As a writer and political activist Michael Gold was an important presence on the American scene for three decades. His was a powerful voice for social change and human rights. Jews Without Money, his only novel, is his fictionalized autobiography of immig
The Portable Blake contains the hermetic genius's most important works: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in their entirety; selections from his "prophetic books"--including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Abion, Amer
An indispensable book by writers who have experienced firsthand the rewards and challenges of crafting a memoir Anyone undertaking the project of writing a memoir knows that the events, memories, and emotions of the past often resist the orderly structu
When Henry Roth published Call It Sleep, his first novel, in 1934, it was greeted with critical acclaim. But in that dark Depression year, books were hard to sell, and the novel quickly dropped out of sight, as did its twenty-eight-year-old author. Only w
Kazin’s memorable description of his life as a young man as he makes the journey from Brooklyn to “americanca”-the larger world that begins at the other end of the subway in Manhattan. A classic portrayal of the Jewish immigrant culture of the 1930s
Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic "hall of mirrors," Aldous Huxley a "city of dreadful joy." Jack Kerouac found a "huge desert encampment," David Thomson imagined
These two novellas demonstrate the fragility of the American dream, from two very different perspectives. In 'The Day of the Locust', talented young artist Tod Hackett has been brought to Hollywood to work in the design department of a major studio. He di
"West is still a satirist with few peers and no betters, and a writer of bleak, haunting power." — Kirkus Reviews. In this 1931 Dada-inspired work, the first novel of the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, the eponymous antihero stum
In this volume the Library of America offers the most complete literary portrait ever published of Nathanael West. Along with the four novels for which he is famous, this authoritative collection gathers his work in other genres, including stories, poetry
