Literary Biographies, Essays & Criticism
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Bookmarked: Reading My Way from
Hollywood to Brooklyn by Wendy Fairey
(Mar. 3, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-1-
62872-537-7). Fairey’s mother, Hollywood
columnist Sheilah Graham, was F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s last love. When Fairey was a
child, Fitzgerald would bring her books by
classic authors, from Charles Dickens to
Virginia Woolf, sparking a lifelong literary
journey that she traces in this memoir.
Meanwhile There Are Letters: The
Correspondence of Eudora Welty and
Ross Macdonald, edited by Suzanne
Marrs and Tom Nolan (July 7, hardcover,
$35, ISBN 978-1-62872-527-8). In 1970,
Ross Macdonald wrote a letter to Eudora
Welty, beginning a 13-year correspondence. Macdonald and Welty’s biographers
offer a collection of their witty, wry, tender,
and, at times, profoundly romantic letters.
ARTE PÚBLICO
The Milli Vanilli Condition: Essays
on Culture in the New Millennium by
Eduardo Espina, trans. from the Spanish by
Travis Sorenson (Mar. 31, paper, $17.95,
ISBN 978-1-55885-811-4). Uruguayan-born poet Espina ponders the paradoxes
of modern life in a serious-minded but
entertaining collection of essays on a wide
variety of subjects, including serial killers,
nostalgia, and even the Olympics.
BELLEVUE LITERARY
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A Solemn Pleasure by Melissa
Pritchard (May 12, paper, $16.95, ISBN
978-1-934137-96-3). Novelist (Palmerino)
and short story writer Pritchard shares, in
these 15 essays, a passion for writing and
storytelling that educates, honors, and
inspires. The inaugural title in Bellevue’s
the Art of the Essay series.
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Mark Twain’s Notebooks: Journals,
Letters, Observations, Wit, Wisdom,
and Doodles, edited by Carlo De Vito
(May 5, paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-
57912-997-2). This original and insightful
collection combines Twain’s journal writings
with his rarely seen sketches and doodles to
create a fascinating, and often hilarious,
visual testimonial to the father of American
literature.
BLOOMSBURY
Nabokov in America: On the Road
to Lolita by Robert Roper (June 9, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-8027-4363-3).
Worldly, refined, cultivated: the Russian-born author of Lolita might seem as European as they come. Nabokov, however,
regarded his time in the U.S. as the richest
of his life, as shown in this revelatory
biography from Roper (Now the Drum of
War).
BRANDEIS UNIV.
The Nearest Thing to Life by James
Wood (June 2, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-
1-61168-741-5). A master class from the
New Yorker’s Wood, often regarded as our
finest living critic, on the connections
between fiction and life. Along with individual works like Chekhov’s “The Kiss” and
Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower,
Wood discusses his personal experiences as
a reader.
CITY LIGHTS
I Greet You at the Beginning of a
Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and
Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997, edited by
Bill Morgan (May 12, hardcover, $26.95,
ISBN 978-0-87286-686-7). A collection of
the correspondence between the author of
; Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris. Norton, Apr.
; The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime
Harold Bloom. Random/Spiegel & Grau, May 12
; The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings;
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Bar;eld, Charles Williams
Philip and Carol Zaleski. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2
; I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career:
The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997
Edited by Bill Morgan. City Lights, May 12
; The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964
Zachary Leader. Knopf, May 5
; Meanwhile There Are Letters:
The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald
Edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan. Arcade, July 7
; The Nearest Thing to Life
James Wood. Brandeis Univ., June 2
; A Solemn Pleasure
Melissa Pritchard. Bellevue Literary, May 12
; Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books
Tim Parks. New York Review Books, May 12
; Young Eliot: A Biography
Robert Crawford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Mar. 31
PW’S TOP 10:
LITERARY BIOGRAPHIES,
ESSAYS & CRITICISM
