James Stern: A Life in Letters 1904-1993 - Tapa dura

James Stern: A Life in Letters, 1904-1993

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover, xiii + 322pp + 16 pages of glossy b&w photos, NOT ex-library. A tiny crease to the side edge of first several leaves. Book is clean and bright throughout, with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Untorn, unclipped, dust jacket shows minor wear. -- A biography of the Anglo-Irish writer James Stern (1904-1993), told through his extensive correspondence and fragmentary memoirs. It explores the life of a man widely regarded as one of the best letter writers of his time, whose social circle included many of the 20th century's most eminent literary figures. Core Themes and Narrative: - A "Friend of the Famous" [Stern was famously well-connected; Malcolm Cowley once remarked that Stern had "known everybody, his wife, his boyfriend, and his natural issue"; the book features letters from luminaries such as Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, W.H. Auden, Djuna Barnes, and Sonia Orwell]; - The Best Letter Writer [according to contemporary Van Wyck Brooks, Stern was "entirely the best letter writer living"; he reportedly wrote as many as eight letters a day in a precise, fine hand, many of which are published here for the first time]; - Life Journey [the book follows Stern's path from a "moneyed, horsey" Irish-Jewish family in County Meath through his varied career as a steeplechase rider, pig farmer, and bank clerk before he turned to writing]. Stern's Literary Contributions: While the book emphasizes his letters, it also provides context for his published works and translations. Alongside his wife, Tania Kurella, Stern was a prolific translator of major German authors, including Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, and Sigmund Freud. He was a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Republic, and Harper's, famously writing a satirical review of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. -- "In the early 1930s there emerged from a moneyed, horsey, philistine Irish/Jewish family, living in some splendour in County Meath, a young writer of extraordinary talent. You have only to look at the range of comments reproduced in the endpapers of this book to gauge the impression Jimmy Stern made on a gallery of very distinguished literati. After an early manhood in England, Africa, Germany and France and his wartime years in America, Stern also became a perceptive critic and a translator (mostly with his German wife Tania) of the work of Brecht, Freud, Kafka, Mann and others. But he published only four books, all before 1953. This book is not only about a literary life, it is in part about the tensions between promise and fulfilment. Miles Huddleston draws on an impressive corpus of Stern's letters (Van Wyck Brooks said of him 'You are entirely the best letter writer living') as well as excerpts from his subject's fragmentary, and unpublished, memoirs. Because his acquaintance was so starry (Malcolm Cowley wrote of Stern, 'My God, you've known everybody, his wife, his boyfriend, and his natural issue'), the book sparkles with letters, many hitherto unpublished, from his eminent contemporaries, among them Djuna Barnes, Sybille Bedford, Kay Boyle, John Davenport, Constantine FitzGibbon, David Garnett, Brian Howard, Arthur Miller, Lewis Mumford, Sonia Orwell, William Plomer, Katherine Anne Porter and Patrick White. It is a complex life, unfolded by Miles Huddleston with sympathy and style, that stimulates, moves, frustrates, and richly amuses by turn.". Nº de ref. del artículo: 007729

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