About this ebook
In Writers, great American storyteller Barry Gifford paints portraits of famous writers caught in imaginary vulnerable moments in their lives. In prose that is funny, grotesque, and a touch brutal, Gifford shows these writers at their most human, which is to say at their worst: they are liars, frauds, lousy lovers, and drunks.
This is a world in which Ernest Hemingway drunkenly sets explosive trip wires outside his home in Cuba, Marcel Proust implores the angel of death as a delirious Arthur Rimbaud lies dying in a hospital bed, and Albert Camus converses with a young prostitute while staring at himself in the mirror of a New York City hotel room.
In Gifford's house of mirrors, we are offered a unique perspective on this group of literary greats. These stories, meant to be performed as plays, are tender and thoughtful exercises in empathy. Obsessions loom large, especially a preoccupation with death. Gifford asks: What does it mean to devote oneself entirely to art? And as an artist, what defines failure, or success?
This edition of Writers includes five new pieces, featuring Georges Simenon with André Gide, Franz Kafka with Marcel Proust, Flannery O’Connor with William Burroughs, Ivan Turgenev with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad with D.H. Lawrence, and Willa Cather with Gypsy Rose Lee.
This is a world in which Ernest Hemingway drunkenly sets explosive trip wires outside his home in Cuba, Marcel Proust implores the angel of death as a delirious Arthur Rimbaud lies dying in a hospital bed, and Albert Camus converses with a young prostitute while staring at himself in the mirror of a New York City hotel room.
In Gifford's house of mirrors, we are offered a unique perspective on this group of literary greats. These stories, meant to be performed as plays, are tender and thoughtful exercises in empathy. Obsessions loom large, especially a preoccupation with death. Gifford asks: What does it mean to devote oneself entirely to art? And as an artist, what defines failure, or success?
This edition of Writers includes five new pieces, featuring Georges Simenon with André Gide, Franz Kafka with Marcel Proust, Flannery O’Connor with William Burroughs, Ivan Turgenev with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad with D.H. Lawrence, and Willa Cather with Gypsy Rose Lee.
In Writers, great American storyteller Barry Gifford paints portraits of famous writers caught in imaginary vulnerable moments in their lives. In prose that is funny, grotesque, and a touch brutal, Gifford shows these writers at their most human, which is to say at their worst: they are liars, fr...
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About the author
BARRY GIFFORD is the author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages. Gifford began his career as a poet and musician. He has been the recipient of awards from PEN, The National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, The Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Luna was made into a Major Motion Picture which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His most recent prose works are The Roy Stories, Landscape With Traveler: The Pillow Book of Francis Reeves, and Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac. His most recent poetry collection is Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems (2012). Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
BARRY GIFFORD is the author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages. Gifford began his career as a poet and musician. He has been the recipient of awards from PEN, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Americ...
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