Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School - Softcover

Smokler, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1616146567 ISBN 13: 9781616146566

Verlag: Prometheus Books, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

What do the great books of your youth have to say about your life now? Remember reading Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby in high school? How about Slaughterhouse-Five and Pride and Prejudice? Would you read them again now that no one's grading you, just for your own enjoyment? This book helps you decide to do just that. Author Kevin Smokler will guide you through fifty books commonly assigned in high school English class and show you why you'd probably enjoy rereading the same books as an adult.

Smokler's essays on the classics - witty, down-to-earth, appreciative, and insightful - are divided into ten sections, each covering an archetypical stage of life - from youth and first love to family, loss, and the future. The author not only reminds you about the essential features of each great book but gives you a practical, real-world reason why revisiting it in adulthood is not only enjoyable but useful.

Can The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn help you cope with aging? What does To Kill a Mockingbird have to say about being a parent? How about Fahrenheit 451 on not getting stuck in a crappy job? Practical Classics gives you an incentive to reread and a reason why.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kevin Smokler (San Francisco, CA) is the editor of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2005. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Believer.

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PRACTICAL CLASSICS

50 REASONS TO REREAD 50 BOOKS YOU HAVEN'T TOUCHED SINCE HIGH SCHOOLBy Kevin Smokler

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2013 Kevin Smokler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61614-656-6

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................................................9INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................111. The Midlife Crisis of Huckleberry Finn..................................................................................192. Candide Says Relax. Then Get to Work....................................................................................243. A Separate Peace and the Dream of Best Friends Forever..................................................................294. Owners of Our Lonely Hearts.............................................................................................345. How the Uncaged Bird Sings..............................................................................................406. Real Indians Play Rock 'n' Roll.........................................................................................497. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: Yours and Mine..........................................................................548. Edith Wharton: "Innocence Is for Wimps".................................................................................599. The Us Yet to Come......................................................................................................6410. Am I a Man or an Android?..............................................................................................6811. If This Library Is Paradise ...........................................................................................7512. Staying Out of the Bell Jar............................................................................................8013. You May Find Yourself Trapped in Alexander Portnoy's Head .............................................................8614. Cannery Row: Where Everybody Knows Your Name...........................................................................9115. My Favorite Book of Them All...........................................................................................9616. Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen for the Clumsier Sex..................................................................10317. Marriage Counseling from Henrik Ibsen..................................................................................10718. Eyes on Love...........................................................................................................11219. I've Been Young and Afraid, Joyce Carol Oates. Thank You for Asking....................................................11720. The Scarlet Letter: I Don't Like It Either.............................................................................12221. Bartleby in the Breakroom..............................................................................................12922. The Work/Life Balance of Sherlock Holmes...............................................................................13423. Working at Relaxing with David Foster Wallace..........................................................................14124. At the Office with "Master Harold" ... and the Boys....................................................................14725. Burning Books: One Crappy Job..........................................................................................15126. Why To Kill a Mockingbird Makes a Great Father's Day Gift..............................................................15727. The Ambivalent Family of Toni Morrison.................................................................................16128. Of Wontons, Mah-Jongg, and Time........................................................................................16629. A Family of Giant Insects..............................................................................................17130. Maus: A Comic Book about Fathers, Sons, and Genocide...................................................................17631. The Renaissance Nerds of The Phantom Tollbooth.........................................................................18332. Camping It Up with Susan Sontag........................................................................................18833. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin, Notes by Kevin Smokler.....................19434. Hello, I'm William Shakespeare.........................................................................................20535. Understanding Marshall McLuhan.........................................................................................21036. Holden Caulfield, That Little Brat.....................................................................................22137. Albert Camus, the Unsexy Stranger......................................................................................22938. Shirley Jackson's Rituals of Violence..................................................................................23439. The Stone-Faced Trip of Slaughterhouse-Five............................................................................23940. An Act of Violence, a Book of Forgiveness..............................................................................24441. The Shameless Case of Walt Whitman.....................................................................................25142. Emily Dickinson's Lessons for Success..................................................................................25643. Little Heroes and Locust...............................................................................................26344. Visit Tinker Creek. Then Keep Going....................................................................................26845. How to Tell a Hero Story...............................................................................................27246. Beware of Revolutionaries Who Look Like Pigs...........................................................................27947. Meet Thomas Pynchon, Your Driving Companion............................................................................28448. The Remains of Tomorrow................................................................................................28949. Four Different Ways That Things Fall Apart.............................................................................29350. A Letter...............................................................................................................299NOTES......................................................................................................................303

Chapter One

THE MIDLIFE CRISIS OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Mark Twain was forty-one years old when he began work on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He had a wife, three children, and was about a dozen books into his career. He'd been famous for over a decade and largely wrote Huck during summers at his sister-in-law's farm, where an octagonal writing studio had been built especially for him. He led a comfortable and contented life but struggled for eight long years to give Huck Finn, a supporting player in one of his earlier books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a starring role. Nearly fifty years old when he finished Huck, Mr. Twain had spent the first decade of his middle age on the novel now credited with inventing our archetypes of American boyhood.

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Prometheus Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1616146567
• ISBN 13: 9781616146566
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 300
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande