Drama : American

The House of the Seven Gables is a novel written in 1851 by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The novel begins: Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. The Pyncheon family actually existed and were ancestors of American novelist Thomas Pynchon. The House of the Seven Gables likely bears no relation to the novel, as its seven-gabled state was unknown to Hawthorne and he often stated that it was a work of complete fiction based on no particular house. This seven gabled house which has been suggested to be Hawthorne''s inspiration is a museum in Salem, Massachusetts that was founded to fund an accompanying settlement house. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Intuitive navigation. . Text annotation and mark-up. more...

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Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile is a novel by Herman Melville published in installments in Putnam''s Monthly Magazine from July 1854 through March 1855, in book form by George Palmer Putnam in New York in March 1855, and in a pirated edition by George Routledge in London in May 1855. It is loosely based on a pamphlet (108-page) autobiography that Melville acquired in the 1840s, Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter (Providence, Rhode Island, 1824). At about 60,000 words, the novel is much shorter than the major novels but significantly longer than two of Melville''s greatest stories, "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno," which were written during the same period and included the following year in The Piazza Tales. It followed the universal excoriation of his previous novel, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. Thus Melville wrote it as quickly and as straightforwardly as he could in order to secure some sort of income, and for mainly that reason he loathed the book. Still, the novel shows Melville comfortable in his narrative powers and indulging his considerable talents for humor, sly characterization, episodic action, and unsettling understatement. It is one of his easiest books to read, which is all the more surprising in that it was followed by perhaps his most difficult prose work, The Confidence-Man, in 1857. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Intuitive navigation. . Text annotation and mark-up. more...

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John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his struggles with alcoholism. It was published in 1913. The title is taken from the British folksong "John Barleycorn". Excerpted from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Intuitive navigation. . Text annotation and mark-up. . more...

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Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain detailing his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. The book begins with a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541. It continues with anecdotes of Twain''s training as a steamboat pilot, as the ''cub'' of an experienced pilot. He describes, with great affection, the science of navigating the ever-changing Mississippi River. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Intuitive navigation. . Text annotation and mark-up. . more...

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Love-Lies-Bleeding, Don DeLillo's third play, is a daring, profoundly compassionate story about life, death, art and human connection. Three people gather to determine the fate of the man who sits in a straight-backed chair saying nothing. He is Alex Macklin, who gave up easel painting to do land art in the southwestern desert, and he is seventy now, helpless in the wake of a second stroke. The people around him are the bearers of a complicated love, his son, his young wife, the older woman -- his wife of years past -- who feels the emotional tenacity of a love long-ended. It is their question to answer. When does life end, and when should it end? In this remote setting, without seeking medical or legal guidance, they move unsteadily toward last things. Luminous, spare, unnervingly comic and always deeply moving, Love-Lies-Bleeding explores a number of perilous questions about the value of life and how we measure it. more...

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