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The Atlas (novel)
''The Atlas'' is a 1996 semi- autobiographical work by American novelist William T. Vollmann. A mixture of fiction and non-fiction, this book was drawn from Vollmann's experiences traveling around the world. He relates these experiences through 53 interconnected stories that weave their way through the novel. Vollmann has said that Yasunari Kawabata's ''Palm-of-the-Hand Stories'' were an important influence on the structure of the collection. Several of the short stories share the same titles as some of Vollmann's earlier novels, such as '' Fathers and Crows'', ''Butterfly Stories Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises ...'' and '' The Rifles''; he describes these as miniature versions of the larger works. The stories in the first half of the book are numbered from one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William T
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of England in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is sometimes abbreviated "Wm." Shortened familiar versions in English include Will, Wills, Willy, Willie, Bill, and Billy. A common Irish form is Liam. Scottish diminutives include Wull, Willie or Wullie (as in Oor Wullie or the play ''Douglas''). Female forms are Willa, Willemina, Wilma and Wilhelmina. Etymology William is related to the given name ''Wilhelm'' (cf. Proto-Germanic ᚹᛁᛚᛃᚨᚺᛖᛚᛗᚨᛉ, ''*Wiljahelmaz'' > German ''Wilhelm'' and Old Norse ᚢᛁᛚᛋᛅᚼᛅᛚᛘᛅᛋ, ''Vilhjálmr''). By regular sound changes, the native, inherited English form of the name shoul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Travel Literature
The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period, James Boswell's ''Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'' (1786) helped shape travel memoir as a genre. History Early examples of travel literature include the ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' (generally considered a 1st century CE work; authorship is debated), Pausanias' ''Description of Greece'' in the 2nd century CE, ''Safarnama'' (Book of Travels) by Nasir Khusraw (1003-1077), the '' Journey Through Wales'' (1191) and '' Description of Wales'' (1194) by Gerald of Wales, and the travel journals of Ibn Jubayr (1145–1214), Marco Polo (1254–1354), and Ibn Battuta (1304–1377), all of whom recorded their travels across the known world in detail. As early as the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata discussed history and tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memoir
A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiography since the late 20th century, the genre is differentiated in form, presenting a narrowed focus. A biography or autobiography tells the story "of a life", while a memoir often tells the story of a particular event or time, such as touchstone moments and turning points from the author's life. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist or a memorialist. Early memoirs Memoirs have been written since the ancient times, as shown by Julius Caesar's ''Commentarii de Bello Gallico'', also known as ''Commentaries on the Gallic Wars''. In the work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. His second memoir, ''Commentarii de Bello Civili'' (or ''Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975. History Guinzburg, a Harvard graduate and former employee of Simon and Schuster and Oppenheimer, a graduate of Williams College and Alfred A. Knopf, founded Viking in 1925 with the goal of publishing nonfiction and "distinguished fiction with some claim to permanent importance rather than ephemeral popular interest." B. W. Huebsch joined the firm shortly afterward. Harold Guinzburg's son Thomas became president in 1961. The firm's name and logo—a Viking ship drawn by Rockwell Kent—were meant to evoke the ideas of adventure, exploration, and enterprise implied by the word "Viking." In August 1961, they acquired H.B. Huesbsch, which maintained a list of backlist titles from authors such as James Joyce an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical ''The Monthly Review'', when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that " utobiographyis a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read. Early life Born into a well-established family in Osaka, Japan, Kawabata was orphaned by the time he was four, after which he lived with his grandparents. He had an older sister who was taken in by an aunt, and whom he met only once thereafter, in July 1909, when he was ten. She died when Kawabata was 11. Kawabata's grandmother died in September 1906, when he was seven, and his grandfather in May 1914, when he was fifteen. Having lost all close paternal relatives, Kawabata moved in with his mother's family, the Kurodas. However, in January 1916, he moved into a boarding house near the junior high school (comparable to a modern high school) to which he had formerly commuted by train. After graduating in March 1917 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
is the name Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata gave to 146 short stories he wrote during his long career. The earliest stories were published in the early 1920s, with the last appearing posthumously in 1972. The first Japanese edition to collect these stories appeared in 1971. The title refers to the brevity of the stories – many of which are only two to three pages long – which would "virtually fit into the palm of the hand". Style and themes For Susan J. Napier in the ''Monumenta Nipponica'', Kawabata's brief stories express the facets of his novels, while at the same time "providing an intensity of focus that is the essence of Kawabata's celebrated 'haiku-esque' style", working with "evocations and suggestions". Often, the stories focus "on feelings rather than understanding", presenting "the chaos of the human heart", and depict "epiphanies, transformations and revelations". Reviewers also pointed out a "delicate lyricism" and "warmth and fragility" as well as a "cool form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fathers And Crows
''Fathers and Crows'' is a 1992 historical novel by the American author William T. Vollmann. It is the second book in the seven-book series '' Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes''. ''Fathers and Crows'' explores the encounters and conflicts between French Jesuit missionaries in New France (Canada) and the native Huron and Iroquois peoples in Canada and present-day New York state. The Natives called the Jesuits "Black Robes", for their clerical costume. Vollman features historical figures as major characters, including Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, Samuel de Champlain, Marc Lescarbot, Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt et de Saint-Just, Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts, and Kateri Tekakwitha, a Catholic Mohawk religious woman who was canonized in October 2012, the first Native American/First Nations person to be so honored. References External links * Skow, John (August 31, 1992)"Collision of Cultures" ''Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butterfly Stories
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises the large superfamily Papilionoidea, which contains at least one former group, the skippers (formerly the superfamily "Hesperioidea"), and the most recent analyses suggest it also contains the moth-butterflies (formerly the superfamily "Hedyloidea"). Butterfly fossils date to the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago. Butterflies have a four-stage life cycle, as like most insects they undergo complete metamorphosis. Winged adults lay eggs on the food plant on which their larvae, known as caterpillars, will feed. The caterpillars grow, sometimes very rapidly, and when fully developed, pupate in a chrysalis. When metamorphosis is complete, the pupal skin splits, the adult insect climbs out, and after its wings have expanded and dried, it fl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Rifles (novel)
''The Rifles'' is a 1994 novel by American writer William T. Vollmann. It is intended to be the sixth book in a planned seven-book cycle entitled Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes. As of 2015 five of the seven have been published, ''The Rifles'' being the third to reach print. Unlike the other books in this series so far, ''The Rifles'' is not wholly a historical novel, as it primarily takes place in the early 1990s, although the storyline depicting the trials and challenges of modern Inuit life is tied to the ill-fated exploration of the Arctic region by Sir John Franklin in the mid-19th century. The novel also discusses the 1955 forced migration of Inuit from Inukjuak, Quebec to Resolute, Nunavut Resolute or Resolute Bay ( iu, ᖃᐅᓱᐃᑦᑐᖅ, translit=Qausuittuq, lit=place with no dawn, italic=no) is an Inuit hamlet on Cornwallis Island in Nunavut, Canada. It is situated at the northern end of Resolute Bay and the Northwest Pa .... References E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija; sk, Juhoslávia; ro, Iugoslavia; cs, Jugoslávie; it, Iugoslavia; tr, Yugoslavya; bg, Югославия, Yugoslaviya ) was a country in Southeast Europe and Central Europe for most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the ''Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes'' by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (which was formed from territories of the former Austria-Hungary) with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign. The kingdom gained international recog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1996 American Novels
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on board; Eight people 1996 Mount Everest disaster, die in a blizzard on Mount Everest; Dolly (sheep), Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult somatic cell; The Port Arthur massacre (Australia), Port Arthur Massacre occurs on Tasmania, and leads to major changes in Gun laws of Australia, Australia's gun laws; Macarena, sung by Los del Río and remixed by The Bayside Boys, becomes a major dance craze and cultural phenomenon; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crash-ditches off of the Comoros Islands after the plane was Aircraft hijacking, hijacked; the 1996 Summer Olympics are held in Atlanta, marking the Centennial (100th Anniversary) of the modern Olympic Gam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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