Barbara Bk itibaren Juárez, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

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12/22/2024

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2018-07-25 11:40

Antrenman Bilgisi Ve Sporcu Sağlığı - Onur Oral TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi

Tarafından yazılmış kitap Tarafından: Nobel Akademik Yayıncılık

The Savage Gentleman by Philip Wylie Published by Bison Books, March 2011. Originally published 1932. If known at all these days, Philip Wylie (1902-1971) is perhaps best known for his disaster novel written with Edwin Balmer, When Worlds Collide (1933), or even the George Pal produced film version (1953). However, outside the SF world he wrote hundreds of short novels, screenplays, reviews, serials, and social comment, much of which has now become rather obscure. Well done then to Bison Books, who have re-released a lesser-known work by this author. First published in 1932, it is at first glance less SF and more an extension of social comment. More akin to Stranger in a Strange Land than Armageddon, it has been claimed, like his earlier novel Gladiator (1930), that it is a precursor, if not an influence on the development of the pulp hero. Whereas The Savage Gentleman is seen as perhaps an influence on The Man of Bronze, Doc Savage, Gladiator is also seen as one of the main inspirations for Superman. According to Gary Westfahl, ‘it remains the case that Wylie succeeded in, and then abandoned, three separate writing careers. He worked as a Hollywood screenwriter; he wrote a number of well-regarded science fiction novels, and he wrote some books for a mainstream audience. But he never established himself as a leading figure in any of these fields, explaining why he is not well remembered—he was a talented visitor to several worlds, an inhabitant of none of them.’ The story starts fairly straightforwardly. At the end of the 19th century Stephen Stone, millionaire, is betrayed by his wife and as a result takes their son, Henry, to a remote and isolated island where he is brought up by Stone and two male companions, a Scotsman named McCobb and a Negro servant named Jack, without the influence of women. The first half of the book reads like a boys-own adventure idyll, with the men hunting, fishing and educating Henry. Thirty years or so pass. Henry’s father dies on the island. Then Stone Island is discovered by a small Scandinavian freighter and the remaining men are brought back to New York of the 1930’s: a place very different from the New York they left when Henry was an infant. We now have telephones, electricity, aeroplanes, airships. Henry also finds himself the owner of a huge news conglomerate set up by his father and run in their absence by the magnate Voorhees. His island education has created a handsome and well built young man (a point frequently emphasised in the book) who is a great conversationalist and excellent company, well versed in etiquette, and extraordinarily nice, though one who cannot remember ever seeing a woman. Indeed his father has taught him never to trust a female and that love itself is a myth. With such a setup, much of the remainder of this tale is how Henry adjusts to the contemporary world and the complexities of the modern woman, an issue exacerbated when he meets Marian Whitney, the granddaughter of corporate lawyer and family friend Elihu Whitney. In summary, we have here a social commentary and a book which questions the roles of gender in society in what seems to be a common theme of Wylie’s. In his introduction to this edition of Savage Gentleman, Richard A. Lupoff states that Wylie is ‘railing against womankind’, and the idea of ‘momism’. It must be said that there is a highlighting of the value of ‘men doing manly things’ here. The first thing the men do, once having deliberately beached their yacht, is clear land, and build a house, and create a farm with hunting and fishing in a manner that would make a survivalist proud. Alternatively, thinking about the target audience of the 1930’s, this may be what the reader wants. Following such an idea, there is also great store placed on the consequential male bonding here too. It is a very male-orientated environment, albeit with a Negro male slave. (This is a point that Lupoff makes, that although Black slavery is an issue that sits uncomfortably with the readership of today, Jack is a character more subtle and respected than at first suggested.) This can be seen further reflected in the pulp fiction of the time, with the lead hero and his (typically male) buddies supporting each other through difficulties, whether it be fighting crime or even relationships with women. The gentleman, for all his social graces and suave gentility, is nevertheless still a savage when needs be, as is shown in the ending of the novel. This is an old-fashioned view, and one which would be controversial even today. Whilst the world has moved on, this book is rather stuck in its historical context. However, rather than being the male sexist rant that the above summary may suggest, the female character, in the guise of Marian Whitney, actually suggests that Henry will only live happily ever after in a fuller, better informed life with a witty, honest, and vivacious woman. However, for all of the book’s male posturing, it can be quite engaging. It highlights the concerns of the US of the 1930’s – gangsters, media conglomeration, loose morals, prohibition – and makes us question whether such a life is better than the isolated island lifestyle that Henry Stone, McCobb and Jack at one point wish to return to. A book that is meant to provoke a response, though this felt like an early prototype of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (a point further emphasised when we find that one of the business moguls here is called Harriman!) If you can read the book in its original context, allowing for the stereotyping and racism of its day, it is and at times even funny. If nothing else, it shows us how far the genre has moved since the 1930’s. Moreover by the end Wylie seems to suggest not a separation of the sexes but that each gender has its defined role/place and in fact each needs each other to enable people to reach their full potential.

2018-07-25 15:40

Hayaletler : New York Üçlemesi 2 TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi

Tarafından yazılmış kitap Tarafından: Can Yayınları

I read and loved Rebecca as a teenager, and am unsure why I never sought out any of the other novels by the author, but after reading this book I will be sure to do so. I am so glad that Sourcebooks is reprinting this, and hope that it can find its way to many other people who have missed it, as I have. On the rare occasion I have the experience where book and mood meet perfectly. This happened with Frenchman's Creek, a book I am sure that I would have very much enjoyed no matter my mood, but which was exactly the book I was seeking at the time I read it. The wild, windy March days--with looming storm, and gathering clouds, the brief hours of sunshine tempered by drops of ice cold rain, and mud-causing snow--have left me restless and wild myself, longing for escape. And so enter Dona St. Columb, the beautiful but restless Lady, tired of London high society, longing for escape from the falsity and uselessness of her life. After a foolish escapade, and stupid flirtation, she sets off, with her two young children and their nurse, to her husband's country estate surrounded by forest river and ocean. All she wants is to find some solitude and peace--far away from the stench of the stifling London summer, and a husband who can not understand her. "Forget the children's tears, forget Prue's grievance, forget the pursed up mouth of the coachman, forget Harry and his troubled distressed blue eyes when she announced her decision. "But damn, Dona, what have I done, what have I said, don't you know that I adore you?" Forget all these things, because this was freedom, to stand here for one minute with her face to the sun and the wind, this was living, to smile and to be alone." The descriptions of the nature and life teeming around the estate--the birds and butterflies, wildflowers and trees, creeks and ocean--bringing joy and peace to Dona and her children, are so well done that I feel as if I were there, in the Cornish countryside. I am transported away from the cold wind, the six inches of March snow I shoveled off of the walks this morning, the snow which keeps coming and will necessitate another shoveling in a few short hours. Instead I drowse lazily, being baked by the sun; I tramp through the thick woods; I stand above the ocean, the salty breeze enlivening me. "The birds were astir again, after their noonday silence, and the silent butterflies danced and fluttered, while drowsy bumblebees hummed in the warm air, winging their way to the topmost branches of the trees... and there, suddenly before her for the first time was the creek, still and soundless, shrouded by the trees, hidden from the eyes of men. She stared at it in wonder, for she had had no knowledge of its existence, this stealthy branch of the parent river creeping into her own property, so sheltered, so concealed by the woods themselves. The tide was ebbing, the water was oozing away from the mudflats, and here, where she stood, was the head of the creek itself, for the stream ended in a trickle, and the trickle in a spring. The creek twisted around a belt of trees, and she began to walk along the bank, happy, fascinated, forgetting her mission, for this discovery was a pleasure quite unexpected, this creek was a source of enchantment, a new escape, better than Navron itself, a place to drowse and sleep, a lotus-land." Her stodgy neighbor had warned her about pirates, who have been robbing from the estates up and down the coast, and reportedly having their way with the womenfolk. Their leader a dangerous frenchman, so stealthy and with a ship so fast that he has not been aprehended. Dona had listened to the reports with some amusement, but really paid them no mind until she caught sight of the ship in the creek on her land, and at the same time found herself covered with a coat, and forced onto the pirate ship.What she finds there astounds her, there is no sign of the steriotypical pirate, but an educated, tidy, considerate artist. And beyond the peace which she had sought and found, Dona finds the adventure and passion her spirit had been seeking, and someone who understands. "...she had known then that this was to happen, nothing could prevent it; she was part of his body, and part of his mind, they belonged to eachother, both wanderers, both fugitives, cast in the same mould." Danger, excitement, love, a meeting of souls, Lady St. Columb has found it all. Unfortunately she can not keep it all, something must be given up: her children and husband and very way of life, or the new love and adventure which she so craved. Yet events transpire that make it not even such a cut and dried choice as this. Anyone who has ever felt the need to escape from the cage of daily life will identify with and love this book. It has found its way into my heart, and will be added to the stack of favorites I pull out when I feel in the right restless mood, and need a satisfying read.

Okuyucu Barbara Bk itibaren Juárez, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

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