Diary Fiction PDF Download

Author: H. Porter Abbott
Publisher: Ithaca : Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
H. Porter Abbott explores the role of the personal diary and its use as a literary strategy in a number of representative works in fiction. He asserts that the device of the diary can give a work a unique literary reflexivity: the diary not only tells the tale but directly influences its development. This book serves as a guide to the field of diary fiction and at the same time sheds new light on issues central to the study of narrative and autobiography.

Author: Kathryn Scanlan
Publisher: MCD
ISBN: 0374719993
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
A Paris Review Staff Pick, one of Chicago Tribune's 25 Hot Books of Summer, and one of The A.V. Club's 15 Most Anticipated Books of 2019 A stark, elegiac account of unexpected pleasures and the progress of seasons Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart—water-stained and illegible in places—but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless. After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9—Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). “Sure grand out,” the diarist writes. “That puzzle a humdinger,” she says, followed by, “A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th.” An entire state of mourning reveals itself in “2 canned hams.” The result of Scanlan’s collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death. In Aug 9—Fog, Scanlan’s spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist—a singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint.

Author: Electa Rome Parks
Publisher: Urban Books
ISBN: 159983250X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Electa Rome Parks paints a powerful portrait of a crazed fan who can't seem to close the book on the affair after a one-night-stand with a famous author—and who will stop at nothing to make him hers. Even if that means killing him. . . Bestselling author Xavier Preston is used to women throwing themselves at him. On top of being a successful writer, he's also tall, dark and sexy as sin. He's always relished the attention, in fact, and is ever-willing to entertain the erotic urges of women wanting to get between more than the covers of his novels. Except once he meets Kendall, he decides it's time to put his womanizing ways behind him and devote himself to her entirely. Well, almost. . . Gorgeous Pilar is the last decadent treat Xavier decides he'll help himself to—thinking they are both on the same "no strings" page. Except behind Pilar's fine façade beats the heart of a raving maniac—a fatally attracted fan addicted to the kind of hot loving only Xavier can give her. And she's not about to let him get away from her so easily. So what starts out as a discreet dalliance soon spirals into a deadly game of obsession and pain—which can only have one winner. . .

Author: Angela Hooks
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 9781622739301
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Meandering plots, dead ends, and repetition, diaries do not conform to literary expectations, yet they still manage to engage the reader, arouse empathy and elicit emotional responses that many may be more inclined to associate with works of fiction. Blurring the lines between literary genres, diary writing can be considered a quasi-literary genre that offers a unique insight into the lives of those we may have otherwise never discovered. This edited volume examines how diarists, poets, writers, musicians, and celebrities use their diary to reflect on multiculturalism and intercultural relations. Within this book, multiculturalism is defined as the sociocultural experiences of underrepresented groups who fall outside the mainstream of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and language. Multiculturalism reflects different cultures and racial groups with equal rights and opportunities, equal attention and representation without assimilation. In America, the multicultural society includes various cultural and ethnic groups that do not necessarily have engaging interaction with each other whereas, importantly, intercultural is a community of cultures who learn from each other, and have respect and understand different cultures. Presented as a collection of academic essays and creative writing, The Diary as Literature Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America analyses diary writing in its many forms from oral diaries and memoirs to letters and travel writing. Divided into three sections: Diaries of the American Civil War, Diaries of Trips and Letters of Diaspora, and Diaries of Family, Prison Lyrics, and a Memoir, the contributors bring a range of expertise to this quasi-literary genre including comparative and transatlantic literature, composition and rhetoric, history and women and gender studies.

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689832494
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. January 24th After you’ve had it, there isn't even life without drugs… It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her. For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl’s harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful—and as timely—today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.

Author: Shannon Hale
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408812991
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
When a beautiful princess refuses to marry the prince her father has chosen, her father is furious and locks her in a tower. She has seven long years of solitude to think about her insolence. But the princess is not entirely alone - she has her maid, Dashti. Petulant and spoilt, the princess eats the food in their meagre store as if she were still at court, and Dashti soon realises they must either escape or slowly starve. But during their captivity, resourceful Dashti discovers that there is something far more sinister behind her princess's fears of marrying the prince, and when they do break free from the tower, they find a land laid to waste and the kingdom destroyed. They were safe in the tower, now they are at the mercy of the evil prince with a terrible secret. Thrilling, captivating, and a masterful example of storytelling at its best. The princess's maid is a feisty and thoroughly modern heroine, in this wonderfully timeless story.

Author: Helen Fielding
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780141000190
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a single, thirtysomething woman on a perpetual quest for self-improvement, as she struggles to cope with relationships, weight control, and the other baffling complexities of modern life.

Author: Robert Walser
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590176928
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
A Schoolboy’s Diary brings together more than seventy of Robert Walser’s strange and wonderful stories, most never before available in English. Opening with a sequence from Walser’s first book, “Fritz Kocher’s Essays,” the complete classroom assignments of a fictional boy who has met a tragically early death, this selection ranges from sketches of uncomprehending editors, overly passionate readers, and dreamy artists to tales of devilish adultery, sexual encounters on a train, and Walser’s service in World War I. Throughout, Walser’s careening, confounding, delicious voice holds the reader transfixed.

Author: Ricardo Piglia
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632060485
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
Sixty years in the making and the capstone of a monumental literary career, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life is the final volume of the autobiographical trilogy from the author who is considered Borges’ heir and the vanguard of the Post-Boom generation of Latin American literature. Emilio Renzi, Piglia’s literary alter ego, navigates the tumultuous ups and downs of a post-Peronist Argentina filled with political unrest, economic instability, and a burgeoning literary scene ready to make its mark on the rest of the world. How could we define a perfect day? Maybe it would be better to say: how could I narrate a perfect day? Is that why I write a diary? To capture—or reread—one of those days of unexpected happiness? The final installment of Ricardo Piglia’s lifelong compilation of journals completes the seemingly impossible project of documenting the entire life of a writer. A Day in the Life picks up the thread of Piglia’s life in the 1980s until his death from ALS in 2017. Emilio Renzi, Piglia’s literary alter ego, navigates the tumultuous ups and downs of a post-Peronist Argentina filled with political unrest, economic instability, and a burgeoning literary scene ready to make its mark on the rest of the world and escape the shadows of legendary authors Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Arlt. Renzi’s peripatetic, drinking, philandering ways don’t abate as he grows older, and we’re exposed to the intrinsic insecurities that continually plague him even as fate tips in his favor and he goes on to win international literary prizes and becomes professor emeritus of Princeton University. His literary success is marred only by the disappointments and tragedies of his personal life as he deals with the death of friends and family, failed relationships, and the constant pecuniary struggles of a writer trying to live solely on his ability to produce art. The final sections of this ambitious project intimately trace the deterioration of Piglia’s body after his diagnosis: My right hand is heavy and uncooperative but I can still write. When I can no longer…. The crowning achievement of a prolific, internationally acclaimed author, this third volume cements Ricardo Piglia’s position as one of the most influential Latin American authors of the last century. Praise for The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life: “[A] posthumous autobiographical masterpiece…. [P]rofoundly moving. A meditation on both the accumulation and ephemerality of time, Piglia’s final work is a brilliant addition to world literature.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review “Filled with literary aperçus and fragments of history: an elegant, affecting close to a masterwork.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Praise for The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: “Splendidly crafted and interspliced with essays and stories, this beguiling work is to a diary as Piglia is to ‘Emilio Renzi’: a lifelong alter ego, a highly self-conscious shadow volume that brings to bear all of Piglia’s prowess as it illuminates his process of critical reading and the inevitable tensions between art and life. Amid meeting redheads at bars, he dissects styles and structures with a surgeon’s precision, turning his gaze on a range of writers, from Plato to Dashiell Hammett, returning time and again to Pavese, Faulkner, Dostoyevsky, Arlt and Borges. Chock-full of lists of books and films he consumed in those voracious early years of call girls, carbon paper, amphetamines and Heidegger, this is an embarrassment of riches — by turns an inspiring master class in narrative analysis, an accounting of the pesos left in his pockets and a novel of Piglia’s grandfather (named Emilio, natch) with his archive of World War I materials pilfered from Italian corpses…. No previous familiarity with Piglia’s work is needed to appreciate these bibliophilic diaries, adroitly repurposed through a dexterous game of representation and masks that speaks volumes of the role of the artist in society, the artist in his time, the artist in his tradition.” —Mara Faye Lethem, The New York Times Book Review “For the past few years, every Latin American novelist I know has been telling me how lavish, how grand, how transformative was the Argentinian novelist Ricardo Piglia’s final project, a fictional journal in three volumes, Los diarios de Emilio Renzi—Renzi being Piglia’s fictional alter ego. And now here at last is the first volume in English, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years, translated by Robert Croll. It’s something to be celebrated… [It] offer[s] one form of resistance to encroaching fascism: style.” —Adam Thirlwell, BookForum, The Best Books of 2017 “[A] masterpiece…. everything written by Ricardo Piglia, which we read as intellectual fabrications and narrated theories, was partially or entirely lived by Emilio Renzi. The visible, cerebral chronicles hid a secret history that was flesh and bones.” —Jorge Carrión, The New York Times “A valediction from the noted Argentine writer, known for bringing the conventions of hard-boiled U.S. crime drama into Latin American literature...Fans of Cortázar, Donoso, and Gabriel García Márquez will find these to be eminently worthy last words from Piglia." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “When young Ricardo Piglia wrote the first pages of his diaries, which he would work on until the last years of his life, did he have any inkling that they would become a lesson in literary genius and the culmination of one of the greatest works of Argentine literature?” —Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream “Ricardo Piglia, who passed away earlier this year at age seventy-five, is celebrated as one of the giants of Argentine literature, a rightful heir to legends like Borges, Cortázar, Juan Jose Saer, and Roberto Arlt. The Diaries of Emilio Renzi is his life's work...An American equivalent might be if Philip Roth now began publishing a massive, multi-volume autobiography in the guise of Nathan Zuckerman…It is truly a great work...This is a fantastic, very rewarding read—it seems that Piglia has found a form that can admit everything he has to say about his life, and it is a true pleasure to take it in.” —Veronica Esposito, BOMB Magazine “In 1957, Argentinian writer Ricardo Piglia started to write what would become 327 notebooks filled with the thoughts of his alter ego, Emilio Renzi. Piglia’s final literary act before his death in January 2017 was to organize and publish these works as Renzi’s diaries. Formative Years, the first of three volumes, covers the years 1957 to 1967, detailing Renzi’s development into a central figure of Argentine literary culture. In epigrammatic diary entries filled with memorable observations, Piglia details Renzi’s political education, relationships, views on Argentinian politics, and experiences during this remarkably productive era of Latin American fiction. As a fictionalized autobiography, it is, like the work of Karl Ove Knausgaard, of My Struggle fame, part confession and part performance. Renzi meets and corresponds with literary luminaries like Borges, Cortázar, and Márquez, and offers insightful readings of Dostoevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, and Joyce. Ilan Stavans (Quixote: The Novel and the World, 2015) provides a wonderfully informative introduction. Fans of W.G. Sebald and Roberto Bolaño will find the first installment in Piglia’s trilogy to be a fascinating portrait of a writer’s life.” —Alexander Moran, Booklist "Here through the Boom and Bolaño breech storms Ricardo Piglia, not just a great Latin American writer but a great writer of the American continent. Composed across his entire career, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi is Piglia's secret story of his shadow self—a book of disquiet and love and literary obsession that blurs the distinctness of each and the other." —Hal Hlavinka, Community Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY) “In this fictionalized autobiography, Piglia’s ability to succinctly criticize and contextualize major writers from Kafka to Flannery O’Connor is astounding, and the scattering of those insights throughout this diary are a joy to read. This book is essential reading for writers.” —Publishers Weekly “The Diaries of Emilio Renzi is a rare glimpse into the heart of twentieth-century Latin American literature, with the inimitable Ricardo Piglia as tour guide. More than just a traditional diary, Renzi is an illuminating voyage into the hearts of books and writers and history. An inspiring work and an important achievement.” —Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX) “The great Argentine writer…. In a career that spanned four decades, during which he became one of Latin America’s most distinctive literary voices.” —Alejandro Chacoff, The New Yorker “The Diaries of Emilio Renzi continue to be a fascinating literary-autobiographical experiment ... and, especially, a wonderful immersion in literature itself. Of particular interest in showing the transition of Latin American (and specifically Argentine) literature—no longer: ‘out of sync, behind, out of place’—Piglia's range extends far beyond that too. Yes, most of this is presumably mainly of interest to the similarly literature-obsessed—but Piglia makes it hard to imagine who wouldn't be.” — M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

Author: Lorna Martens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521108256
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Although the diary novel is often regarded as a twentieth-century genre due to its particular popularity in this century, the form actually has a long history that originates in the eighteenth century. The Diary Novel is the first book to trace that history, concentrating on French, German and English works with some attention given to Russian and Scandinavian traditions as well. Beginning with a discussion of the definition of the diary novel and some observations about genre study and criticism, Lorna Martens proceeds with interpretations of major diary novels by writers such as Defoe, Gide, Rilke, Frisch, Butor and Lessing. The Diary Novel includes sections on the influence of Richardson and the letter journal novel, the publication of the journaux intimes, psychological fiction, reliability of the narrator and the contemporary diary novel.