A Writer's Life by Gay Talese

A Writer's Life by Gay Talese

For those who cannot read the language of the original texts, the lively and varied world of eighteenth-century Russian literature has been largely inaccessible. In this valuable collection, expert translator David Gasperetti presents three seminal tales that express the major literary, social, and philosophical concerns of late-eighteenth-century Russia.

The country's first bestseller, Matvei Komarov's Vanka Kain tells the story of a renowned thief and police spy and is also an excellent historical source on the era's criminal underworld. Mikhail Chulkov's The Comely Cook is a cross between Moll Flanders, with its comic emphasis on a woman of ill-repute who struggles to secure her place in society, and Tristram Shandy, with its parody of the conventions of novel writing. Finally, Nikolai Karamzin's Poor Liza, the story of a young woman who kills herself over a failed love affair, set the standard for writing sentimentalist fiction in Russia.

Taken as a whole, these three works outline the beginnings of modern prose fiction in Russia and also illuminate the literary culture that would give rise to the Golden Age of Russian letters in the middle of the next century.

Gay Talese was born in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1932, to Italian immigrant parents. He attended the University of Alabama, and after graduating was hired as a copyboy at the New York Times.

After a brief stint in the army, Talese returned to the New York Times in 1956. Since then he has written for numerous publications, including Esquire, the New Yorker, Newsweek, and Harper's Magazine. It was these articles that led Tom Wolfe to credit Gay Talese with the creation of an inventive form of nonfiction writing called The New Journalism.

Talese's bestselling books have dealt with the history and influence of the New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power); the inside story of a Mafia family (Honor Thy Father); his father's immigration to America from Italy in the years preceding World War II (Unto the Sons); and the changing moral values of America in the period between World War II and the AIDS epidemic (Thy Neighbor's Wife).

Gay Talese lives with his wife, Nan, in New York City.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679410966
ISBN 10	0679410961
Title	A Writer's Life
Author	Gay Talese
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Year published	2006-04-25
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable