Лоуренс

Массовая литература США. Стивен Кинг, Джон Гришем. Творчество Джона Ирвинга.

Morrison, Toni (1931-), American writer noted for her examination of black experience (particularly black female experience) within the black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for black culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of her childhood. She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. In 1965 she became a fiction editor. From 1984 she taught writing at the State University of New York at Albany, leaving in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University. Morrison's first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community.

Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex. The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. Jazz (1992) is a story of violence and passion set in New York City's Harlem during the 1920s. Her novel Paradise (1998) is a richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma. The central theme of Morrison's novels is the black American experience; in an unjust society her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture.

Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977), Russian American novelist, poet, and critic, whose highly inventive writings earned him critical acclaim as a major 20th-century literary figure. Nabokov's novels demonstrate great stylistic and compositional virtuosity, and his astonishing imagination often took a morbid or grotesque turn.

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, into a prominent and wealthy aristocratic family. His father was politically active in Russia before the family fled to western Europe in 1919, in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nabokov attended school in England and graduated from the University of Cambridge with highest honors in French and Russian literature in 1922. He then moved to Berlin, Germany, where his family was living. That same year his father was accidentally shot and killed.

In Berlin, Nabokov wrote for the Russian emigre press under the pseudonym of Vladimir Sirin. He moved to France in 1937 and began to write in English. In 1940 he moved to the United States, where he was a professor of English literature at Wellesley College from 1941 to 1948 and a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959. In 1945 he became an American citizen. After the publication and success of Lolita, he eventually retired from teaching and moved to Switzerland to concentrate on writing.

Most of Nabokov's early works in Russian show a strong inclination toward parody, punning, and hoax. These qualities later carried over to his writing in English. Most of his Russian books were translated into English under his personal supervision. They include Mashen'ka (1926; Mary, 1970), Korol', dama, valet (1928; King, Queen, Knave, 1968), Zashchita ( 1930; The Defense, 1964), Podvig (1933; Glory, 1972), and Camera obscura (1933; revised and translated as Laughter in the Dark, 1938). Other Russian works were Otchayaniye (1936; Despair, 1937), Dar ( 1937; The Gift, 1963), and Priglashenie na kazn' (1938; Invitation to a Beheading, 1959).

Nabokov's first full-length English work was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), about a young Russian man’s relationship to his half-brother, a British writer. Lolita (1955), a brilliantly detailed, unconventional story, recounts the intense and obsessive involvement of a middle-aged European man with a sexually precocious young American girl, whom Nabokov termed a nymphet. The controversial book caused a sensation in Europe, and when it was published in the United States in 1958, it received a similar reception.

Nabokov wrote several other novels in English. Pnin (1957) focuses on a Russian professor living in the United States. Pale Fire (1962) is a satire on academic pretentiousness consisting of a 999-line poem and commentary by a demented New England scholar who is the exiled king of a mythical country. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) is a complicated work that is, in part, an inquiry into the nature of time. Transparent Things (1972) is another meditation on time, and Look at the Harlequins! (1974) is the autobiography of a fictional Russian emigre writer whose life parallels Nabokov’s.

Nabokov’s short-story collections include Nabokov's Dozen (1958), Tyrants Destroyed (1975), and The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995), which was published after his death and contained 13 previously unpublished stories. His poetry includes two collections in Russian and an English collection, Poems (1959).

Nabakov’s nonfiction works include Nikolai Gogol (1944), a critical study of the 19th-century Russian writer, and Strong Opinions (1973), a collection of essays. Nabokov’s four-volume translation, with commentaries, of the novel Eugene Onegin (1823-1831) by Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin appeared in 1964. Speak, Memory(1966) is a highly evocative account of Nabokov’s childhood in imperial Russia and his later life up to 1940. Lectures on Literature (1980) and Lectures on Russian Literature (1981) deal with European and Russian literary masters and are based on lectures Nabokov gave at Cornell in the 1950s.

King, Stephen (1947-), American novelist and short-story writer whose books were credited with reviving the genre of horror fiction in the late 20th century.

King graduated from the University of Maine in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in English. While writing short stories he supported himself by teaching and working as a janitor, among other jobs. His first published novel, Carrie (filmed 1976), about a tormented teenage girl gifted with telekinetic powers, appeared in 1974 and was an immediate popular success. Carrie w as the first of many novels in which King blended horror, the macabre, fantasy, and science fiction. Among such works were Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining ( 1977; filmed 1980), The Stand (1978), The Dead Zone (1979; filmed 1983), Firestarter (1980; filmed 1984), Cujo (1981), Christin e (1983; filmed 1983), It (1986), Misery (1987; filmed 1990), The Tommyknockers (1987), and The Dark Half (1989). In his books King explored almost every terror-producing theme imaginable, from vampires, rabid dogs, deranged killers, and a pyromaniac to ghosts, extrasensory perception and telekinesis, biological warfare, and even a malevolent automobile. Though his work was disparaged as undisciplined and inelegant, King was a talented storyteller whose books gain their effect from realistic detail, forceful plotting, and the author's undoubted ability to involve and scare the reader. By the early 1990s King's books had sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and his name had become synonymous with the genre of horror fiction. King also wrote the short stories collected in Night Shift (1978), as well as several novellas and motion-picture screenplays. Some of his novels were successfully adapted for the screen by such directors as Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, and Rob Reiner.

Grisham, John (1955-), attorney-turned-novelist, accomplished a rare feat in publishing: he completed writing four novels, A Time to Kill (1989 ), The Firm (1991), The Pelican Brief (1992), and The Client (1993), and had each one reach the New York Times best-seller lists within five years. Thus, Grisham became the fastest-selling writer of modern fiction in history. Though often criticized for depicting one-dimensional characters and for formulating implausible plots, Grisham was generally lauded for his fast-paced, adrenaline-charged page-turners. Despite being free of gratuitous sex, violence, and gore, Grisham's novels managed to keep readers on the edge of their seats just by making heroes out of innocent people fighting corrupt government, the underworld, and immoral businessmen.

John Grisham was born in 1955 in Arkansas but grew up in Southaven, Miss. After he was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1981, he practiced law and served (1984-89) as a Democrat in the Mississippi state legislature. Then, inspired by a trial he had observed in 1984, Grisham took three years to write his first novel, A Time to Kill, which deals with the legal, social, and moral repercussions when a black man is tried for the murder of two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter. Despite good reviews for its skillfully crafted dialogue and sense of place, the novel failed to sell. Grisham vowed to "take a naked stab at commercial fiction" with his next novel, The Firm, about a law-school graduate who is seduced into joining a Memphis law firm that turns out to be a front for the Mafia. The film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures Corp. for $600,000, prompting a bidding war for publishing rights, which Doubleday won for $200,000. Within weeks of its release in 1991, the novel appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for nearly a year, allowing Grisham to give up his law practice and move with his family to a 28-ha (70-ac) farm in Oxford, Miss. In the meantime, A Time to Kill was reissued in paperback, and over three million copies were sold. Grisham wrote his third novel, The Pelican Brief --about a female law student investigating the assassinations of two Supreme Court justices--in only three months. There were 5.5 million copies of the book in print by March 1993. Film rights to the novel were sold for over $1 million. The Client sacrificed roller-coaster suspense for humour and slapstick energy. Critics almost universally agreed that the plot, dealing with an 11-year-old boy who uncovers a mob-related murder plot, read as though it had been tailor-made for the silver screen. Indeed, the film rights to the novel were sold for $2.5 million, while the novel itself sold 2.6 million copies within 15 weeks…

Irving, John (1942-), American author, whose novels often involve colorful characters who face difficult personal situations. John Winslow Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, and attended the Universities of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), Vienna (Austria), and New Hampshire.

Irving joined the Department of English at Mount Holyoke College in 1967, and two years later his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published. This was followed by The Water-Method Man (1972) and The 158-Pound Marriage (1974).

Irving's fourth novel, The World According to Garp(1978), which follows the tumultuous life of a writer, was such a commercial success that Irving was able to leave teaching and devote full time to writing. The book was nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Irving's other works include The Hotel New Hampshire (1981; motion picture, 1982), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), A Son of the Circus (1994), Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1996), and A Widow for One Year (1998).

( 1885-1930)

Писатель-модернист,но есть загадка-почему он пишет традиционный роман.

Нетрадиционная у него концепция жизни.Поток сознания у него трансформируется в поток эмоций и чувств.Так же чувство одиночества и стремление сотворить новый мир,новую концепцию жизни.

Исключительное у него:традиционная форма и он решает проблему существования человека в абсурдной действительности.

Основная тема у Лоуренса - защита человека от порабощающей его механистической цивилизации.

Детство прошло в шахтерском поселке.Отец любил его и любил шахту,как объединяющее людей место.

Мать -учитель, приучила к искусству.Но выйдя замуж за шахтера потеряла возможность к личностному и духовному росту.Лоуренс видит причину этому-работа,гнет цивилизации.И противопоставляет этому жизнь многоцветную,радужную.Гармония- в природе, и чувства тоже в природе. А проявление искренности это любовь.Любовь физическая неотъемлемая часть любви душевной.

Тема любви Лоуренса не в прославлении только телесной стороны любви, а в том, что он отводит голосу крови роль лакмусовой бумажки.

Любовь трактует как возможность проявить себя.Лоуренс завет романистов чтобы помочь разобраться людям в их чувствах

" мы не знаем ничего или почти не знаем ничего о нас самих, что пользы знаний по географии или экономики если мы не знаем себя.Романист помогает человеку заглянуть в глубину таящихся в нет африканских джунглей"

последний роман Лоуренса"любовник леди Чаттерли"

был запрещен в публикации.в Начале 60 х годов был опубликован в издательстве "пингвин"и издание было обвинено в печатании порнографического текста, но суд отверг обвинение и роман стал очень известен.

механистические черты и метафорические: коляска, мнет цветы коляской, писал бездушные рассказы,усилия мотора главнее усилий человека.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-06