Torch Song (short Story)
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Torch Song (short Story)
"Torch Song" is a short story by John Cheever which first appeared in The New Yorker on October 4, 1947. The work was included in the short fiction collection ''The Enormous Radio and Other Stories'' (1953), published by Funk and Wagnalls. "Torch Song" is included in '' The Stories of John Cheever'' (1978). A work often anthologized, the story is a modern rendering of the mythological Angel of Death. Plot Jack Lorey is a twenty-something transplant to New York City, formerly of Ohio, who is seeking a career in New York City. He encounters Joan Harris, who hails from the same Ohio town as Jack, at a social gathering. She has abandoned her hopes of becoming a professional model, and serves at a number of entry-level jobs to support herself. Joan's demeanor is that of a healthy, well-adjusted and tolerant woman who enjoys social life. Jack and Joan form a casual platonic relationship, each pursuing their own romantic interests. During the ensuing years Jack is twice married and di ...
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John Cheever
John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born; and Italy, especially Rome. His short stories included " The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", " The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and " The Swimmer", and he also wrote five novels: ''The Wapshot Chronicle'' (National Book Award, 1958),from the Awards 50-year anniversary publications and from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) '' The Wapshot Scandal'' (William Dean Howells Medal, 1965), '' Bullet Park'' (1969), '' Falconer'' (1977) and a novella '' Oh What a Paradise It Seems'' (1982). His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous soc ...
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Joan Harris
Joan P. Holloway Harris is a fictional character on the AMC television series ''Mad Men'' (2007–15). She is portrayed by Christina Hendricks. Hendricks has received six consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and has won two Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her performance. She has also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series twice along with the cast of ''Mad Men''. Fictional character biography Background Joan was born on February 24, 1931. From Season 1 through Season 3, Joan is the office manager at the advertising agency Sterling Cooper. Her primary responsibilities are to manage the secretarial, steno, and telephone operators pools; attend to the needs of the executives; and organize agency events. She is also seen during meetings with the heads of departments, implementing ''Roberts Rules of Order'', taking ...
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1947 Short Stories
It was the first year of the Cold War, which would last until 1991, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Events January * January–February – Winter of 1946–47 in the United Kingdom: The worst snowfall in the country in the 20th century causes extensive disruption of travel. Given the low ratio of private vehicle ownership at the time, it is mainly remembered in terms of its effects on the railway network. * January 1 - The Canadian Citizenship Act comes into effect. * January 4 – First issue of weekly magazine ''Der Spiegel'' published in Hanover, Germany, edited by Rudolf Augstein. * January 10 – The United Nations adopts a resolution to take control of the free city of Trieste. * January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles; the mysterious case is never solved. * January 16 – Vincent Auriol is inaugurated as president of France. * January 19 – Ferry ...
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Twayne Publishers
Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale Group, is active in research and educational publishing for public, academic, and school libraries, and businesses. The company is known for its full-text magazine and newspaper databases, Gale OneFile (formerly known as Infotrac), and other online databases subscribed by libraries, as well as multi-volume reference works, especially in the areas of religion, history, and social science. Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954 by Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr., the company was acquired by the International Thomson Organization (later the Thomson Corporation) in 1985 before its 2007 sale to Cengage. History In 1998, Gale Research merged with Information Access Company and Primary Source Media, two companies also owned by Thomson, to form the G ...
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Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. History Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random," which suggested the name Random House. In 1934 they published the first authorized edition of James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' in the Anglophone world. ''Ulysses'' transformed Random House into a formidable publisher over the next two decades. In 1936, it absorbed the firm of Smith and Haas—Robert Haas became the third partner until retiring and selling his share back to Cerf and Klopfer in 19 ...
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Frederick Ungar Publishing Company
Frederick Ungar Publishing Company was a New York publishing firm which was founded in 1940. History The Frederick Ungar Publishing Company published over 2,000 titles, including reference books such as the ''Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century'' and many works on literature and cinema. The more than 200 translations published by the firm of works by such authors as Thomas Mann, including his '' Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen'' (1918) (translated as ''Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man''), Erich Fromm and Goethe helped make those works more popular in the United States.(19 November 1988)Frederick Ungar; World Literature Publisher ''Los Angeles Times'' The company was acquired by Continuum Publishing Company in 1985.McDowell, Edwin (14 September 1985)UNGAR PUBLISHING IS BOUGHT BY CONTINUUM ''The New York Times'' Frederick "Fritz" Ungar Frederick "Fritz" Ungar (born Friedrich Ungar) worked as a publisher from 1922 and co-founded the publishing houses Phaidon ...
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Alfred A
Alfred may refer to: Arts and entertainment *''Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series * ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne * ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák *"Alfred (Interlude)" and "Alfred (Outro)", songs by Eminem from the 2020 album ''Music to Be Murdered By'' Business and organisations * Alfred, a radio station in Shaftesbury, England *Alfred Music, an American music publisher *Alfred University, New York, U.S. *The Alfred Hospital, a hospital in Melbourne, Australia People * Alfred (name) includes a list of people and fictional characters called Alfred * Alfred the Great (848/49 – 899), or Alfred I, a king of the West Saxons and of the Anglo-Saxons Places Antarctica * Mount Alfred (Antarctica) Australia * Alfredtown, New South Wales * County of Alfred, South Australia Canada * Alfred and Plantagenet, Ontario * Alfred Island, Nunavut * Mount Alfred, British Columbia United States * Alfred, Maine ...
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The Library Of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors ranging from Mark Twain to Philip Roth, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, including selected writing of several U.S. presidents. Overview and history The ''Bibliothèque de la Pléiade'' ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided the model for the LOA, which was long a dream of critic and author Edmund Wilson. The initial organizers included American academic Daniel Aaron,Cromie, William J., Ken Gewertz, Corydon Ireland, and Alvin Powell"Honorary degrees awarded at Commencement's Morning Exercises", ''Harvard Gazette''. June 7, 2007. Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer, and Roger W. Straus Jr. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Coles, Irving Howe, and Eudora Wel ...
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Blake Bailey
John Blake Bailey (born July 1, 1963) is an American writer and educator. Bailey is known for his literary biographies of Richard Yates, John Cheever, Charles Jackson, and Philip Roth. He is the editor of the Library of America omnibus editions of Cheever's stories and novels. In April 2021, his agency dropped him after several of his former eighth grade students came forward with accounts of rape and sexual abuse committed when they were adults. Background Bailey grew up in Oklahoma City and attended high school at Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School, where he was friends with another future author, Dan Fagin. He was a student at Tulane University, from which he graduated in 1985. Bailey and his family lost their house and most of their possessions in Hurricane Katrina, an experience he wrote about in a series of articles for '' Slate''. In 2009–2010, Bailey was Writer in Residence at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. From 2010 to 2016, he was the Mina ...
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Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its fictional time frame runs from March 1960 to November 1970. ''Mad Men'' begins at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, and continues at the new firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (later named Sterling Cooper & Partners) near the Time-Life Building at 1271 Sixth Avenue. According to the pilot episode, the phrase "Mad men" was a slang term coined in the 1950s by advertisers working on Madison Avenue to refer to themselves, "Mad" being short for "Madison" (in reality, the only documented use of the phrase from that time may have been in the late-1950s writings of James Kelly, an advertising executive and writer). The series's main character is the charismatic advertising executive D ...
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The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of Short story, short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous Fact-checking, fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue. Overview and history ''The New Yorker'' was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a ''The New York Times, N ...
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Necrophilia
Necrophilia, also known as necrophilism, necrolagnia, necrocoitus, necrochlesis, and thanatophilia, is sexual attraction towards or a sexual act involving Cadaver, corpses. It is classified as a paraphilia by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its ''International Classification of Diseases'' (ICD10, ICD) diagnostic manual, as well as by the American Psychiatric Association in its ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual'' (DSM). Origins of term Various terms for the crime of corpse-violation animate sixteenth- through nineteenth-century works on law and legal medicine. The plural term "nécrophiles" was coined by Belgian physician Joseph Guislain in his lecture series, ''Leçons Orales Sur Les Phrénopathies,'' given around 1850, about the contemporary necrophiliac François Bertrand: Psychiatrist Bénédict Morel popularised the term about a decade later when discussing Bertrand. History In the ancient world, sailors returning corpses to their home country were often accused ...
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