor's door. ; Testamento|Testament; En el Gato Tuerto|At the One-Eyed Cat; Pin, pan, pun|Bang Bang; Quien soy|Who I Am; Una noche|A Night; Bueno, digamos|OK, Let's Say; Y cuando me contó|And When He Told Me; Reversibilidad|Reversibility; Isla|Island; SAMUEL FEIJÓO - En la muerte por fuego de Gladys, la joven de los canarios|On the Death by Fire of Gladys, the Young Girl Who Kept Canaries; Tumba con palmas|Tomb with Palm-Trees; Tres blues|Three Blues; Son del loco|The Madman's Son; Caonao adentro|Deep Within the Caonao; GASTÓN BAQUERO - Breve viaje nocturno|A Brief Nocturnal Voyage; Pavana para el Emperador|Pavane for the Emperor; El viento en Trieste decía|The Wind in Trieste Told; Los lunes me llamaba Nicanor|On Mondays My Name Was Nicanor; El héroe|The Hero; Fábula|Fable; Charada para Lidia Cabrera|Charada for Lidia Cabrera; Marcel Proust pasea en barca por la bahía de Corinto|Marcel Proust Cruises the Bay of Corinth; El gato personal del conde Cagliostro|Count Cagliostro's Cat; El viajero|The Traveler; ELISEO DIEGO - Bajo los astros|Beneath the Stars; El oscuro esplendor|The Dark Splendor; En memoria|In Memoriam; Cartagena de Indias|Cartagena of the Indies; Versiones|Versions; La casa del pan|The House of Bread; Riesgos del equilibrista|The Rope Dancer's Risks; La niña en el bosque|The Girl in the Forest; La casa abandonada|The Deserted House; Oda a la joven luz|Ode to the Young Light; Testamento|Testament; Mi madre la oca|Mother Goose; Comienza un lunes|On a Monday; A una muchacha|To a Girl; CINTIO VITIER - El bosque de Birnam|Birnam Wood; Plegaria|Prayer; FINA GARCÍA-MARRUZ - Visitaciones|Visitations; El momento que más amo|My Favorite Moment; de Gramática inglesa|from English Grammar; Pequeña elegía|Little Elegy; Dígame|Tell Me; Uso de plurales|Use of the Plural; Heraldo|Herald; Adán|Adam; Participios pasivos|Past Participles; Quién ha visto|Who Has Seen; Este libro de gramática|This Grammar Book; LORENZO GARCÍA VEGA - Variaciones|Variations; En las lágrimas de las focas|In the Seals' Tears; Túnel|Tunnel; El santo del Padre Rector|The Rector's Saint's Day; El viejo Maldoror|Old Maldoror; Con una advertencia|With a Warning; Texto martiano|Martían Text; Buscándome el vacío|Seeking My Void; Ilusión venido a menos|Illusion Come to Naught; Arañazo mediúmnico|Mediumistic Scratch; El extraño rigor|Strange Rigor; Colosal olvido|Colossal Oblivion; Manuscrito para la cajita|Manuscript for the Box; No, vano discurso no es vacío|No, Vain Speech Is Not Empty; Junto al campo de golf|By the Golf Course; Revisando la visión|Revising the Vision; Caluroso el día|Warm Day; Un mandala|A Mandala; CARLOS GALINDO LENA - Qué hacer si he perdido las llaves. |What to do if I've lost the keys. ; Siempre es bueno recordar a Tebas|It's Always Good to Remember Thebes; Ayer el mar era una ausencia|Yesterday the Sea Was an Absence; FRANCISCO DE ORAÁ - Yo no sé cómo voy a no sé donde|I Don't Know How I'm Going I Don't Know Where; De cómo fue la muerte hallada dentro de una botija|How Death Was Found Inside a Jar; En uso de razón|Of Sound Mind; Ahora quita el agua y pon el sol|Now Take Away the Water and Bring the Sun; Vida de niño|A Boy's Life; Ahogado en el serón|Drowned in the Basket; Sobre las cosas que, si miras bien, ves en el cielo|Concerning the Things That, If You Take a Good Look, You'll See in the Sky; Dos sueños con un ave|Two Dreams of a Bird; Aventura entre niños|Adventure Among Children; Del pescador|Of the Fisherman; De tres fotos de Mella|On Three Photos of Mella; ROBERTO BRANLY - Atardecer sobre San Anastasio|Evening Falls on San Anastasio; Pablo Armando Fernández; Nacimiento de Eggo|Birth of Eggo; Rendición de Eshu|Surrender of Eshu; de Suite para Maruja|from Suite for Maruja; La primavera, dices. |’Spring,’ you say. ; Cuando anochece. |When night begins to fall. ; Casi siempre, y solos. |Almost always, and alone. ; ROBERTO FERNÁNDEZ RETAMAR - Un hombre y una mujer|A Man and a Woman; Felices los normales|Blessèd Are the Normal; Le preguntaron por los persas|Being Asked About the Persians; FAYAD JAMÍS - A veces|Sometimes; Las bodas del hormiguero|The Wedding in the Anthill; Vagabundo del alba|Wanderer of the Dawn; Charlot y la luna|Charlie and the Moon; Por esta libertad|For This Freedom; HEBERTO PADILLA - En tiempos difíciles|In Difficult Times; El discurso del método|Discourse on Method; Oración para el fin de siglo|Prayer for the Turn of the Century; Los poetas cubanos ya no sueñan|Cuban Poets Don't Dream Anymore; Para aconsejar a una dama|To Advise a Lady; Poética|Poetics; Paisajes|Landscapes; El lugar del amor|The Place of Love; JOSÉ ALVAREZ BARAGAÑO - Los distritos sonoros|Sonorous Districts; Yo oscuro|Dark Self; Los muertos|The Dead; Revolución color de libertad|Revolution, The Color of Freedom; Nuestro nombre no está escrito. |Our name is unwritten. ; CÉSAR LÓPEZ - Como en cualquier ciudad. |As in any respectable city. ; El poeta en la ciudad|The Poet in the City; ANTÓN ARRUFAT - de Repaso final|from Final Revision; Mi familia muerta. |My dead family. ; El gallo que canta. |The rooster that sings. ; JOSÉ KOZER - Te acuerdas, Sylvia|Sylvia, Do You Remember; Rebrote de Franz Kafka|Kafka Reborn; La dádiva|The Offering; Jerusalén celeste|The Heavenly Jerusalem; òltima voluntad|Last Will and Testament; çnima|Anima; Reino|Dominion; La casa de enfrente|The House Across the Way; Danzonete|Danzonete; MIGUEL BARNET - Así, la muerte|Death's Like That; Suite cubana|Cuban Suite; Caminando la ciudad|Walking the City; Con pies de gato|On Cat's Feet; Memorándum XIV|Memorandum XIV; En el barrio chino|In Chinatown; BELKIS CUZA MALÉ - Las cenicientas|The Cinderellas; La fuente de plata|The Silver Platter; Caja de Pandora|Pandora's Box; Crítica a la razón impura|Critique of Impure Reason; El ombligo del mundo|The Navel of the World; NANCY MOREJÓN - Parque Central alguna gente |Some People/Central Park/3:00 P. M. ; LUIS ROGELIO NOGUERAS - Mujer saliendo del armario|Woman Emerging from the Closet; Un tesoro|A Treasure; Canta|Sing; Don't look back, lonesome boy|Don't Look Back, Lonesome Boy; |; Pérdida del poema de amor llamado ‘Niebla’|Loss of the Poem Called ‘Mist’; Oración por el hijo que nunca va a nacer|Prayer for the Son Who Will Never Be Born; Un poema|A Poem; El último caso del inspector|The Detective's Last Case; Una muchacha|A Girl; Viaje|Voyage; LINA DE FERIA - Poema para la mujer que habla sola en el Parque de Calzada|Poem for the Woman Who Talks to Herself in Calzada Park; No es necesario ir a los andenes|You Don't Have to Go onto the Platform; Preámbulo|Preamble; DELFÍN PRATS - No vuelvas a los lugares donde fuiste feliz|Never Return to the Scenes of Your Happiness; Para festejar el ascenso de êcaro|In Celebration of the Ascent of Icarus; Fábula del cazador y el ciervo|Fable of the Hunter and the Stag; Viento de Patmos|Wind Out of Patmos; EXCILIA SALDAÑA - La mujer que ríe y llora|The Woman Who Laughs and Cries; RAÚL HERNÁNDEZ NOVÁS; Quién seré sino el tonto|Who Would I Be If Not the Fool; Sobre el nido del cuco|Over the Cuckoo's Nest; AMANDO FERNÁNDEZ - Descenso de la agonía|Deathwatch; El capitán|The Captain; La estatua|The Statue; SOLEIDA RÍOS - Pájaro de La Bruja|The Witch's Bird; Maleva y los niños en el paraíso|Maleva and the Children in Paradise; El texto sucio|Dirty Text; Recogí limones|Gathering Lemons; El camino del cementerio|The Road to the Cemetery; LOURDES GIL - Desvelo de los pájaros anoche|Nightly Insomnia of the Birds; Fata Morgana|Fata Morgana; REINA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ - Ellas escriben cartas de amor|Women Write Love Letters; Una mujer se desnuda frente a un profesor estupefacto|A Woman Undresses in Front of a Stupefied Professor; Una muchacha loca como los pájaros|A Girl Mad as Birds; Pescadores |Fishermen ; ABILIO ESTÉVEZ - Las pequeñas cosas|Small Things; Frente al río|Facing the River; Visita del abuelo|Grandfather's Visit; IRAIDA ITURRALDE - Claroscuro|Chiaroscuro; El rostro de la nación|The Face of the Nation; Exilio, la sien|Exile, the Brow; RUTH BEHAR; Carta|Letter; Ofrenda|Offering; El mundo|The World; Un deseo para el año que viene|A New Year's Wish; ANGEL ESCOBAR - Las puertas|Doors; El pulgar y el índice|The Thumb and the Index Finger; Hospitales|Hospitals; Los cuatro cuentos|The Four Tales; Otro|Another; La sombra del decir|The Shadow of Speech; La guardería infantil|Daycare Center; Quién le teme a Franz Kafka|Who's Afraid of Franz Kafka; Frente frío|Cold Front; RAMÓN FERNÁNDEZ LARREA - Poema transitorio|Transitory Poem; Cantando con mi abuelita sobre las piernas|Singing with My Grandmother on My Lap; El país de los elfos|The Land of Elves; ROBERTO MÉNDEZ - Fábula peligrosa|Dangerous Fable; Ensayo sobre la tristeza|Essay on Sorrow; Lo estelar|The Stellar; ROLANDO SÁNCHEZ MEJÍAS - Cálculo de lindes|A Calculus of Boundaries; Rogelio Saunders; Vater Pound|Vater Pound; ISMAEL GONZÁLEZ CASTAÑER - de Sábado|from Saturday; Cinco mujeres turcas. |Five Turkish women. ; Vacaciones en el mundo|A Vacation in the World; Mirar y mirar por la ventana|Looking and Looking Through the Window; Viendo construir un puente. |Watching them build a bridge. ; JUAN CARLOS FLORES - Tótem|Totem; El secadero|The Drying Shed; Uno de los blues|One of the Blues; Retrato de una dama|Portrait of Lady; El ciclista K|K the Bicyclist; Sírvase usted|Help Yourself; La mosca|The Fly; PEDRO LLANES - Nombres de la casa invisible|The Names of the Invisible House; SIGFREDO ARIEL; La luz, bróder, la luz|The Light, Brother, the Light; La vida ajena|The Other Life; La hora de comer|Dinner Time; FRANK ABEL DOPICO - El correo de la noche|Night Mail; Mercadilla de máscaras|Mask Market; A mi padre|To My Father; Francois Villón|François Villon; Cuando pasan los años|When the Years Pass; ALBERTO RODRÍGUEZ TOSCA - Ojos de perro azul|Eyes of the Blue Dog; Suma transitoria|Transitory Sum; OMAR PÉREZ LÓPEZ - Contribuciones a un idea rudimentaria de nación|Contributions to a Rudimentary Idea of a Nation; Cunda, el herrero. |Cunda, the blacksmith. ; Imprecaciones, adivinanzas|Invocations, Riddles; Saludo de los perros|The Dogs' Greeting; Las instituciones místicas del decoro|The Mystical Institutions of Decorum; El loco|The Madman; ANTONIO JOSÉ PONTE - Un poco a la manera de Ismael|Somewhat in the Style of Ismael; Sobre el planeta|Regarding the Planet; Canción|Song; Un bosque, una escalera|A Forest, a Stairway; La silla en escapada|Chair on the Run; Augurios|Auguries; Asiento en las ruinas|A Seat in the Ruins; HERIBERTO HERNÁNDEZ - Las paredes de vidrio|Glass Walls; Fábula del delfín y la sombra del pájaro|Fable of the Dolphin and the Bird's Shadow; PEDRO MARQUÉS DE ARMAS - Tú no irás a Troya|You'll Not to Troy; Claro de bosque |Forest Clearing ; DAMARIS CALDERÓN - Con el terror del equilibrista|With the Terror of the Tightrope Walker; Ésta será la única mentira en la que siempre creeremos|This Will Be the Only Lie We'll Always Believe; Astillas|Splinters; Huesos fuertes|Strong Bones; La máscara japonesa|The Japanese Mask; ALESSANDRA MOLINA - As de triunfo|Trump Card; Herbolaria|Herbalist; Ronda infantil|A Childish Round; CARLOS A. AGUILERA - B, Ce-|B, Ce-; JAVIER MARIMÓN - Generación espontánea|Spontaneous Generation; Biographies and Notes to the Poems; Translators; Acknowledgments; Credits.

Mark Weiss is a poet, translator, publisher, and editor. His publications include six books of poetry; as coeditor, Across the Line/Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California; and as translator, Stet: Selected Poems of José Kozer.

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Selected Cronicas by Clarice Lispector. New York. 1996. New Directions. Translated From The Portuguese By Giovanni Pontiero. 296 pages. Cover design by Semadar Megged. 9780811213400. November 1996.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Clarice Lispector's Saturday column in the Jornal do Brasil was, even by the Brazilian standards of this 'chronicle' genre, extraordinarily free and intimate - astonishingly so to European readers. Varying from stories to aphorisms, from introspective revelation to conversations with taxi-drivers, this flexible medium was brilliantly handled by Brazil's most innovative woman writer. Her conversations with writers and poets, musicians and actors, painters and architects, reveal her endless curiosity about all forms of human expression. Her travel notes and reminiscences of places as far apart as Berne and Brasilia, Liberia and London, reveal an incomparable feeling for atmosphere. Her encounters with children, and with the dispossessed of Brazil, show an empathy that is unsparing both to adults and to the fortunate - that is, herself and her readers. Lispector is marvelously unpredictable, and always disarmingly frank.

Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.

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Betye Saar: Extending The Frozen Moment by Betye Saar. Berkeley. 2005. University of California Press. 176 pages. 0520246624.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Essays By James Christen Steward, Deborah Willis, Kellie Jones, Richard Cándida Smith, Lowery Stokes Sims, Sean Ulmer, and Katherine Derosier Weiss. Betye Saar, born in Los Angeles in 1926, emerged in the 1960s as a powerful figure in the redefinition of African American art. Over the past forty years, she has injected African American visual histories into mainstream visual culture by blending spiritual, political, and cultural iconography to create complex works with universal impact. This beautifully illustrated book accompanies an exhibition of Saar’s work, showcasing the extraordinary depth and breadth of her achievement. It provides multiple vantage points from which to gain a richer understanding of Saar’s career, American art of the 1960s, feminism, contemporary art, and California culture and politics.

James Christen Steward is Director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Deborah Willis is Professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University.

Kellie Jones is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University.

Richard Cándida Smith is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lowery Stokes Sims is Director of the Studio Museum, Harlem, New York.

Sean M. Ulmer is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at UMMA.

Katharine Derosier Weiss is Exhibitions Assistant at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

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Discovering the World by Clarice Lispector. Manchester. 1992. Carcanet. Translated From The Portuguese By Giovanni Pontiero. 652 pages. Cover illustration Flowers' An engraving by Marina Caram. Jacket design by Stephen Raw. 0856359548

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Clarice Lispector’s Saturday column in the Jornal do Brasil was, even by the Brazilian standards of this ‘chronicle’ genre, extraordinarily free and intimate - astonishingly so to European readers. Varying from stories to aphorisms, from introspective revelation to conversations with taxi-drivers, this flexible medium was brilliantly handled by Brazil’s most innovative woman writer. Her conversations with writers and poets, musicians and actors, painters and architects, reveal her endless curiosity about all forms of human expression. Her travel notes and reminiscences of places as far apart as Berne and Brasilia, Liberia and London, reveal an incomparable feeling for atmosphere. Her encounters with children, and with the dispossessed of Brazil, show an empathy that is unsparing both to adults and to the fortunate - that is, herself and her readers. Lispector is marvelously unpredictable, and always disarmingly frank.

Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector’s gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.

GIOVANNI PONTIERO is Reader in Latin American Literature at the University of Manchester, and the translator of novels and stories by Lispector, Jose Saramago, and others.

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Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan. London. 1972. Heinemann. 498 pages. 0434305755.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Ringolevio is a New York street game, a violent game, ‘a game to be fought rather than played’. It was Emmett Grogan’s preparation for life. Who is Emmett Grogan? He’s a freckle-faced Irish-American from Brooklyn who got hooked on ‘junk’ while still at school and had to support his habit by petty theft and robbery with violence. He’s been professional burglar, convict, playboy traveller, film-maker, Soho porn-broker, saboteur, and a U. S. Defense Department certified schizophrenic who deliberately sent himself amphetamine crazy on a military bazooka range. He’s the founder and chief inspiration of the legendary Diggers of San Francisco, who were dedicated to creating a genuine alternative lifestyle and spent years ‘acquiring’ and passing out free food, free clothes, free theatre and more to hundreds of poor and needy in the Haight-Ashbury and the city ghettoes. He’s America’s most famous invisible man, who, determined to keep his identity anonymous, has fed deceptions to the press and let others use his name to the point where some people even think he doesn’t actually exist, assuming the name is a symbol for all who work outside the system reported the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s a brilliantly gifted natural writer whose RINGOLEVIO is perhaps the single most exciting book ever to come out of the American underground, an autobiography that explodes with sheer adventure and a revolutionary social vision.

Emmett Grogan (c. 1943–1978) was a founder of the Diggers, a radical community-action group of Improv actors in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California. The Diggers took their name from the English Diggers (1649-1650), a radical movement opposed to feudalism, the Church of England and the British Crown. The San Francisco Diggers were a legendary group that evolved out of two radical traditions that thrived in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground art/theater scene, and the New Left/civil rights/peace movement. The Diggers combined street theater, direct action, and art happenings in their social agenda of creating a Free City. Their most famous activities revolved around distributing free food (‘Free because it's yours!’) every day in the park, and distributing ‘surplus energy’ at a series of Free Stores (where everything in stock was without a price tag). The Diggers coined various slogans that became part of the counterculture and even the larger society, such as, ‘Do your own thing’ and ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ The Diggers ultimately inspired Abbie Hoffman to undertake a similar venture on the Lower East Side of New York City during the mid-1960s. The Diggers of the 1960s also inspired present-day Food Not Bombs groups who distribute free food to the hungry. Grogan's penchant for personal myth-making and distrust of the mainstream media made it difficult for reporters to acquire more than a few details of his life. He wrote in RINGOLEVIO that he had traveled to Europe to escape the Mafia and lived there for several years; in reality, after high school in Brooklyn, he attended Duke University for one year before moving to San Francisco. Grogan was also the author of FINAL SCORE, a crime novel. He married the French-Canadian actress Louise LaTraverse and had one son, Max. Emmett Grogan sang back-up with Ramblin' Jack Elliott on ‘Mr. Tambourine Man‘ written by Bob Dylan. Dylan dedicated his 1978 album Street Legal to Grogan. On April 6, 1978, the 35-year-old Emmett Grogan was found dead on an F Train subway car in New York City, the victim of a heart attack possibly induced by chronic heroin use. Grogan shunned media attention, and became increasingly suspicious of those who sought publicity. In Ringolevio Grogan discusses the 1967 Human Be-In, criticizing counterculture luminaries Timothy Leary, Jerry Rubin, and especially Abbie Hoffman. He writes of poet Allen Ginsberg, ‘He even appeared to believe that the mere assembling of such a crowd was a superworthy achievement in itself, negating any need for further action. In a way it did. Since the body count of three hundred thousand assured the HIP [Haight Independent Proprietors] and their friends of worldwide media coverage, why give the press anything to photograph or write about other than the people who gathered? That way it was one great big fashion show, that's all.’ Grogan thought the HIP merchants were the primary beneficiaries of the event as he writes, ‘The HIP merchants were astounded by their own triumph by promoting such a large market for their wares. They became the Western world's taste makers overnight.'