Carmela Ciuraru Livres

Many kinds of equine characters grace these pages, from magnificent war horses to cowboys' trusty steeds, from broken-down nags to playful colts, from wild horses to dream horses.

This rousing anthology features the work of more than twenty-five writers from the great twentieth-century countercultural literary movement. Writing with an audacious swagger and an iconoclastic zeal, and declaiming their verse with dramatic flourish in smoke-filled cafés, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range.The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure and the work of such women writers as Diane DiPrima and Denise Levertov. LeRoi Jones’s plaintive “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” and Bob Kaufman’s stirring “Abomunist Manifesto” appear here alongside statements on poetics and the alternately incendiary and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers.Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, this is a rich and varied tribute and, in the populist spirit of the Beats, a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere.

A witty, provocative exploration of the tumultuous marriages of five renowned writers, this work illuminates the creative process alongside the influences of money, fame, and power in their complex relationships. The history of wives often reflects silence and resilience, particularly in the context of celebrity and male privilege. The marriages of famous writers frequently reveal stormy dynamics marked by ambition, narcissism, and infidelity. As critic Elizabeth Hardwick noted, a man's brutality towards his wife is often overlooked. Author Carmela Ciuraru delves into the lives of these literary couples, revealing the struggles behind their public personas. Kenneth Tynan's jealousy of his wife Elaine Dundy's success highlights the tension between support and rivalry. Roald Dahl's initial pride in Patricia Neal's stardom turned to resentment when she became the primary breadwinner. Elizabeth Jane Howard found it necessary to divorce Kingsley Amis to pursue her writing, as his needs stifled her creativity. The most traditional partnership featured Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall, who, despite their conservative views, navigated their own unique challenges. The relationship between Italian novelists Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia was fraught with incompatibility and emotional turmoil, yet it fueled their literary achievements. This insightful and humorous book examines the intricate interplay of life, art, and love within t

What's in a name? In our "look at me" era, everyone's a brand. Privacy now seems a quaint relic, and self-effacement is a thing of the past. Yet, as Nom de Plume reminds us, this was not always the case. Exploring the fascinating stories of more than a dozen authorial impostors across several centuries and cultures, Carmela Ciuraru plumbs the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of fame. Biographies have chronicled the lives of pseudonymous authors such as Mark Twain, Isak Dinesen, and George Eliot, but never before have the stories behind many noms de plume been collected into a single volume. These are narratives of secrecy, obsession, modesty, scandal, defiance, and shame: Only through the protective guise of Lewis Carroll could a shy, half-deaf Victorian mathematician at Oxford feel free to let his imagination run wild. The "three weird sisters" (as they were called by the poet Ted Hughes) from Yorkshire the Brontes produced instant bestsellers that transformed them into literary icons, yet they wrote under the cloak of male authorship. Bored by her aristocratic milieu, a cigar-smoking, cross-dressing baroness rejected the rules of propriety by having sexual liaisons with men and women alike, publishing novels and plays under the name George Sand. Grounded by research yet highly accessible and engaging, these provocative, astonishing stories reveal the complex motives of writers who harbored secret identities sometimes playfully, sometimes with terrible anguish and tragic consequences. A wide-ranging examination of pseudonyms both familiar and obscure, Nom de Plume is part detective story, part expos , part literary history, and an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity

"A witty look at the complex and fascinating but tumultuous marriages of five well-known figures in the literary world, including British theater critic Kenneth Tynan, and authors Roald Dahl and Kingsley Amis."-- Publisher's description