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Old Men In Love
''Old Men In Love'' is a book by Alasdair Gray, published by Bloomsbury in 2007. The book purports to be a found manuscript by John Tunnock, which Gray merely edits - from the author's earlier ''Poor Things'', the writing presented as Tunnock's likewise recycles earlier material by Gray. Tunnock's unfinished trilogy of novels, based on the lives of Socrates, Fra Lippo Lippi and Henry James Prince, are re-workings of earlier stage and television drama by Gray. In the afterword to the novel the literary critic Sidney Workman (a fictitious alter-ego of Gray used in his debut novel, ''Lanark''), points out the novel's themes. ''Old Men In Love'' was met with an ambiguous critical reception, praised for its striking design and criticised for its lack of substance and derivation from earlier material. Writing in the ''Observer'', James Purdon commented that "In form as well as subject matter, this is probably the most twitchily onanistic fiction since ''Portnoy's Complaint ''Port ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals, including one at the Òran Mór venue and one at Hillhead subway station. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before ''Lanark'', he had plays performed on radio and TV. His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poor Things
''Poor Things'' is a novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, published in 1992. It won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize the same year. The novel was called "a magnificently brisk, funny, dirty, brainy book" by the '' London Review of Books'' and is a departure from Gray's usual subject-matter of Glasgow realism and fantasy. However, its Victorian narrative takes in Gray's previous concerns with social inequalities, relationships, memory and identity. Story The main body of the work centres on Bella Baxter, a woman whose early life and identity are the subject of some ambiguity. That ambiguity is complicated by her husband Archibald McCandless's autobiography, "Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer," which distorts the truth about his life with Bella. He claims that she was a corpse, resurrected by McCandless’s colleague, the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter, who had her brain swapped with that of her unborn foetus, resulting in her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape. Plato's dialogues are among the most co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fra Lippo Lippi
Filippo Lippi ( – 8 October 1469), also known as Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Quattrocento (15th century) and a Carmelite Priest. Biography Lippi was born in Florence in 1406 to Tommaso, a butcher, and his wife. He was orphaned when he was two years old and sent to live with his aunt Mona Lapaccia. Because she was too poor to rear him, she placed him in the neighboring Carmelite convent when he was eight years old. There, he started his education. In 1420 he was admitted to the community of Carmelite friars of the Priory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Florence, taking religious vows in the Order the following year, at the age of sixteen. He was ordained as a priest in approximately 1425 and remained in residence of that priory until 1432. Giorgio Vasari, the first art historian of the Renaissance, writes that Lippi was inspired to become a painter by watching Masaccio at work in the Carmine church. Lippi's early work, notably the Tarquinia Madonna (Galleria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry James Prince
The Agapemonites or Community of The Son of Man was a Christianity, Christian Religious denomination, religious group or sect that existed in England from 1846 to 1956. It was named from the el, italic=yes, agapemone meaning "abode of love". The Agapemone community was founded by the Reverend Henry Prince in Spaxton, Somerset. The sect also built a church in Upper Clapton#The Abode of Love, Upper Clapton, London, and briefly had bases in Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk, Brighton and Weymouth, Dorset, Weymouth. The ideas of the community were based on the theories of various German religious mysticism, mystics and its primary object was the spiritualisation of the matrimonial state. The Church of England had dismissed Prince earlier in his career for his radical teachings. The Agapemonites predicted the imminent return of Jesus Christ. According to newspaper accounts, Prince's successor, John Hugh Smyth-Pigott, declared himself Jesus Christ's reincarnation. The Agapemone community con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
A Life In Four Books
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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