Francine Prose Knihy

Román ironicky nahlíží na módní hnutí New Age a na jisté směry feminismu, tedy na aktuální fenomény typické pro žhavý dnešek. V jeho příběhu o několika mužích a ženách se však skrývá univerzální přesah.

An essay by Xavier F. Salomon, Frick Curator, paired with a contribution by author Francine Prose bring to life one of Titian's most personal and revealing portraits. Author of lives of saints, scurrilous verses, comedies, tragedies, and innumerable letters, Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) attained considerable wealth and influence, in part through literary flattery and blackmail. Little is known of his early years, but by 1527 he had settled permanently in Venice. Among Aretino’s friends and patrons were some of the most prominent figures of his time, several of whom gave him gold chains such as the one he wears in this portrait. He was on intimate terms with Titian, who painted at least three portraits of him. Here the artist conveys his friend’s intellectual power through the keen, forceful head and his worldliness through the solid, weighty mass of the richly robed figure.

Though the sense of realism in German photographer Loretta Lux's striking portraits of children remains eerily intact, Lux does not strive to create faithful photographic representations of her young subjects. Instead, each image--invariably comprised of a lone child in a sparse landscape--is painstakingly composed and manipulated to create psychically charged explorations of the nature of childhood and the process of self-discovery. Originally trained as a painter, Lux continues to draw influence from paintings by old masters such as Velasquez, Goya and Runge. This influence is especially apparent in Lux's compositions. After carefully choosing the models, costumes and backdrops--sometimes using her own paintings--she digitally combines and enhances each element to form meticulously structured tableaux. The consistently forlorn expressions of her models combined with the hyperreality of the image create portraits that transcend their subjects and remind us that childhood is as chaotic and multidimensional as any other part of life.

Photographs of breasts are everywhere: in museums, on book covers, in fashion ads, and on posters. Alluring symbols of womanhood, breasts have fascinated generations of image makers. Here, for the first time between two covers, is the breast in photography: the titillating breast, the maternal breast, the aging breast, and the symbolic breast.

In the classical world, the muses were the nine daughters of Zeus who inspired creative individuals to produce remarkable works. Francine Prose highlights the significance of real women who inspired greatness, presenting them as more than mere catalysts deserving recognition for their contributions. Each chapter serves as a mini-biography, exploring the lives of these women and their relationships with male artists. For instance, memoirist Hester Thrale's letters to Samuel Johnson influenced his later works, while Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, navigated her independence from the author. Yoko Ono emerges as a muse and artist in her own right, whose avant-garde tendencies were sometimes blamed for John Lennon’s musical decline. Prose includes both well-known figures like Suzanne Farrell, who collaborated with George Balanchine, and lesser-known women such as Lou Andreas-Salomé, who had ties to Nietzsche and Freud. The book delves into how these women motivated men of achievement, often at the cost of their own recognition, and examines the lasting consequences of their roles in the creative process.

A biography of one of twentieth century America's most influential patrons of the arts that covers her personal life, uncompromising spirit, and relationships with such modern masters as Jackson Pollock and Man Ray.

In "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl," Yiyun Li weaves captivating stories that explore the human condition through the lens of politics and folklore. From complex relationships to a unique investigative agency in Beijing, her lyrical prose paints a vivid landscape of life, blending the strange with the familiar.

Set against the backdrop of the 1970s, this memoir explores the disillusionment of American youth as they confront the fading hopes of the previous decade. Through a blend of sharp intelligence and irony, Francine Prose recounts her emotional and artistic development, offering insights into the political climate of the time. The narrative balances rigor with unexpected poignancy, making it a compelling reflection on the challenges of growing up amid shifting societal ideals.

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë’s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.