Literature Book List ·

Ghost of Monsieur Scarron

This third novel in the three Cases of Circumstantial Evidence provides an intimate portrayal of deception and corruption in one small poor Parisian family in the late 1600s. In contrast to the majesty of the court of Louis XIV and the bloodthirsty crowds of Paris at that time, the simple lives of Jean Larcher and his wife and son are pitiably ruined by the presence of a seducer and his political pamphlets.…

Under a Glass Bell

Under a Glass Bell is one of Nin's finest collections of stories. First published in 1944, it attracted the attention of Edmond Wilson, who reviewed the collection in The New Yorker. It was in these stories that Nin's artistic and emotional vision took shape.…

The Town

In the final novel of Richter’s Awakening Land trilogy, Sayward Wheeler completes her mission and lives to see the transition of her family and her friends, American pioneers, from the ways of wilderness to the ways of civilization.…

The Fathers

The Fathers is the powerful novel by the poet and critic recognized as one of the great men of letters of our time.Old Major Buchan of Pleasant Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia, lived by a gentlemen's agreement to ignore what was base or rude, to live a life which was gentle and comfortable because it was formal.…

In Defense of Reason

Three Classics of Contemporary Criticism

Introduction by Kenneth Fields Yvor Winters has here collected, with an introduction, the major critical works—Primitivism and Decadence, Maule’s Curse, and The Anatomy of Nonsense—of the period in which he worked out his famous and influential critical position.…

The Function of Criticism

Problems and Exercises

A Spy in the House of Love

Although Anaïs Nin found in her diaries a profound mode of self-creation and confession, she could not reveal this intimate record of her own experiences during her lifetime. Instead, she turned to fiction, where her stories and novels became artistic “distillations” of her secret diaries.…

The Yogi of Cockroach Court

In this novel of the mestizo, or mixed-blood, Frank Waters completes the Southwestern canvas begun in The Man Who Killed the Deer and People of the Valley. Set in a violent Mexican border town, the story centers on Barby, a tormented mestizo, Guadalupe, the mestiza “percentage-girl,” and Tai-Ling, the serene yogi.…

Collages

”Collages began with an image which had haunted me. A friend, Renate, had told me about her trip to Vienna where she was born, and of her childhood relationships to statues. She told me stories of her childhood, her relationship to her father, her first love.…

D. H. Lawrence

An Unprofessional Study

In 1932, two years after D. H. Lawrence's death, a young woman wrote a book about him and presented it to a Paris publisher. She recorded the event in her diary: “It will not be published and out by tomorrow, which is what a writer would like when the book is hot out of the oven, when it is alive within oneself.…

Seduction of the Minotaur

An excerpt from Seduction of the Minotaur: Some voyages have their inception in the blueprint of a dream, some in the urgency of contradicting a dream. Lillian's recurrent dream of a ship that could not reach the water, that sailed laboriously, pushed by her with great effort, through city streets, had determined her course toward the sea, as if she would give this ship, once and for all, its proper sea bed.…

Winter of Artifice

Three Novelettes

Winter of Artifice is a collection of novelettes: ‘Stella,’ ‘Winter of Artifice,’ and ‘The Voice.’

Children of the Albatross

Children of the Albatross is divided into two sections: “The Sealed Room” focuses on the dancer Djuna and a set of characters, chiefly male, who surround her; “The Café” brings together a cast of characters already familiar to Nin's readers, but it is their meeting place that is the focal point of the story.…

The Four-Chambered Heart

The Four-Chambered Heart, Anaïs Nin's 1950 novel, recounts the real-life affair she conducted with café guitarist Gonzalo Moré in 1936. Nin and Moré rented a house-boat on the Seine, and under the pervading influence of the boat's watchman and Moré's wife Helba, developed a relationship.…

Ladders to Fire

After struggling with her own press and printing her own works, Anaïs Nin succeeded in getting Ladders to Fire accepted and published in 1946. This recognition marked a milestone in her life and career.…

House of Incest

“The genesis of House of Incest was in the dream. The keeping of dreams was an important part of that exploration of the unconscious. But I discovered dreams in themselves, isolated, were not always interesting.…

The Man Who Killed the Deer

A Novel of Pueblo Indian Life

The story of Martiniano, the man who killed the deer, is a timeless story of Pueblo Indian sin and redemption, and of the conflict between Indian and white laws; written with a poetically charged beauty of style, a purity of conception, and a thorough understanding of Indian values.

People of the Valley

One of Frank Waters's most popular novels, People of the Valley takes place high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains where an isolated Spanish-speaking people confront a threatening world of change.…