The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure

The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure PDF Author: C. D. Rose
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 161219379X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject. Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin. The dictionary amounts to a monumental accomplishment: the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency. It is, in short, a treasure.

The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure

The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure PDF Author: C. D. Rose
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612193781
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject. Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin. The dictionary amounts to a monumental accomplishment: the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency. It is, in short, a treasure.

The Blind Accordionist

The Blind Accordionist PDF Author: C. D. Rose
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199178
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
A supposedly long lost collection of fable-like stories supposedly written by the little-known middle European writer Maxim Guyavitch ... with a helpful intro and afterword making it hilariously clear that the keyword is "supposedly." In the novel WHO'S WHO WHEN EVERYONE IS SOMEONE ELSE, the character "C.D. Rose" (not to be confused with the author C.D. Rose) searches an unnamed middle-European city for the long-lost manuscript of a little-known writer named Maxim Guyavitch. That search was fruitless, but in THE BLIND ACCORDIONIST, "C.D. Rose" has found the manuscript--nine sparkling, fable-like short stories--and he presents them here with an (hilarious) introduction explaining the discovery, and an afterword providing (hilarious) critical commentary on the stories, and what they might reveal about the mysterious Guyavitch. THE BLIND ACCORDIONIST is another masterful book of world-making by the real C.D. Rose, absorbing in its mix of intelligence and light-heartedness, and its ultimate celebration of literature itself. It is the third novel in the series about "C.D. Rose," although the reader does not need to have read the previous two books. (The first in the series was THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF LITERARY FAILURE, containing portraits of dunsuccessful writers; the second was WHO'S WHO WHEN EVERYONE IS SOMEONE ELSE, in which the author of the DICTIONARY, "C.D. Rose," searches for the manuscript of his favorite dead writer, Maxim Guyavitch, while on a book tour for the DICTIONARY.) Like those books, THE BLIND ACCORDIONIST can be read both as a simple but wonderful collection of quirky stories, and as comedy--or as a beautiful and moving elegy on the nobility of writers wanting to be read.

Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else

Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else PDF Author: C. D. Rose
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1612197132
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A hilariously charming novel about a heartbroken man trying to redeem himself by championing forgotten books Fleeing heartbreak, an unnamed author goes to an unnamed city to give a series of lectures at an unnamed university about forgotten books ... only to find himself involved in a mystery when the professor who invited him is no where to be found, and no one seems quite sure why he's there.... So begins this Wes Anderson-like novel hilariously spoofing modernist literature even as it tells a stirring -- and eerily suspenseful -- story about someone desperate to prove the redeeming power of reading -- and writing -- books. And as the narrator gives his lectures, attends vague functions where no one speaks English, never quite meets his host professor and wonders the city looking for the grave of his literary hero, the reader begins to suspect this man's relentless faith in literature may be the only thing getting him through the mystery enveloping him.

An Atlas of Extinct Countries

An Atlas of Extinct Countries PDF Author: Gideon Defoe
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 1609456815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
"Prisoners of Geography meets Bill Bryson: a funny, fascinating, beautifully illustrated—and timely—history of countries that, for myriad and often ludicrous reasons, no longer exist. “Countries are just daft stories we tell each other. They’re all equally implausible once you get up close.” Countries die. Sometimes it’s murder, sometimes it’s by accident, and sometimes it’s because they were so ludicrous they didn’t deserve to exist in the first place. Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either “got too greedy” or “Napoleon turned up.” Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence. This is an atlas of 48 nations that fell off the map. The polite way of writing an obituary is: dwell on the good bits, gloss over the embarrassing stuff. This book refuses to do so, because these dead nations are so full of schemers, racists, and con men that it’s impossible to skip the embarrassing stuff. Because of this – and because treating nation-states with too much reverence is the entire problem with pretty much everything – these accounts are not concerned with adding to the earnest flag saluting in the world, however nice some of the flags might be."

The Temple of Iconoclasts

The Temple of Iconoclasts PDF Author: Juan Rodolfo Wilcock
Publisher: Verba Mundi
ISBN: 9781567925302
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"From an armchair in England, Rosenblum hatches a complicated plot to return the world to the year 1580-reintroducing ruffs, doublets, codpieces, and sundry period diseases. By sheer force of will, Littlefield discovers that he's able to crystallize table salt into the shapes of "chickens and other small animals." Babson founds an international organization with the declared aim of annulling the law of gravity. These are only a few of the dozens of eccentrics, visionaries, and downright crackpots who populate the pages of Juan Rodolfo Wilcock's charming fiction in the form of a biographical dictionary. Temple's brief portraits blend mordant satire and profound imaginative sympathy, taking in the whole dazzling spectrum of human folly-including a handful of colors that only Wilcock's Swiftian eye could possibly have perceived" --

Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea

Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea PDF Author: C. D. Rose
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1685890857
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Book Description
“A book that belongs on the same shelf as Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, and several works by Zoran Zivkovic, Stanislaw Lem and David Markson.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post A collection of entrancing literary fables from an underrated master of the form … Perfect for the fans of David Mitchell, Julio Cortázar and Steven Barthelme are these 15 dreamlike tales. Welcome to the fictional universe of C. D. Rose, whose stories seem to be set in some unidentifiable but vaguely Mitteleuropean nation, and likewise have an uncanny sense of timelessness — the time could be some cobblestoned Victorian past era, or the present, or even the future. A journalist’s interview with an artist turns into a dizzying roundelay of memory and image. Two Russian brothers, one blind and one deaf, build an intricate model town during an interminable train ride across the steppe. An annotated discography for the works of a long-lost silent film star turns into a mysterious document of obsession. Three Russian sailors must find ways to pass the time on a freighter orphaned in a foreign port. A forgotten composer enters a nostalgic dream-world while marking time in a decaying Romanian seaport. In these 19 dreamlike tales, ghosts of the past mingle with the quiddities of modernity in a bewitching stew where lost masterpieces surface with translations in an invisible language, where image and photograph become mystically entwined, and where the very nature of reality takes on a shimmering sense of possibility and illusion. “Every madness is logical to its owner,” one of Rose’s characters says. And it is that line — between logic and madness — that Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea walks with such assuredness and imagination.

Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else

Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else PDF Author: C. D. Rose
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612197140
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
A hilariously charming novel about a heartbroken man trying to redeem himself by championing forgotten books Fleeing heartbreak, an unnamed author goes to an unnamed city to give a series of lectures at an unnamed university about forgotten books ... only to find himself involved in a mystery when the professor who invited him is no where to be found, and no one seems quite sure why he's there.... So begins this Wes Anderson-like novel hilariously spoofing modernist literature even as it tells a stirring -- and eerily suspenseful -- story about someone desperate to prove the redeeming power of reading -- and writing -- books. And as the narrator gives his lectures, attends vague functions where no one speaks English, never quite meets his host professor and wonders the city looking for the grave of his literary hero, the reader begins to suspect this man's relentless faith in literature may be the only thing getting him through the mystery enveloping him.

We'll Never Have Paris

We'll Never Have Paris PDF Author: Andrew Gallix
Publisher: Repeater
ISBN: 1912248395
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 537

Book Description
Fiction and essays inspired by Paris from more than 70 Anglophone writers -- A MoveableFeast for the twenty-first century. "When good Americans die, they go to Paris", wrote the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in 1894. The French capital has always radiated an unmatched cultural, political and intellectual brilliance in the anglophone imagination, maintaining its status as the modern cosmopolitan city par excellence through the twentieth century to today. We'll Never Have Paris explores this enduring fascination with this myth of a bohemian and literary Paris (that of the Lost Generation, Joyce, Beckett and Shakespeare and Company) which also happens to be a largely anglophone construct -- one which the Eurostar and Brexit only seem to have exacerbated in recent years. Edited by Andrew Gallix, this collection brings together many of the most talented and adventurous writers from the UK, Ireland, USA, Australia and New Zealand to explore this theme through short stories, essays and poetry, in order to build up a captivating portrait of Paris as viewed by English speakers today -- A Moveable Feast for the twenty-first century. We'll Never Have Paris includes contributions from seventy-nine authors, including Tom McCarthy, Will Self, Brian Dillon, Joanna Walsh, Eley Williams, Max Porter, Sophie Mackintosh and Lauren Elkin.
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