The Chronicles of Michel Du Jabot


Book Description

Eckhard Gerdes's biggest work, his sixteenth published novel "Have you seen whales frolicking in the seaógiant masses of shiny wet flesh gracefully rising up into the air and then just as gracefully plunging back into the water? They do it not to catch flies as trout do, food always on their tiny minds, but to delight at their ability to do it, delight at being whales. I rise and plunge, says the whale, therefore I am! And so it is with Eckhard Gerdes in his massive, whale tale kind of a book, The Chronicles of Michel du Jabotóhe is not after seducing a reader or two with a suspenseful story into purchasing his book but to exercise the writer in himself, delight at his ability to use language. Gerdes is because he writes." --Yuriy Tarnawsky, from the introduction Fiction.




The Music of the Other


Book Description

The great flood of world musics into our immediate cultural environment is not a simple matter of expanding global musical exchange, but rather many complex processes such as the growth of intercontinental tourism and the development of technologies in communication. Elegantly tracing the dimensions of these new musical encounters, Laurent Aubert considers the impact of world musics on our values, our habits and our cultural practices. His discussions of key questions about our contemporary music culture widen conventional ethnomusicological perspectives to consider the nature of Western society as a 'global village' and the impact of current Western demands on the future of world musics and their practitioners.




Chinese Reverse Glasspainting 1720-1820


Book Description

Displaying a talent for combining aesthetic sensibility with scientific rigor, the author has given new life to something that once excited European passions: an original, non-academic art at the forefront of the 'new technology' of the time. For decades, aristocrats of the Old World and then American collectors (the latter at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries) spent countless sums on the purchase of these works, which were worth a fortune. These wealthy collectors of curiosities of all types were also most certainly great dreamers seeking a worthy setting for their dreams. Unbeknownst to them, their endeavours had much greater scope, creating and nourishing the conditions for a rare encounter between two worlds: a golden age of atypical collaboration, a combined adventure between China and Europe.




How to Read


Book Description

For too long, our educational system has oversimplified the practice of reading while pretending that only one method works: Read as fast as you can, from beginning to end, in a straight line, without skipping anything. The fastest reader is the best reader and gets the gold star and the certificate for free ice cream! This, of course, punishes deliberate, careful students and booklovers who delight in the process and incorporate what they read into their everyday lives. The dominant method of reading works for simple linear texts, but it is by no means the only way to go about reading and excludes many other types of texts. In How to Read, veteran novelist, editor and educator Eckhard Gerdes reveals 81 different approaches for reading, opening up new horizons that restrictive educators have been blocking from view for far too long. This innovative guidebook will enrich the experience of textuality for young and old readers alike.




A Companion to François Rabelais


Book Description

"A Companion to François Rabelais offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the works of François Rabelais, one of the most influential writers of the Western literary tradition. A monk, medical doctor, translator and editor, Rabelais embodies the ideals of Renaissance humanism. His genre-bending fiction combines vast erudition, comic verve, and critical observations of all spheres of contemporary life that are relevant to this day. Two sections of this volume situate Rabelais's work in the larger social, political, and literary context of his time. A third section gives concise interpretations of each of the five books of the Pantagrueline Chronicles. The contributors are eminent scholars of early modern literature, many of whom write in English for the first time"--







I Will Repay


Book Description

I Will Repay was written by Baroness Emmuska Orczy and originally published in 1906, this is a sequel novel to the Scarlet Pimpernel. The second Pimpernel book written by Orczy, it comes chronologically third in the series, after Sir Percy Leads the Band and before The Elusive Pimpernel. The protagonist is a wealthy Parisian lawyer who is forced into a duel with a rich young wastrel ten years before the Revolution. The Revolution finds the same lawyer a well regarded deputy in the Assembly. He is a philanthropist and well loved, even by the Paris mob. Unbeknown to him, the young sister of the man he killed in the duel has sworn revenge on him.




Offbeat/Quirky


Book Description

Fiction. Anthology. OFFBEAT/QUIRKY is the first of a new series of books by JEF. It is an anthology of innovative fiction with a difference, of forty-six of the bravest voices in literature writing today.




Plague City


Book Description

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Winner of the 2019 Kenneth Patchen Award of the Innovative Novel. Innovative and engaging from the start PLAGUE CITY draws the reader in with forms and a genreless narrative presented via reader participation. The prose sometimes reads like a song, sometimes asks questions, and shows you how literature might (must!) move forward in a chaotic world. With space to breathe Genelle Chaconas weaves a collage-style work that asks the reader to return, reread, and reconsider fiction (and reality).--Jane L. Carman




The Pissers' Theatre


Book Description

IS THE FOURTH WALL A URINAL? In Eckhard Gerdes's fifteenth novel, two women friends - one from the city, the other from the suburbs - attend opening night of a cryptic new play: "Pissers' Theatre." Oddly enough, both the play and the theatre it's being presented in have been designed to accommodate audience incontinence. Thus, the production pauses whenever someone needs to empty their bladder. This bizarre experiment plays havoc with the show's continuity and leads our heroines into strange places - onstage and off. An offbeat and amusing new novel by a master fictioneer.