First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors
Language: English
Published by Algonquin, 1993
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Blue Awning Books, Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.Blue Awning Books
AbeBooks seller since January 16, 2006
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 5.40
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
502 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4. Blue boards with qtr black cloth, stamped in gold on spine. White glossy dj. Black mark on bottom page edges; no other damage or markings noted.
Seller Inventory # 92684
- Title
- First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors
- Author
- Mandelbaum, Paul
- Publisher
- Algonquin
- Publication year
- 1993
- Condition
- Very Good
- Dust jacket
- DJ: Very Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0945575718
- ISBN 13
- 9780945575719
- Edition
- 1st ptg.
- Dimensions
- 8vo.
Editor Paul Mandelbaum asked scores of authors if they - or their mothers - had saved anything they had written as children or adolescents. Forty-two writers went to their attics and dug up all manner of manuscripts - from the eight-year-old Amy Tan's essay "What the Library Means to Me," to ten-year-old Rita Dove's poem "The Rabbit with the Droopy Ear," to Norman Mailer's action-packed adventure fantasy "The Martian Invasion," also concocted at age ten.
Each of the forty-two chapters in First Words includes a brief introduction to the author, the juvenilia with commentary by writer and editor linking the childhood and adult work, photographs of the author (then and now), and, in some cases, facsimile reproductions of the original manuscripts and drawings.
The result is a funny and surprisingly informative gathering of childhood creations by today's most celebrated writers - those who are amused by and happy to share their own early efforts.
As Paul Mandelbaum says in his introduction to the book, "We pleasantly drift in and out of the knowledge that these young writers are the same people who have come to occupy the places of greatest honor on our bookshelves. Juvenilia reminds us of often forgotten truths: that art takes its nourishment from the common garden of human experience. And that authors are children grown up, still learning, even as they teach us."
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
Of course, the young Michael Crichton would describe what goes on in a dissection lab. Of course, Madeleine L'Engle would wonder about space and the meaning of eternity. Margaret Atwood would questions conventional female behavior, arguing for the right to smoke cigars. And Stephen King would write a macabre story of slicing and piercing at age nine.
First Words is an inspiration to budding writers, encouraging teachers, and just plain readers.
FIRST WORDS features the early works of: Margaret Atwood, Roy Blunt, Jr., Paul Bowles, Pat Conroy, Michael Crichton, Rita Dove, Clyde Edgerton, Gail Godwin, Allan Gurganus, Charles Johnson, Stephen King, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L'Engle, Jill McCorkle, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, William Styron, Amy Tan, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Tobias Wolf
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Blue Awning Books
Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since January 16, 2006
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Blue Awning Books
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