Reading backwards / John Crowley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crowley, John, 1942- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Crowley, John, 1942-.

Crowley, John.

American essays.

Physical Description:

455 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Subtitle from cover: Essays & reviews, 2005-2018

Place of Publication:

Burton, MI : Subterranean Press, 2019.

Summary:

"Reading Backwards is John Crowley's first collection of non-fiction since In Other Words was published in 2007. Like its predecessor, this new book reflects an astonishing range of interests, both literary and otherwise. Like its predecessor, it is a book that no John Crowley fan can afford to miss. The volume opens with the autobiographical "My Life in the Theater," a memoir of the younger Crowley's earliest ambitions, and closes with the moving and memorable "Practicing the Arts of Peace." In between, the author offers us more than thirty carefully crafted essays, each one notable for its insight, intelligence and typically graceful prose. The opening section, A Voice from the Easy Chair, reflects Crowley's tenure as Easy Chair columnist for Harper's Magazine. Subjects include life under the once omni-present threat of the Selective Service Board, the enduring personal importance of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and thoughts on what it means to be truly well read. The second section, Fictional Voices, is filled with acute commentary on a wide range of books and writers, among them SF masters such as Paul Park, Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas Disch; the important, if neglected, historical novelist David Stacton (a model for the fictional Ffellowes Kraft of the Ægypt novels); classic science fiction novels of the 1950s, and much, much more. The final section, Looking Outward, Looking In, ranges freely across a wide variety of subjects and ideas, such as UFO literature, the utopian architecture of Norman Bel Geddes, the life and career of renowned theosophist Helena Blavatsky, and the nature of time. Reading Backwards is a book that can be read from beginning to end with enormous pleasure. It can also be read and enjoyed in whatever order the reader prefers. However it's read, it's a multifarious source of entertainment, illumination, and thought, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual life of one of the finest novelists of our time."--Amazon.com.

Contents:

Section 1 A Voice From The Easy Chair p. 39

Everything that Rises p. 41

Dressed to Kill p. 49

Rule, Britannica p. 57

A Ring-Formed World p. 65

Universal Use p. 73

Spare the Darling p. 81

On Not Being Well Read p. 89

Selective Service p. 97

An Artist of the Sleeping World p. 105

Section 2 Fictional Voices p. 113

A Postcard from Ursula p. 115

Paul Park's Hidden Worlds p. 119

Life Work: The Fiction of Nicholson Baker p. 131

Leslie Epstein's Uproars p. 143

Ben Katchor's Cardboard Valise p. 159

Remembering Thomas Disch p. 169

The Wolves of Joan Aiken p. 181

David Stacton's Evidences p. 189

The Hero of a Thousand Dreams p. 203

The Fiction of Richard Hughes p. 213

Richard Hughes: In Hazard p. 231

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey p. 239

The Whole Household of Man: Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Novels p. 245

Blossom and Fade: Hermann Hesse and The Glass Bead Game p. 257

Nine Classic Science Fiction Novels of the 1950s p. 267

Section 3 Looking Outward, Looking In p. 279

Norman Bel Geddes: The Man Who Designed the Future p. 281

Stranger Things: UFOs and Life on the Moon p. 293

Metamorphosis: Rosamond Purcell's Natural History p. 303

Unrealism p. 315

Madame and the Masters p. 325

The Ones Who Walk Away from Metropolis, or H. G. Wells at the Movies p. 339

A Few Moments in Eternity p. 345

Works of Mercy p. 355

The Next Future p. 373

A Well Without a Bottom p. 385

New Ghosts and How to Know Them p. 399

Time After Time p. 413

Squeak and Gibber p. 427

ENVOI: Practicing the Arts of Peace p. 441.

ISBN:

1596069465

9781596069466

OCLC:

1090279933