Varhaiset kirja-arvostelijatJohn Crowley

Reading John Crowley’s stories is to see almost-familiar lives running parallel to our own, secret histories that never quite happened, memories that might be real or might be invented. In the thirteen stories collected here, Crowley sets his imagination free to roam from a 20th century Shakespeare festival to spring break at a future Yale in his Edgar Award winning story “Spring Break”. And in the previously unpublished “Anosognosia” the world brought about by one John C.’s high-school accident may or may not exist. Table of Contents — not final order And Go Like ThisAnosognosiaConversation HeartsFlint and MirrorThe Girlhood of Shakespeare's HeroinesThe Million Monkeys of M. BorelSpring BreakThis Is Our TownThree TalesLittle Yeses, Little NosGlow Little Glow-WormMount Auburn StreetTom Mix Praise for John Crowley’s fiction: “Ka, is a beautiful, often dreamlike late masterpiece. Elegiacal and exhilarating, Ka is both consoling and unflinching in its examination of what it means to be human, in life and death. If, as Robert Graves wrote, “There is one story and one story only,” we are very lucky that John Crowley is here to tell it to us.” — Los Angeles Times “John Crowley is one of the finest writers of our time.” — Michael Dirda, Washington Post “One of the finest fantasy novels of the year, gains the power of a true epic.” — Chicago Tribune “. . . a read that is simultaneously dry and bizarre, but it’s anything but tiresome. Its original uncanniness is only heightened by Crowley’s new edition, and the specificity of its historical moment made more familiar.” — Emily Nordling, tor.com “Crowley and his collaborators have successfully mixed together disparate elements to create a strange literary concoction that fizzes with creative energy.” — Michael Berry, Portland Press Herald “The Chemical Wedding is full of outlandish set pieces—candles that walk on their own; a queen’s gown so beautiful it can’t be gazed upon—that might suggest an allegorical reading. But their imagery, as Crowley points out in his footnotes, is inconsistent: any allegory is defeated by the book’s sheer incongruity.” — Peter Bebergal, The New Yorker “Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust.” —Peter Straub “A master of language, plot and characterization, Crowley triumphs in this occult and Hermetic tale, at once naturalistically persuasive and uncannily visionary.” —Harold Bloom “Like a magus, John Crowley shares his secrets generously, allowing us to believe that his book is revealing the true and glorious nature of the world and the reader’s own place within it.” —Village Voice “[Crowley] transforms the lead of daily life into seriously dazzling artistic gold.” —Newsday “So rich and so evocative and so authentic.” —Tom Brokaw “[An] intricate and stylish romp … both a Gothic extravaganza and a picaresque adventure.” —New York Times Book Review “An eerily authentic simulation of Romantic literature … beautiful.” — Boston Globe “Though it’s an impertinent undertaking, it’s also a beautiful success.” —Seattle Time “A complex, nested novel of literary and biographical reconstruction. . . . A stunning, rewarding work.” —Vancouver Sun John Crowley (johncrowleyauthor.com) was born in Presque Isle, Maine, and grew up in Vermont, Kentucky, and Ohio. He went to Indiana University and moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. His novels include the Little, Big, the Ægypt series, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, and a new edition of The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosenkreutz. He recently retired after teaching creative writing at Yale for twenty-five years. He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Mythopoeic, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. He lives in Conway, MA.

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Michael Cunningham, Roxana Robinson, Stephen L. Carter, John Crowley, Amy Bloom, Alice Mattison, Chris Knopf, Jonathan Stone, Sarah Pemberton Strong, Karen E. Olson, Jessica Speart, Chandra Prasad, David Rich, and Hirsh Sawhney. New Haven may be best known for Yale University, but its criminal dimensions run as deep as anywhere else on the Eastern Seaboard. Whether the setting is a college campus, the waterfront, East Rock, The Hill, or Wooster Square, the stories in this volume bring the full city to life—and death. From editor Amy Bloom: New Haven in not a tourist kind of town. Yes, if you want to see the Cushing brain collection of 400 brains-in-jars (with another 150 planned for display), including artifacts like the piece of steak signed (if that’s the word)—using an electrosurgical knife—by Ivan Pavlov, and plenty of infant skulls. Also, more transcendently, you can visit beautiful Beinecke Library, a six-story tower of translucent marble, instead of mere glass, protecting the rare books, including my favorite, the Voynich manuscript, written centuries ago in what seems to be a fictional language with drawings of plants that don’t exist. Also, for the picnickers, the tomb of Midnight Mary in the eighty-five-acre Evergreen Cemetery, right off Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. On her gravestone, it reads: The people shall be troubled at midnight and pass away. It’s a noir kind of town. I love New Haven. I asked other writers who have the same odd, deep affection for the city that I do to tell me their stories. Michael Cunningham, Roxana Robinson, Stephen L. Carter, Alice Mattison, John Crowley. And more. We’ve got the darkly funny, the darker, the ineffable, and the deeply brooding. What we’ve got for you, right here . . . is New Haven.

It’s the height of World War II, and in a vast new plant in Oklahoma the largest bomber ever built is being produced - the Van Damme B-30 Pax. The home front’s a wild place: the work force - largely women - putting in long hours, learning they can do the job, and finding freedoms they’ve never known. Prosper Olander’s a disabled man whose prospects have also expanded at the plant. After growing up in a not very friendly world, he’s making good money for the first time, and he’s among a crowd of women who are away from home and family: Connie the single mom, Vi the best pitcher in the industry softball league, Diane whose husband’s in the Pacific. Before the brief storm of war and freedom blows out, they’ll all be changed.

With In Hazard, a thrilling tale of disaster on the high seas, NYRB Classics is proud to bring back into print all four novels by Richard Hughes, one of the masters of twentieth-century fiction. Richard Hughes's first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica--one of the Modern Library's one hundred best novels of the century--describes a family of children taken captive by pirates, and shows that what happens on their adventure is no more tumultuous and primal than their own inner natures. In Hazard moves from the world of childhood into that of adulthood and continues Hughes's exploration of human nature in extremis. The Archimedes is a steamship that is as shipshape as human ingenuity can make it, but all its modern technology isn't enough to save it when an unbelievably savage storm strikes. In fact, when machines fail technology turns out to be a pact with the devil: the result is a ship you can’t row with mere manpower; a rudder too heavy to move; no way for a carpenter to rig up a mast. All that remains is the human spirit. Hero and coward, master and servant aren't always what they seem to be as the life-or-death struggle reveals what lies within their souls and tightens or unravels the bonds between them.