Geoffrey K. Watkins Livres

This study is a unique correction of a misperception regarding works by two of nineteenth century America's literary giants: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and Mark Twain (1835-1910). By examining their lives within the social, political, and technological climates of their respective times, the author presents a strong argument for his new and radical reading of Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Twain's The Great Dark (1898) as being America's literary counterparts to Rousseau's social theories. Arguing against the prevailing sentiment that Poe's novel is merely popular fiction and that Twain's tale is an unfinished diatribe, this study clearly delineates their serious attempts to reverse the moral malaise of nineteenth century America through personal spiritual renewal via the aegis of dream transcendence.

Even for those who are already acquainted with the insightful and brooding work of Geoffrey K. Watkins, Little Deaths will come as a dark surprise. Here are sixteen stories of life, each story standing alone in its own small world, but all of them clustered like spectators at an accident scene, not wanting to see what is happening, but unable to look away, watching and waiting for the ending; an ending which is in each story as inevitable as death, but just as unpredictable. These are not, however, stories of Death, of final rest, but of the tiny shards of shattered emotional glass which without warning cut away at our hearts, our minds and our souls and lead to those little deaths which slowly and relentlessly slay us while we are still alive.