Author: Ricardo J. Quinones
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400862140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
Era by era, from the writings of the classical Christian epoch up to East of Eden and Amadeus, from Philo to Finnegans Wake, Ricardo Quinones examines the contexts of a master metaphor of our culture. This brilliant work is the first comprehensive book on the Cain and Abel story. "Ricardo Quinones takes us on a grand tour of Western civilization in his admirable book, which reveals the riches of the Cain-Abel story as it develops from its Biblical origin to Citizen Kane and Michel Tournier. This is cultural history and literary criticism of the first order, finely written, formidably but gracefully erudite, and illustrating the capacity of Judeo-Christian culture and the modernity emerging from it constantly to criticize the darker side of its own foundations and realizations."--Joseph Frank "Ricardo J. Quinones skips Biblical and Talmudic exegesis to follow Cain and Abel through later centuries, from classical times to the present. What he uncovers sheds light on important shifts of consciousness and behavior in European and American culture. . . . Quinones writes with true eloquence and conviction. . . ."--James Finn Cotter, The Hudson Review "Quinones's study of how [the] three Cains were transformed by Romanticism and Modernism into a sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but always necessary archetype of the modern world is literary and cultural analytic history at its very best."--Choice Ricardo J. Quinones is Josephine Olp Weeks Professor of English and Comparative Literatures, and Director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. He is the author of The Renaissance Discovery of Time (Harvard), Dante Alighieri (Twayne), and Mapping Literary Modernism: Time and Development (Princeton). Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Changes of Cain
Author: Ricardo J. Quinones
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400862140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
Era by era, from the writings of the classical Christian epoch up to East of Eden and Amadeus, from Philo to Finnegans Wake, Ricardo Quinones examines the contexts of a master metaphor of our culture. This brilliant work is the first comprehensive book on the Cain and Abel story. "Ricardo Quinones takes us on a grand tour of Western civilization in his admirable book, which reveals the riches of the Cain-Abel story as it develops from its Biblical origin to Citizen Kane and Michel Tournier. This is cultural history and literary criticism of the first order, finely written, formidably but gracefully erudite, and illustrating the capacity of Judeo-Christian culture and the modernity emerging from it constantly to criticize the darker side of its own foundations and realizations."--Joseph Frank "Ricardo J. Quinones skips Biblical and Talmudic exegesis to follow Cain and Abel through later centuries, from classical times to the present. What he uncovers sheds light on important shifts of consciousness and behavior in European and American culture. . . . Quinones writes with true eloquence and conviction. . . ."--James Finn Cotter, The Hudson Review "Quinones's study of how [the] three Cains were transformed by Romanticism and Modernism into a sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but always necessary archetype of the modern world is literary and cultural analytic history at its very best."--Choice Ricardo J. Quinones is Josephine Olp Weeks Professor of English and Comparative Literatures, and Director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. He is the author of The Renaissance Discovery of Time (Harvard), Dante Alighieri (Twayne), and Mapping Literary Modernism: Time and Development (Princeton). Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400862140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
Era by era, from the writings of the classical Christian epoch up to East of Eden and Amadeus, from Philo to Finnegans Wake, Ricardo Quinones examines the contexts of a master metaphor of our culture. This brilliant work is the first comprehensive book on the Cain and Abel story. "Ricardo Quinones takes us on a grand tour of Western civilization in his admirable book, which reveals the riches of the Cain-Abel story as it develops from its Biblical origin to Citizen Kane and Michel Tournier. This is cultural history and literary criticism of the first order, finely written, formidably but gracefully erudite, and illustrating the capacity of Judeo-Christian culture and the modernity emerging from it constantly to criticize the darker side of its own foundations and realizations."--Joseph Frank "Ricardo J. Quinones skips Biblical and Talmudic exegesis to follow Cain and Abel through later centuries, from classical times to the present. What he uncovers sheds light on important shifts of consciousness and behavior in European and American culture. . . . Quinones writes with true eloquence and conviction. . . ."--James Finn Cotter, The Hudson Review "Quinones's study of how [the] three Cains were transformed by Romanticism and Modernism into a sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but always necessary archetype of the modern world is literary and cultural analytic history at its very best."--Choice Ricardo J. Quinones is Josephine Olp Weeks Professor of English and Comparative Literatures, and Director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. He is the author of The Renaissance Discovery of Time (Harvard), Dante Alighieri (Twayne), and Mapping Literary Modernism: Time and Development (Princeton). Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Curse of Cain
Author: Regina M. Schwartz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226741994
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
For Regina Schwartz, we ignore the dark side of the Bible to our peril. The perplexing story of Cain and Abel is emblematic of the tenacious influence of the Bible on secular notions of identity - notions that are all too often violently exclusionary, negatively defining "us" against "them" in ethnic, religious, racial, gender, and nationalistic terms. In this compelling work of cultural and biblical criticism, Schwartz contends that it is the very concept of monotheism and its jealous demand for exclusive allegiance - to one God, one Land, one Nation or one People - that informs the model of collective identity forged in violence, against the other.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226741994
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
For Regina Schwartz, we ignore the dark side of the Bible to our peril. The perplexing story of Cain and Abel is emblematic of the tenacious influence of the Bible on secular notions of identity - notions that are all too often violently exclusionary, negatively defining "us" against "them" in ethnic, religious, racial, gender, and nationalistic terms. In this compelling work of cultural and biblical criticism, Schwartz contends that it is the very concept of monotheism and its jealous demand for exclusive allegiance - to one God, one Land, one Nation or one People - that informs the model of collective identity forged in violence, against the other.
Raising Cain
Author: Dan Kindlon, Ph.D.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307569225
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The stunning success of Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher’s landmark book, showed a true and pressing need to address the emotional lives of girls. Now, finally, here is the book that answers our equally timely and critical need to understand our boys. In Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., and Michael Thompson, Ph.D., two of the country’s leading child psychologists, share what they have learned in more than thirty-five years of combined experience working with boys and their families. They reveal a nation of boys who are hurting—sad, afraid, angry, and silent. Statistics point to an alarming number of young boys at high risk for suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and loneliness. Kindlon and Thompson set out to answer this basic, crucial question: What do boys need that they’re not getting? They illuminate the forces that threaten our boys, teaching them to believe that “cool” equals macho strength and stoicism. Cutting through outdated theories of “mother blame,” “boy biology,” and "testosterone,” Kindlon and Thompson shed light on the destructive emotional training our boys receive—the emotional miseducation of boys. Through moving case studies and cutting-edge research, Raising Cain paints a portrait of boys systematically steered away from their emotional lives by adults and the peer “culture of cruelty”—boys who receive little encouragement to develop qualities such as compassion, sensitivity, and warmth. The good news is that this doesn't have to happen. There is much we can do to prevent it. Kindlon and Thompson make a compelling case that emotional literacy is the most valuable gift we can offer our sons, urging parents to recognize the price boys pay when we hold them to an impossible standard of manhood. They identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school and show how parents can help boys cultivate emotional awareness and empathy—giving them the vital connections and support they need to navigate the social pressures of youth. Powerfully written and deeply felt, Raising Cain will forever change the way we see our sons and will transform the way we help them to become happy and fulfilled young men.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307569225
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The stunning success of Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher’s landmark book, showed a true and pressing need to address the emotional lives of girls. Now, finally, here is the book that answers our equally timely and critical need to understand our boys. In Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., and Michael Thompson, Ph.D., two of the country’s leading child psychologists, share what they have learned in more than thirty-five years of combined experience working with boys and their families. They reveal a nation of boys who are hurting—sad, afraid, angry, and silent. Statistics point to an alarming number of young boys at high risk for suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and loneliness. Kindlon and Thompson set out to answer this basic, crucial question: What do boys need that they’re not getting? They illuminate the forces that threaten our boys, teaching them to believe that “cool” equals macho strength and stoicism. Cutting through outdated theories of “mother blame,” “boy biology,” and "testosterone,” Kindlon and Thompson shed light on the destructive emotional training our boys receive—the emotional miseducation of boys. Through moving case studies and cutting-edge research, Raising Cain paints a portrait of boys systematically steered away from their emotional lives by adults and the peer “culture of cruelty”—boys who receive little encouragement to develop qualities such as compassion, sensitivity, and warmth. The good news is that this doesn't have to happen. There is much we can do to prevent it. Kindlon and Thompson make a compelling case that emotional literacy is the most valuable gift we can offer our sons, urging parents to recognize the price boys pay when we hold them to an impossible standard of manhood. They identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school and show how parents can help boys cultivate emotional awareness and empathy—giving them the vital connections and support they need to navigate the social pressures of youth. Powerfully written and deeply felt, Raising Cain will forever change the way we see our sons and will transform the way we help them to become happy and fulfilled young men.
Cain and Abel - Arch Books
Author: Nicole Dreyer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780758652256
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This Arch Book retells the story of Cain and Abelfirst man to be born and the first man to die (Genesis 4).
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780758652256
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This Arch Book retells the story of Cain and Abelfirst man to be born and the first man to die (Genesis 4).
Days of Cain
Author: J. R. Dunn
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
ISBN: 1618249274
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
Arguably the best time travel tale dealing with the Holocaust every written, in our humble opinion. A rebellious group of time travelers attempt to prevent one of the greatest atrocities humanity ever deviseAuschwitz. Monitor and ace enforcement operative Gaspar James is sent to stop them. Gaspar knows that the horror must be allowed to run its course in order to preserve the integrity of the time line. At least that's what he has told himself throughout his service to the Moiety, the group charged with overseeing the continuity of time. But even Gaspar has his doubts¾and millions of lives hang in the balance. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). "[Dunn's fiction contains] . . . action scenes ranking with the best in military SF."¾Publishers Weekly "Genuinely harrowing and impassioned, with wonderful characters and an unforgettable theme."¾Kirkus
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
ISBN: 1618249274
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
Arguably the best time travel tale dealing with the Holocaust every written, in our humble opinion. A rebellious group of time travelers attempt to prevent one of the greatest atrocities humanity ever deviseAuschwitz. Monitor and ace enforcement operative Gaspar James is sent to stop them. Gaspar knows that the horror must be allowed to run its course in order to preserve the integrity of the time line. At least that's what he has told himself throughout his service to the Moiety, the group charged with overseeing the continuity of time. But even Gaspar has his doubts¾and millions of lives hang in the balance. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). "[Dunn's fiction contains] . . . action scenes ranking with the best in military SF."¾Publishers Weekly "Genuinely harrowing and impassioned, with wonderful characters and an unforgettable theme."¾Kirkus
The Way of Cain
Author: Billy J. Rash
Publisher: Word & Spirit Resources, LLC
ISBN: 9781936314553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Author and pastor, Dr. Billy Rash, reveals the tactics of a subtle and deadly attack the enemy uses against believers self-deception. As the highest form of deception, it is clothed in an easily justified attitude summed up with two words: spiritual apathy. In Jude 11 the Bible calls it, The Way of Cain.
Publisher: Word & Spirit Resources, LLC
ISBN: 9781936314553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Author and pastor, Dr. Billy Rash, reveals the tactics of a subtle and deadly attack the enemy uses against believers self-deception. As the highest form of deception, it is clothed in an easily justified attitude summed up with two words: spiritual apathy. In Jude 11 the Bible calls it, The Way of Cain.
Cain's Legacy
Author: Jeanne Safer
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465029442
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
Bonds between brothers and sisters are among the longest lasting and most emotionally significant of human relationships. But while 45 percent of adults struggle with serious sibling strife, few discuss it openly. Even fewer resolve it to their satisfaction.In Cain's Legacy, psychotherapist Jeanne Safer, a recognized authority on sibling psychology (and an estranged sister herself) illuminates this pervasive but hidden phenomenon. She explores the roots of inter-sibling woes, from siblicide in the book of Genesis to tensions in Frederique's family history. Drawing on sixty in-depth interviews with adult siblings struggling with conflicts over money, family businesses, aging parents, contentious wills, unhealed childhood wounds, and blocked communication, Safer provides compassionate guidance to brothers and sisters whose relationship is broken. She helps siblings overcome their paralysis and pain, revealing how they can come to terms with the one peer relationship they can never sever -- even if they never see each other again.A heartfelt look at a too-often avoided topic, Cain's Legacy is a sympathetic and clear-eyed guide to navigating the darkness separating us from our brothers and sisters.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465029442
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
Bonds between brothers and sisters are among the longest lasting and most emotionally significant of human relationships. But while 45 percent of adults struggle with serious sibling strife, few discuss it openly. Even fewer resolve it to their satisfaction.In Cain's Legacy, psychotherapist Jeanne Safer, a recognized authority on sibling psychology (and an estranged sister herself) illuminates this pervasive but hidden phenomenon. She explores the roots of inter-sibling woes, from siblicide in the book of Genesis to tensions in Frederique's family history. Drawing on sixty in-depth interviews with adult siblings struggling with conflicts over money, family businesses, aging parents, contentious wills, unhealed childhood wounds, and blocked communication, Safer provides compassionate guidance to brothers and sisters whose relationship is broken. She helps siblings overcome their paralysis and pain, revealing how they can come to terms with the one peer relationship they can never sever -- even if they never see each other again.A heartfelt look at a too-often avoided topic, Cain's Legacy is a sympathetic and clear-eyed guide to navigating the darkness separating us from our brothers and sisters.
The Mark of Cain
Author: Ruth Mellinkoff
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520906373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
For few verses in the Bible is the relationship between scripture and the artistic imagination more intriguing than for the conclusion of Genesis 4:15: "And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him." What was the mark of Cain? The answers set before us in this sensitive study by art historian Ruth Mellinkoff are sometimes poignant, frequently surprising. An early summary of rabbinic answers, for examples runs as follows: R. Judah said: "He caused the orb of the sun to shine on his account." Said R. Nehemiah to him: "For that wretch He would cause the orb of the sun to shine! Rather, he caused leprosy to break out on him...." Rab said: "He gave him a dog." Abba Jose said: "He made a horn grow out of him." Rab said: "He made him an example to murderers." R. Hanin said: "He made him an example to penitents." R. Levi said in the name of R. Simeon b. Lakish: "He suspended judgment until the flood came and swept him away." After a review of such early Jewish and Christian exegesis, Mellinkoff divides physical interpretations on the mark into three groups: "A Mark on Cain's Body," "A Movement of Cain's Body," and "A Blemish Associated with Cain's Body." Her discussion of these groups is the heart of her study and offers its richest examples of interplay among medieval art and imaginative literature, on the one hand, and biblical exegesis, on the other. Thus in one remarkable tour de force, she shows us how a poetic misprision of Genesis 4:24 - "Sevenfold vengeance will be taken for Cain: but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold" - made Lamech the murderer of Cain; how there then grew up the legend that Lamech, a hunter, had killed Cain when he mistook him for an animal; how from that, the notion that the mark of Cain was a horn or horns on Cain's head arose (in the poignant formulation of the Tanhuma Midrash: "Oh father, you have killed something that resembles a man except it has a horn on its forehead!"); and how from that, in the maturity of the legend, there flowered Cornish drama, Irish saga, and stunning reliefs of a dying, antlered Cain in the cathedrals of Vezelay and Autun. Like Genesis 4:15 itself, 'The Mark of Cain' is suggestive rather than comprehensive. Concluding chapters on "Intentionally Distorted Interpretations of Cain's Mark" and "Cain's Mark and the Jews" bring the history down to our own day, but Mellinkoff does not claim to have said the last word on the subject. Her achievement is neither documentary nor exegetical but rather demonstrative: she shows us with brilliant economy how the artistic imagination functioned in a world whose intellectual definition was a closed canonical text.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520906373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
For few verses in the Bible is the relationship between scripture and the artistic imagination more intriguing than for the conclusion of Genesis 4:15: "And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him." What was the mark of Cain? The answers set before us in this sensitive study by art historian Ruth Mellinkoff are sometimes poignant, frequently surprising. An early summary of rabbinic answers, for examples runs as follows: R. Judah said: "He caused the orb of the sun to shine on his account." Said R. Nehemiah to him: "For that wretch He would cause the orb of the sun to shine! Rather, he caused leprosy to break out on him...." Rab said: "He gave him a dog." Abba Jose said: "He made a horn grow out of him." Rab said: "He made him an example to murderers." R. Hanin said: "He made him an example to penitents." R. Levi said in the name of R. Simeon b. Lakish: "He suspended judgment until the flood came and swept him away." After a review of such early Jewish and Christian exegesis, Mellinkoff divides physical interpretations on the mark into three groups: "A Mark on Cain's Body," "A Movement of Cain's Body," and "A Blemish Associated with Cain's Body." Her discussion of these groups is the heart of her study and offers its richest examples of interplay among medieval art and imaginative literature, on the one hand, and biblical exegesis, on the other. Thus in one remarkable tour de force, she shows us how a poetic misprision of Genesis 4:24 - "Sevenfold vengeance will be taken for Cain: but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold" - made Lamech the murderer of Cain; how there then grew up the legend that Lamech, a hunter, had killed Cain when he mistook him for an animal; how from that, the notion that the mark of Cain was a horn or horns on Cain's head arose (in the poignant formulation of the Tanhuma Midrash: "Oh father, you have killed something that resembles a man except it has a horn on its forehead!"); and how from that, in the maturity of the legend, there flowered Cornish drama, Irish saga, and stunning reliefs of a dying, antlered Cain in the cathedrals of Vezelay and Autun. Like Genesis 4:15 itself, 'The Mark of Cain' is suggestive rather than comprehensive. Concluding chapters on "Intentionally Distorted Interpretations of Cain's Mark" and "Cain's Mark and the Jews" bring the history down to our own day, but Mellinkoff does not claim to have said the last word on the subject. Her achievement is neither documentary nor exegetical but rather demonstrative: she shows us with brilliant economy how the artistic imagination functioned in a world whose intellectual definition was a closed canonical text.
Sons of Cain
Author: Val Bianco
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983526216
Category : Conspiracy
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983526216
Category : Conspiracy
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
Charles Johnson's Novels
Author: Rudolph P. Byrd
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253111203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
"This is truly a major contribution to African American literary criticism, and it promises to elevate Johnson to the place in the literary firmament he so richly deserves." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University Charles Johnson came of age during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His fiction bears the imprint of his formal training as a philosopher and his work as a journalist and cartoonist with a well-honed interest in political satire. Mentored by the American writer John Gardner, Johnson is preoccupied with questions of morality, which are informed by his knowledge of Continental and Asian philosophical traditions. In this book, Rudolph Byrd examines Johnson's four novels -- Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage (National Book Award Winner), and Dreamer -- under the rubric of philosophical black fiction, as art that interrogates experience. Byrd contends that Johnson suspends, shelves, and brackets all presuppositions regarding African American life. This bracketing accomplished, the African American experience becomes a pure field of appearances within two poles: consciousness and the people or phenomena to which it is related. Johnson's principal themes are identity and liberation. Intent upon the liberation of perception, for the reader and the writer, Johnson's fiction aims at "whole sight," encompassing a plurality of meanings across a symbolic geography of forms, texts, and traditions from within the matrix of African American life and culture. And like a palimpsest, Johnson's texts contain multiple layers of meaning of disparate origins imprinted over time with varying degrees of visibility and significance. Charles Johnson's Novels will appeal to fans of the writer's work, but it also will serve as a helpful guide for readers newly introduced to this brilliant contemporary American writer.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253111203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
"This is truly a major contribution to African American literary criticism, and it promises to elevate Johnson to the place in the literary firmament he so richly deserves." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University Charles Johnson came of age during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His fiction bears the imprint of his formal training as a philosopher and his work as a journalist and cartoonist with a well-honed interest in political satire. Mentored by the American writer John Gardner, Johnson is preoccupied with questions of morality, which are informed by his knowledge of Continental and Asian philosophical traditions. In this book, Rudolph Byrd examines Johnson's four novels -- Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage (National Book Award Winner), and Dreamer -- under the rubric of philosophical black fiction, as art that interrogates experience. Byrd contends that Johnson suspends, shelves, and brackets all presuppositions regarding African American life. This bracketing accomplished, the African American experience becomes a pure field of appearances within two poles: consciousness and the people or phenomena to which it is related. Johnson's principal themes are identity and liberation. Intent upon the liberation of perception, for the reader and the writer, Johnson's fiction aims at "whole sight," encompassing a plurality of meanings across a symbolic geography of forms, texts, and traditions from within the matrix of African American life and culture. And like a palimpsest, Johnson's texts contain multiple layers of meaning of disparate origins imprinted over time with varying degrees of visibility and significance. Charles Johnson's Novels will appeal to fans of the writer's work, but it also will serve as a helpful guide for readers newly introduced to this brilliant contemporary American writer.