Bøger af Christopher Bigsby

Can some truths ever be captured, either in images or words?

Henry James, John Buchan and Arthur Conan Doyle, unbeknown to one another, are all invited to a Swiss hotel where they have supposedly come to write in peace. When they arrive, however, they are informed that there has been a murder and that a mysterious figure charged to investigate would appreciate their help in solving the crime. Meanwhile, they write their stories. For Henry James it is one of intrigue involving Europe and America as a young man meets his match in more ways than one. For John Buchan it is an adventure story involving Richard Hannay, who we know from The Thirty-Nine Steps, while Conan Doyle, against his better instincts, resurrects Sherlock Holmes for another case. These stories unfold as the details of the murder are slowly revealed.

Ballygoran is a small Irish town, one part memory, one part myth, with a touch of tragedy and a deal of comedy. It is a place which people leave and still more unaccountably stay. Education of the young is in the hands of a rather strange assembly of nuns, one of whom is under the impression she can sing and all of whom are believers in violence as an educative tool. They teach holy scripture and chastity, to both of which their pupils seem unaccountably resistant. Each house has its secrets, from the woman who fell in love with a camel driver, to a couple who wage unrelenting war with one another. There is a clothes store that sells pink underclothes guaranteed to resist assault, along with surgical stockings, giving it reassuring overtones of the medical profession. One woman's husband fell off the roof while adjusting the television aerial, the surgeon respecting her request that his life not be unnecessarily prolonged, he being in no condition to join in the ethical discussion. Then there are the three Marys of whom it was said, though not in the presence, that they could have played rugby for Ireland but for their gender and the risk of injury to any team they joined. These are only part of a cast of comic characters, many of whom meet in the local pub whose licensing hours are elastic. But what is comedy without a touch of melancholy and would you not feel melancholy if it rained more days than not and if dreams never quite distilled into reality. This is a comedy from the award-winning novelist (Hester, Beautiful Dreamer) and biographer (Arthur Miller: A Biography) Christopher Bigsby, a regular columnist for the Times Higher Education Supplement and who for many years was a presenter on BBC radio (Kaleidoscope, Meridian, Present Voic es, Past Words, The Index, Off the Page), and was the co-author, with Malcolm Bradbury, of plays for radio and television.

What if Edgar Allan Poe did not die, drunk on election day? What if he did not die at all? What if his planned escape from a life that oppressed him led him on a journey not only across an ocean but into the heart of darkness as he encountered those anxious to enroll him in their brotherhood? Christopher Bigsby takes a man renowned for his gothic tales, in which the buried return, and makes Poe himself the target of those with a taste for blood who are prepared to follow him until they judge him ready to join them. Poe, or the Revenant is a story worthy of Poe himself and who is to know where truth ends and invention begins?

A lot of things happened in 1937. The Golden Gate Bridge opened and the New York Yankees won the World Series. Amelia Earhart went missing and the Hindenberg fell out of the sky. In Flint, Michigan, though, there was a strike by General Motors workers, a strike marked by violence. Watching this was a young girl of fourteen whose mother was dying. But a bad year became worse. Kidnapped by a gang of men she is taken into the heart of a particular darkness only to escape, pursued by still others. Looking back from the age of sixteen she tries to make sense of what has happened and the violence she has witnessed. It is now 1939 and across the Atlantic another kind of violence is born. This is the story of a young girl growing up and of a world that she discovers can be unforgiving.

When, in Moby Dick, Ahab disappeared, tied to his nemesis, only one man survived to tell the tale, Ishmael. The story, it appeared, had ended. But stories never really end. What happened thereafter to Ishmael, condemned, for a while, to repeat his account as if there were a lesson to be learned, by him or those to whom he repeated a tale which had a mystery at its heart? Was the white whale more than a simple fact of nature and what drove a man to pursue it as though there were a sudden insight to be unveiled? Here is a sequel to that story as Ishmael seeks to purge his memories, trying his hand at pioneering before caught up in a bloody Civil War, once more facing death, before returning to the sea and the whaling on which he believed he had turned his back. And what of Ahab and a certain white whale? There are rumours that both still sail the deep ocean, locked in that same embrace which brought about the death of all on the Pequod. After all, sometimes rumours may have the shadow of truth about them, repetition being a fundamental law of existence.Christopher Bigsby is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts. His first novel, Hester, won the McKitterick Award while Beautiful Dreamer was an American Library Association Notable Book. His biography of Arthur Miller was shortlisted for the Sheridan Morley and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Britain and the George Freedley Award in the United States It was also a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title while a winner of the European Association for American Studies Prize.Of Hester: 'Magnificent ... Unnaturally beautiful' (The Village Voice) 'Enchantingly beautiful' (The Washington Post}Of Beautiful Dreamer: ''a powerful Faulknerian vision'' (Joyce Carol Oates) 'Stylistically brilliant and pitilessly gripping' (Louis de Bernières)

Bigsby¿s gripping, meticulously researched biography of one of the 20th century¿s greatest playwrights examines Miller¿s refusal to name names before the House on Un-American Activities Committee, offers new insights into Miller¿s marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and sheds new light on how their relationship informed Miller¿s subsequent great plays.

?A valuable contribution to the study of Afro-American literature.?-Booklist

Biography of one of the greatest of modern playwrights, Arthur Miller (1915-2005).