Fire The Bastards!
''Fire the Bastards!'' was written by Jack Green and published in his magazine ''newspaper'' in 1962. It was an acerbic critique of the book reviewing industry. Green examined the initial 55 reviews that appeared in response to the publication of William Gaddis's 1955 debut novel, ''The Recognitions ''The Recognitions'' is the 1955 debut novel of US author William Gaddis. The novel was initially poorly received by critics. After Gaddis won a National Book Award in 1975 for his second novel, ''J R'', his first work gradually received new ...''. He discovered that some reviewers either did not read or finish the work. Almost half of the reviews contained factual errors. Many employed the same clichés: "too difficult", "too long", "too negative", "ambitious", "a promising first novel." In one case he found that a critic had purloined part of his review from another review. ''Fire the Bastards!'' appeared in book form in 1992. The publishers did not have the permission of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jack Green (critic)
jack green (the name was spelled with lower-case letters) is the pseudonym of Christopher Carlisle Reid (born 1928), an American literary critic who was a great defender of the work of William Gaddis. Reid—who took the name from a racing form after he quit his job to become a freelance critic—particularly admired Gaddis' 1955 novel ''The Recognitions'', which flopped upon being published. Reid believed that the commercial failure of the hardcover edition of Gaddis' novel was the result of it having been panned by literary critics. Reid's faith in Gaddis was borne out when ''The Recognitions'' was chosen as one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005. (According to literary sleuth Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College, jack green's name actually is John Carlisle. Carlisle was the son of novelist Helen Grace Carlisle and worked as an actuarial clerk at Metropolitan Life Insurance until 1957, when he quit his job.) As jack green, Reid started a self ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Review
A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a content rating, rating to indicate its relative merit. A compilation of reviews may itself be called a review. Reviews can apply to a film, movie (a Film criticism, movie review), video game (video game review), musical composition (music criticism, music review of a composition or recording), book (book review); a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or software such as business software, sales software; or an event or performance, such as a live concert, live music concert, Play (theatre), play, Musical theater, musical theater show, dance show or art exhibition In the cultural sphere, ''The New York Review of Books'', for instance, is a collection of essays on literature, culture, and current affairs. ''National Review'', fou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Gaddis
William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) was an American novelist. The first and longest of his five novels, ''The Recognitions'', was named one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005 and two others, ''J R'' and ''A Frolic of His Own'', won the annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. National Book Foundation: Awards"National Book Award Winners: 1950–2009" Retrieved March 28, 2012. A collection of his essays was published posthumously as '' The Rush for Second Place'' (2002). ''The Letters of William Gaddis'' was published by Dalkey Archive Press in February 2013. A MacArthur Fellow, Gaddis is widely considered one of the first and most important American postmodern writers."William Gaddis: A Portfolio," ''Conjunctions'' 41 (2003), 373–415. Life and career Gaddis was born in New York City to William Thomas Gaddis, who worked "on Wall Street and in politics", and Edith (Charles) Gaddis, who worked her way up from being secr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Debut Novel
A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future. First-time novelists without a previous published reputation, such as publication in nonfiction, magazines, or literary journals, typically struggle to find a publisher. Sometimes new novelists will self-publish their debut novels, because publishing houses will not risk the capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public. Most publishers purchase rights to novels, especially debut novels, through literary agents, who screen client work before sending it to publishers. These hurdles to publishing reflect both publishers' limits in resources for reviewing and publishing unknown works, and that readers typically buy more books by established authors with a reputation than first-time writers. For this ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Recognitions
''The Recognitions'' is the 1955 debut novel of US author William Gaddis. The novel was initially poorly received by critics. After Gaddis won a National Book Award in 1975 for his second novel, ''J R'', his first work gradually received new and belated recognition as a masterpiece of American literature. In 2005, ''Time'' included ''The Recognitions'' in its list of "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005". Plot The story loosely follows the life of Wyatt Gwyon, son of a Calvinist minister from rural New England; his mother dies in Spain. He plans to follow his father into the ministry. But he is inspired to become a painter by ''The Seven Deadly Sins'', Hieronymous Bosch's noted painting which his father owned. Gwyon leaves New England and travels to Europe to study painting. Discouraged by a corrupt critic and frustrated with his career, he moves to New York City. He meets Recktall Brown, a capitalistic collector and dealer of art, who makes a Faustian deal w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dalkey Archive Press
Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Illinois, in Dublin, and in London. The publisher is named for the novel ''The Dalkey Archive'', by the Irish author Flann O'Brien. Founded in Elmwood Park, IL in 1984 by John O’Brien, Dalkey Archive Press began as an adjunct press to the literary magazine '' Review of Contemporary Fiction'', itself founded by John O'Brien, John Byrne, and Lowell Dunlap and dedicated to highlighting writers who were overlooked by the mainstream critical establishment. Initially, the press reprinted works by authors featured in the ''Review'' but eventually branched out to other works, including original works that had not been published. Until 1988, Dalkey Archive was a two-person operation: O’Brien and office manager/typesetter Shirley Geever. That y ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Books Of Literary Criticism
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Public Domain Books
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkeit'' or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science, psychology, marketing, and advertising. In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, and suffered more recent years from being blurred, as a result of conflation of the idea of a public with the notions of audience, market segment, community, constituency, and stakeholder. Etymology and definitions The name "public" originates with the Latin ''wikt:publicus#Latin, publicus'' (also ''wikt:poplicus#Latin, poplicus''), from ''wikt:populus#Latin, populus'', to the Engli ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dalkey Archive Press Books
Dalkey ( ; ) is an affluent suburb of Dublin, and a seaside resort southeast of the city, and the town of Dún Laoghaire, in the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown in the historic County Dublin, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement and became an active port during the Middle Ages. According to chronicler John Clyn (c.1286–c.1349), it was one of the ports through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century. In modern times, Dalkey has become a seaside suburb that attracts some tourist visitors. One of Dublin's wealthiest districts, it has been home to writers and celebrities including George Bernard Shaw, Jane Emily Herbert, Maeve Binchy, Robert Fisk, Hugh Leonard, Bono, the Edge, Van Morrison and Enya. Etymology The district is named after Dalkey Island, just offshore. The name is ultimately derived from the Irish ''deilg'' ("thorn") and ''inis'' ("island"), with ''ey'' the Old Norse (Viking) version of "island". Geography Dalkey lies by the coas ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |