An English teacher in a community college develops a friendship with a famous local novelist who is inexplicably eager to introduce him to his exotic theories of the creative act. Coincidentally, the same teacher befriends an indigent who is a favorite at the local library, and is involved in his own unique literary pursuits. And both he and the novelist prove to share a disconcerting similarity of ambitions. For the teacher has similar ambitions of his own. Enigmas proliferate, complexiti...

Two terrifying classics by “the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction” (The Washington Post)Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepes...

A philosophical critique of how society encourages us to avoid risk when we should instead accept it.When Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in a heroic attempt to save two children caught in rough seas, obituaries around the world rarely failed to recall that she authored In Praise of Risk, implying that her death confirmed the ancient adage that to philosophize is to learn how to die. Now available in English, this magnificent book indeed offers a trenchant crit...

Eudora Welty was one of the twentieth century’s greatest literary figures. For as long as students have been studying her fiction as literature, writers have been looking to her to answer the profound questions of what makes a story good, a novel successful, a writer an artist. On Writing presents the answers in seven concise chapters discussing the subjects most important to the narrative craft, and which every fiction writer should know, such as place, voice, me...

At eighty-two, Florida Scott-Maxwell felt impelled to write about her strong reactions to being old, and to the time in which we live. Until almost the end this document was not intended for anyone to see, but the author finally decided that she wanted her thoughts and feelings to reach others. Mrs. Scott-Maxwell writes: “I was astonished to find how intensely one lives in one’s eighties. The last years seemed a culmination and by concentrating on them one became more truly oneself. Though...

500 Words and Their SynonymsA synonym is a word that has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word.Sample This:English Synonyms – AABET -- (meaning) to encourage somebody to do something illegalSynonyms for 'Abet' --incite / instigate / provokeABEYANCE -- (meaning) being stopped for a period of timeSynonyms for 'Abeyance' --dormancy / intermission / suspensionABILITY -- (me...

In this fascinating document, one of Japan's best known-and controversial-writers created what might be termed a new literary form. It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end fits into none of them.At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used i...

'It is not our struggle to be happy that is mistaken; it is our false idea that we can find happiness anywhere but in ourselves... happiness does not depend on outward things. It is born of the mind, it is nourished by the mind, it is what rises, like breath in a frosty air, from the mind's wrestling with its fate...'The Art of Happiness (first published in 1935) belongs to John Cowper Powys's sequence of philosophical writings, and finds him exploring the problem ...

The sequel to Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon's great classic work of science fiction.In Last Men in London the author follows up the themes of his earlier masterpiece in presenting a Neptunian 'last man's' views on our twentieth-century world, views informed by the huge dimensions of space and time which separate him from our tiny contemporary world. Once again, Olaf Stapledon has been totally successful in creating a work of such stunning imagination and bril...

Seizure stricken upon the wall of dead end of another iron casted wall of chaining vessels of karma, but its not the fate not at all the destiny, its karma and you surrender into convulsive force of retardiating retrogression of anti nature against our time and our velocity of moving natures inheritance, creative captivity of accumlating momentum.The redo it, by making intact reservation of strectcing mark of determination no matter what the cause to blow you away, YOUR IMPULSIVE N...

These journal entries comprise two volumes of selections (Vol. I, 1973-1982, Vol. II, 1983-2003). Volume I includes an Introduction and some biographical memories.As Stephane Mallarme considered literature the antithesis of journalism, a journal is often the antithesis of a diary. It is of less interest to record moods and events, or barriers to self-realization, than to have ideas and insights about these. As a journal-keeper, I am generally disinterested in diurnal details, unles...

William Olaf StapledonGenre(s)Science fiction, NovelLast Men in London (1932) is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon.The narrator is the same member of the eighteenth and final human species who purportedly induced Stapledon to write Last and First Men. Last Men in London is the story of this being's exploration of the consciousness of a present-day Englishman named Paul, from childhood through service with an ...