Anthologies

For writers Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic “hall of mirrors,” Aldous Huxley a “city of dreadful joy.” Where Jack Kerouac found a “huge desert encampment,” David Thompson imagined “Marilyn Monroe, fifty miles long, lying on her side, half-buried on a ridge of crumbling rock.” In Writing Los Angeles , The Library of America presents a glittering panorama of the city, encompassing fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, and diaries by over seventy writers. This revelatory anthology brings to life the entrancing surfaces and unsettling contradictions of the City of Angels, from Raymond Chandler’s evocation of the murderous moods fed by the Santa Ana winds to John Gregory Dunne’s affectionate tribute to “the deceptive perspectives of the pale subtropical light.” Here are fascinating strata of Los Angeles’s cultural and social history, from the oil boom of the 1920s to the graffiti artists of the 1980s, from flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson to surf music genius Brian Wilson, from the German émigré intellectuals chronicled by Salka Viertel to the hard-bitten homicide cops tracked by James Ellroy. Here are its fragile ecosystems, its architectural splendors, and its social chasms, in the words of writers as various as M.F.K. Fisher, William Faulkner, Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Octavio Paz, Joan Didion, Walter Mosley, and Mona Simpson. Art Pepper discovers Central Avenue in the heyday of the 1940s jazz scene; Charles Mingus describes an early encounter with the builder of the Watts Towers; screenwriter Robert Towne reflects on the origins of Chinatown; John McPhee powerfully conveys the devastation of Los Angeles mudslides; David Hockney teaches himself how to drive in record time; and Pico Iyer finds at Los Angeles International Airport “as clear an image as exists today of the world we are about to enter.” Writing Los Angeles is an incomparable literary tour guide to a city of shifting identities and endless surprises.

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America’s national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural. Whether it’s a frozen curveball, a robot pitcher, or fantasy outcomes (the Cubs winning the World Series!), these terrific stories are ones that fans of science fiction will enjoy, while fans of baseball will find strangely believable. Included in this wonderful anthology are stories from such prolific authors as: Stephen King Jack Kerouac Karen Joy Fowler Rod Serling W. P. Kinsella And many more! Never has a book combined the incredible events of baseball and science fiction like Field of Fantasies does. Whether you’re a sport or science fiction fan, these stories will appeal not only to your fandom, but also to your appreciation and acceptance of the unknown taking place on the baseball diamond. If you’ve ever held a bat or glove in your hand (or just watched the game on TV), you’ll be enthralled by these terrific tales that range from the sandlot to the sold-out stadium.

Explore the fascinating lives and loves of the greatest novelists, poets, and playwrights. From William Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison, Writers explores more than 100 biographies of the world’s greatest writers. Trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and affected their writing, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots, and evocative settings that they created. You will also uncover details each writer’s most famous pieces and understand the times and cultures they lived in - see how the world influenced them and how their works influenced the world. Writers introduces key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each figure, revealing the imaginations, and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. A diverse variety of authors are covered, from the Middle Ages to present day, providing a compelling glimpse into the lives of the people behind the page.

A unique Pocket Poets anthology of a hundred years of poetic tributes to the silver screen, from the silent film era to the present. The variety of subjects is dazzling, from movie stars to bit players, from B-movies to Bollywood, from Clark Gable to Jean Cocteau. More than a hundred poets riff on their movie memories: Langston Hughes and John Updike on the theaters of their youth, Jack Kerouac and Robert Lowell on Harpo Marx, Sharon Olds on Marilyn Monroe, Louise Erdrich on John Wayne, May Swenson on the James Bond films, Terrance Hayes on early Black cinema, Maxine Kumin on Casablanca, and Richard Wilbur on The Prisoner of Zenda . Orson Welles, Leni Riefenstahl, and Ingmar Bergman share the spotlight with Shirley Temple, King Kong, and Carmen Miranda; Bonnie and Clyde and Ridley Scott with Roshomon , Hitchcock, and Bresson. In Reel Verse, one of our oldest art forms pays loving homage to one of our newest—the thrilling art of cinema.