Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Writing and Politics

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Columbia University Press, 2000 M08 15 - 288 pages
Distinguished poet and novelist Jay Parini presents some of his best essays--both classic and unpublished works--on topics ranging from baseball to Frost and Emerson to the culture of creative writing. For aspiring writers, Some Necessary Angels is an illuminating glimpse into the workshop of a distinguished novelist and critic. For readers who share Parini's love of language, it is an invigorating expression of faith.
 

Contents

Mentors
3
Town Life
19
355
95
The Lessons of Theory
203
The Imagination of Politics
215
Literary Theory and the Culture of Creative Writing
231
Writing Biographies Versus Writing
241
Poetry and Silence
257
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
271
Copyright

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About the author (2000)

Jay Parini was born in Pittston, Pennsylvania in 1948. In 1970 he graduated from Lafayette College and he received a doctorate from the University of St. Andrews in 1975. Before becoming a professor of Engliah and Creative Writing at Vermont's Middlebury College in 1982, Parini taught at Dartmouth College. Parini writes poetry, novels, biographies, and criticism, and he has published numerous reviews and essays in major journals and newspapers. He co-founded the New England Review in 1976. In 1995, he was appointed literary executor for author Gore Vidal. A film version of The Last Station, his 1990 novel, was released in 2009. Parini's novel, One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2015.

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