{"product_id":"i-am-alien-to-life-selected-stories-paperback","title":"I Am Alien to Life: Selected Stories - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eDjuna Barnes\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eMerve Emre\u003c\/b\u003e (Foreword by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe best of Djuna Barnes's dark, droll, incisive short fiction, spanning her all-too-brief career, edited and introduced by Merve Emre.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDjuna Barnes is rightly remembered for \u003ci\u003eNightwood\u003c\/i\u003e, her breakthrough and final novel: a hallmark of modernist literature, championed by T. S. Eliot, and one of the first, strangest, and most brilliant novels of love between women to be published in the twentieth century. Barnes's career began long before \u003ci\u003eNightwood\u003c\/i\u003e, however, with journalism, essays, drama, and satire of extraordinary wit and courage. Long into her later life, after World War II, when she published nothing more, it was her short fiction above all that she prized and would continue to revise. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Here are all the stories Barnes sought to preserve, in the versions she preferred, as well as a smattering of rarities as selected by critic and \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e contributor Merve Emre. These are tales of women \"'\u003ci\u003etragique\u003c\/i\u003e' and '\u003ci\u003etriste\u003c\/i\u003e' and 'tremendous' all at once,\" of sons and daughters being initiated into the ugly comedy of life, monuments all to a worldview singular and scathing. As Emre writes in her foreword, \"[Barnes's] themes are love and death, especially in Paris and New York; the corruption of nature by culture; the tainted innocence of children; and the mute misery of beasts . . . her characters may be alien to life, but they are alive--spectacularly, grotesquely alive.\"\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eDjuna Barnes\u003c\/b\u003e (1892-1982) was born on Storm King Mountain in New York State. She worked as a journalist during World War I before leaving the United States to spend the inter-war years in Paris and London among the most celebrated writers and artists of the twentieth century. She returned to New York in 1941 and lived in Greenwich Village until her death. She published three novels as well as short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, skits, and a three-act play between 1914 and 1950. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eMerve Emre\u003c\/b\u003e is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and a contributing writer at the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 240\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.9 x 8.4 x 5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 08, 2024\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47457121796274,"sku":"9781961341227","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0770\/3891\/1666\/files\/42dc340395c362bcfbd08999fe2ede47.webp?v=1778876784","url":"https:\/\/box.dadyminds.org\/products\/i-am-alien-to-life-selected-stories-paperback","provider":"DADYMINDS BOX","version":"1.0","type":"link"}