The author has provided an insightful and concise portrait of Amis and his work. I can't imagine that Amis himself could have done better. Diedrick really knows his subject.

If you are doing research on Martin Amis, this is a book you will have to consider. Terrifically written.

Prof. James Diedrick has written a great study of Martin Amis's work for both the general and scholarly audience. Complete in its scope, this book is a must for anyone studying Martin Amis's work.

This book is a gem and should be on the reading list of any fan of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Much of the contents are anecdotal recollections of Hemingway regarding Fitzgerald who he regarded as immensely talented but weak and dominated (by Zelda and the bottle). A variety of letters between the two help to bring to life the closeness that was in evidence in the early friendship before Fitzgerald's decline and Hemingway's enormous success (followed by his growing intolerance of the waning and less successful like FSF). This book also does not attempt to hide the sometimes incomprehensible mean -spiritedness of Hemingway when despite all his success (largely aided by the early support of others he later cast aside) still felt enough threatened to throw his drowning friends an anchor.

This has new stuff that wasn't in Brucolli's previous book on the two authors SCOTT AND ERNEST. I read that one, and when starting FITZGERALD AND HEMINGWAY, thought I'd read the same book, but with a few added facts. Well, there are tons of new facts in F & H that are EXTREMELY interesting to the Fitzgerald and Hemingway fan. I recommend this book highly. I've read much of it more than once.

Zelda Fitzgerald spent much of her life trying to struggle out of the shadow of her famous husband. For many years she was both a literal and figurative inspiration for his work, often helping him with his stories. This book of her writings allows her to finally take her own place in the fiction world. Her novel, Save Me the Waltz, is an incredible book in which language becomes surrealistic art. There are two sides to every story, and it is interesting to hear Zelda's interpretation of her life with Fitzgerald. The novel itself is a gradual emotional and physical breakdown as it documents a woman on her voyage of self discovery and artistic fulfillment. It has been said that Zelda was a true original and, once encountered, was never forgotten. The same can be said about her work. Though she will unfortunately always be paired and compared with Fizgerald, her voice and style is all her own.

F. Scott Fitzgerald probably had there his real masterpiece, but he did not have the time to finish it. The social and political background, the film industry in Hollywood, was perfect for the kind of intrigues and characters he tried to depict. The period brought a sense of absolute confrontation between the leaders of the industry and the workers, writers, scenographers, technicians, etc. The communist manipulation of the situation was just as effective and real as that by the capital-owners, and this confrontation enabled some social-climbers and some violent power-hungry individuals to take over, when they deemed it necessary or possible, from those who had a cultural and even artistic vision. This artistic vision was not in anyway exclusive of the economic consideration that a film had to make money, but led to the idea that some films had to be so good that they did lose some money bringing a certain aura to the producer. Fitzgerald was also dealing with characters who had a private and emotional life, though mostly an emotional instability that made them desire a dream more than real achievement. Love was never a real consideration. It was at the most a side-kick in life. And that dimension of human life is marvellously shown in the unfinished manuscript. Love is a mixture of memory, dreaming, hoping, need, desire, lust, and social use, at times social escape. This is a final version of love from a man who had probably seen it all and was more than ready to leave this life behind. Unluckily he left it a little bit too soon.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

From the preeminent Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli, this book's remarkable thoroghness and honesty is refreshing. Bruccoli gives the oft misunderstood Fitzgerald a human, albeit, reverent study, exploring beyond the overemphasized alcoholism into the realms of insecurity and sensitivity that had an indelible effect on Fitzgerald's work. The book reads well, without the burden of overly scholarly analysis, making it suitable reading either for doctoral study or simply for a summer beach day.

Gillian Hanson provides her audience with a comprehensive and technically wonderful critical analysis of Silitoe's works - in effect, a brilliant overview of one the twentieth century's greatest writers. Hanson displays an amazing aptitude for conveying the inherent meaning in Silitoe's writing - an almost uncanny understanding of the thoughts and emotions that drove his fiction. It is an excellent choice for either scholarly efforts or casual reading - highly recommended.

An unusually clear and concise introduction to several areas of American Literary Theory. All to often, books of this sort are written by professors for an audience of professors. Dr. Spikes' book, instead, is an excellent tool for students and general readers intent on understanding just a little better the texts they read.

James R. Giles' critical essays on Hubert Selby, Jr.'s work are a most excellent guide for interested students. Upon reading Selby's novel Reqiuem for a Dream, I was fascinated with his style and content. I proceeded to read Last Exit to Brooklyn and Song of the Silent Snow. After finishing these novels, I decided it was time to research Selby in order to compile a research paper for an English class. My passion for Selby's intense and tragic literature led me to Giles' Understanding Hubert Selby Jr. Giles' criticism was the most complete and accurate analysis of Selby's work that I could find. The edition covered all of Selby's novels with a clear, crisp, and concise diction. Giles' insight into Selby's tempestuous mind supplied the chief source and companion to my own essay on Selby. I recommend Giles' most tremendous essays to any student who loves Hubert Selby's dark and antiheroic works. I have yet to find a better analysis of Selby's novels. Every dedicated English student should explore the wastelands of Selby's imaginations, and Giles' criticism is the most capable and reliable guide.

Look Homeward Angel has for decades been a standard coming of age book read devotedly by people in their late teens and early twenties. Over the years, stories developed concerning the amount of cutting that editor Maxwell Perkins (who also edited Hemingway and Fitzgerald) did on the book. The accepted wisdom was that Perkins pulled a masterpiece out of a huge, unpublishable manuscript. This edition, which is based on Wolfe's orginial manuscript and uses his chosen title, shows that while Perkins did help to shape the book, the text that he began with was not the monstrosity it was later believed to be. Some of the cuts Perkins made, such as W.O. Gant's memories of Gettysburg, would appear in Of Time and the River, and Perkins later admitted that he was wrong to cut it. Other material that one reads for the first time seems less important. Overall, I did not find the book to be that different from Look Homeward Angel. It shows both Wolfe's strengts and weaknesses, his abiliy to create Whitmanesque passages, and to engage in self-indulgent prose. I agree with the other reviewers that it is unfortunate that this book so quickly was allowed to go out of print. Whichever version you read, this is a book best read before you are 30.

I first re read Look Homeward Angel,( which I had not read for almost 50 years) then O Lost. I think that the original manuscript is far superior to the edited version, that was originally published. Certainly the introduction is excellant and sets the stage for W.O.Gant's odessey. Admittedly, some editing would be helpful, to make a smoother transition from one chapter to another, but only minor ones, not the radical surgery that was actually done.

I think that Wolfe realized this, and that was why he changed publishers. I look forward to the unedited manuscripts of the Web and the Rock, and You can't go home again.

My only problem is that during the period when I first read these novels, I have had medical and particularly psychiatric training. It is obvious that W.O. suffered from severe bipolar or manic depressive psychosis. With modern treatment, he would have been a happier man, or at least those around him would have had better lives. But then perhaps Thomas Wolfe would not have been the writer that he was to become.

What a wonderful book. It's too bad so many readers today know only Tom Wolfe, not Thomas Wolfe. Even though it has been at least 10 years since reading Look Homewood Angel, I knew almost immediately when I came to the new sections. They add a depth to the novel, bringing in the whole town and relatives, rather being only about Eugene Gant. My favorite Wolfe readings involve trains; the experience about time stopping for a moment when you look into the eyes of someone looking directly at you into the train, is exactly as I remember my earlier train rides.What are they doing now, that the train has passed? Other 800 page books might be dull, but not this one. Having been given it as a present recently, I am very surprised and disappointed that it is already 'out of print." More people should know about O Lost!

I have this friend who hates Henry James. I can't understand it. The style is dated, in that people dont write that way today, but as you get into the book you begin to enjoy the style, as well as the plot, characters, and French/American dual culture shock that still goes on today. (For an update on the theme, look at Le Divorce and Le Mariage by Diane Johnson). I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen to these characters and the description of Paris in the Second Empire were fascinating. If you watch the Masterpiece Theatre version without having read the book, you will be totally confused. They moved events out of sequence all over the place and after about ten minutes I shut off the tape and picked up the book. You have to know the whole story before you watch them throw characters and events at you in the first two scenes that only appear 2/3 of the way through the novel, after a foundation has been laid as to who they are and when and why things happened.

I couldnt recommend this more for a good read. The only caution I have is for readers who have never been to France. They may get an extremely negative impression of French people from many of the characters in this book. Go to Paris and you will find the city is wonderful, and so are the French people. These characters are not typical!! They belong to a certain class, and the book does take place 150 years ago. If this book doesnt get you hooked on James, I dont know what will. Try Washington Square and dont miss that movie, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney and Maggie Smith.

OK so it takes half the book to get to the story. In typical Henry James fashion you are completely prepared for the action. Unlike Thomas Hardy, whose surroundings tell us of the character of the person it surrounds, James wishes you to know the depth of his characters as seen through the eyes of others. This of course brings on many minor characters that just seem to disappear, but it is a view of a person as if the reader was on the other side of the mirror watching the story unfold. Yes, James is wordy, yes this is not a quick read, but Henry James has a mastery of language and story telling that is rare.
"The American" is a wonderful love story that ends as a real life love story might end. Do not expect roses and happily ever after, it is as much a story of an ancient social system as it is of the life of "our hero." And the thing that seems to get missed is that Henry James actually wrote this as a mystery, not a love story.
This is a novel to contemplate and read between the lines. Good verses Evil, Noveau vs Old Money, Right and Wrong, can literature get any better than that?

This book is long, but only because that's how James tells the story. It's like a soup that needs to boil all day, so it's kept on low, but when it's done, it's perfect. The book stays at the pace of "our hero" the American Christopher Newman. A smart, educated, rich, yet easy going, simple, and humane veteran of the Civil War and a self made tycoon, who goes to Europe to see the "treasures and entertain" himself.

He becomes entangled in what he thinks is a simple plan for matrimony, but is really truly a great deal larger and more treacherous and terrible than that.

We spend a lot of time in Newman's mind, paragraphs of character analaysis are sprung upon us, but nothing seems plodding or slow, nothing feels useless. By the end of the book we find that we think like the character and can only agree with what he does. We react to seemingly big plot twists and events as he does, without reaction, and a logical, common sense train of thought.

But don't misunderstand that. For a book that is so polite and the essence of "slow-reaction", it is heartwrenching and tragic. You will cry, you will wonder, and you will ask yourself questions. Colorful, lifelike, and exuberant characters fight for your attention and your emotions, and we are intensely endeared to them. Emotional scenes speckle the book and are just enough. And the fact that something terrible and evil exists in this story hangs over your head from the beginning. It's hard to guess what happens because James doesn't give us many clues, and the ending may come as a surprise to some people. And without us knowing it, James is comparing American culture to European culture (of the day), and this in of itself is fulfilling.

Indeed, James uses every page he has, without wasting any on detailed landscapes and useless banter. 2 pages from the end you have a wrenching heartache, but the last paragraph and page is utterly and supremely satisfying, and you walk away the way Newman walks away, at peace.