New Directions paperback

"Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,'" observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death in 1940. "My books meet no needs except my own, their circulation is practically private and I'm lucky to be published." Yet today, West is widely recognized as a prophetic writer whose dark and comic vision of a society obsessed with mass-produced fantasies foretold much of what was to come in American life. Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), which West envisioned as "a novel in the form of a comic strip," tells of an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist who becomes tragically embroiled in the desperate lives of his readers. The Day of the Locust (1939) is West's great dystopian Hollywood novel based on his experiences at the seedy fringes of the movie industry.

Brief, but challenging essays in which the author looks candidly and without illusion at the world that man has made. Though he sees dark horizons, his ultimate answer is one of Christian hope. The majority of these essays are as relevant today as when they were originally published. Perhaps a sad statement on our world, but it makes for a powerful and simultaneously companionable reading experience. [[MountainShelby's Reviews], GoodReads, Mar 09, 2017]

So There: Poems 1976-83 combines three earlier collections of Robert Creeley's work published by New Directions - Hello: A Journal, February 29-May 3, 1976 (published 1978); Later (1979); and Mirrors (1983). This first gathering of the poet's later work continues but also stands in contrast to his early poems as presented in the monumental Collected Poems 1945-1975 (University of California Press, 1982). Few poets have so clear a demarcation in their work. In 1976, Creeley set off to visit nine countries in the Far East, to explore his sense of self in a foreign landscape. He found not only a "company" of fellow beings but also a transformed sense of life and subsequently a new family. He sees today that these three books in a single volume emphasize the "determined change in my life they are the issue of."