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  A Hunger Artist

  Franz Kafka

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  In the days when hunger could be cultivated and practiced as an art form, the individuals who practiced it were often put on show for all to see. One man who was so devout in his pursuit of hunger pushed against the boundaries set by the circus that housed him and strived to go longer than forty days without food. As interest in his art began to fade, he pushed the boundaries even further. In this short story about one man's plight to prove his worth, Franz Kafka illustrates the themes of self-hatred, dedication, and spiritual yearning.

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  Sheridan Le Fanu - A Short Story...

  Sheridan Le Fanu

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  Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots 
   
  The children were tutored but, according to his brother William, the tutor taught them little if anything. Le Fanu was eager to learn and used his father's library to educate himself about the world. He was a creative child and by fifteen had taken to writing poetry. 
   
  Accepted into Trinity College, Dublin to study law he also benefited from the system used in Ireland that he did not have to live in Dublin to attend lectures, but could study at home and take examinations at the university as and when necessary. 
   
  This enabled him to also write and by 1838 Le Fanu's first story The Ghost and the Bonesetter was published in the Dublin University Magazine. Many of the short stories he wrote at the time were to form the basis for his future novels.  Indeed, throughout his career Le Fanu would constantly revise, cannabilise, embellish and re-publish his earlier works to use in his later efforts. 
   
  Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide. One of the themes running through them is a sad nostalgia for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand in mute salute and testament to this history.  
   
  On 18 December 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. The union would produce four children.  Le Fanu was now stretching his talents across the length of a novel and his first was The Cock and Anchor published in 1845. 
   
  A succession of works followed and his reputation grew as well as his income.  Unfortunately, a decade after his marriage it became an increasing source of difficultly. Susanna was prone to suffer from a range of neurotic symptoms including great anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years before.  
   
  In April 1858 she suffered an "hysterical attack" and died in circumstances that are still unclear. The anguish, profound guilt as well as overwhelming loss were channeled into Le Fanu’s work.  Working only by the light of two candles he would write through the night and burnish his reputation as a major figure of 19th Century supernaturalism. His work challenged the focus on the external source of horror and instead he wrote about it from the perspective of the inward psychological potential to strike fear in the hearts of men.  
   
  A series of books now came forth: Wylder's Hand (1864), Guy Deverell (1865), The Tenants of Malory (1867), The Green Tea (1869), The Haunted Baronet (1870), Mr. Justice Harbottle (1872), The Room in the Dragon Volant (1872) and In a Glass Darkly. (1872). 
   
  But his life was drawing to a close.  Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu died in Merrion Square in his native Dublin on February 7th, 1873, at the age of 58.  
   
  01 - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  02 - The Ghost and the Bone-Setter by Sheridan Le Fanu 
  03 - Sir Dominick's Bargain by Sheridan Le Fanu 
  04 - Dickon the Devil by Sheridan Le Fanu 
  05 - Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter by Sheridan Le Fanu 
  06 - An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street by Sheridan Le Fanu

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  May You Live In Interesting...

  Rachel Lawson

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  "But Lance! We have to stop them! They are trying to pull down a statue of your granddad!" Said a magician a dimension away to Lance's teenage son Lance Junior. They were watching an angry mob of grey aliens and human sympathizers. Who were trying to rip down a statue of the local hero Blue Midnight, the Emperor of the local solar system in a park. 
  Blue Midnight being of course Blake. 
  "Let them, Gabriel, to fight them would cause them to be angrier and they will turn on us! It is only a statue It is only a symbol! It is not the man," said Lance Junior in the magician's head as he dragged the mad magician away from the place.

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  In Our Time

  Ernest Hemingway

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  First published in 1925, when Hemingway was an unknown writer, this collection catapulted him into the literary world and gained him recognition as a highly talented, up-and-coming American writer.
  
  Containing many early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories, In Our Time introduces us to the hallmarks of the famous Hemingway style: a sparse, taut prose brought to life by vivid characters, landscape, and flashes of beauty.

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  Mark Twain: A Biography - Volume 1

  Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain

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  Mark Twain: A Biography - Volume 1Until recently, this work has been considered the "go-to" bio of Mark Twain. Albert Bigelow Paine (July 10, 1861 – April 9, 1937) was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. This recording of Paine's exhaustive biography covers Twain's personal and literary life in detail, heretofore unapproachedAlso available Mark Twain: A Biography - Volume 2

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  The Collected Stories of Richard...

  Richard Yates

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  A literary event of the highest order, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates brings together Yates's peerless short fiction in a single volume for the first time.Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate, and technically accomplished writers of America's postwar generation, and his work has inspired such diverse talents as Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, André Dubus, Robert Stone, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. This collection, as powerful as Yate's beloved Revolutionary Road, contains the stories of his classic works Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (a book The New York Times Book Review hailed as "the New York equivalent of Dubliners") and Liars in Love; it also features nine new stories, seven of which have never been published.Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers, the grim humor that attends life on a tuberculosis ward, or the moments of terrified peace experienced by American soldiers in World War II, Yates examines every frayed corner of the American dream. His stories, as empathetic as they are unforgiving, are like no others in our nation's literature. Published with a moving introduction by the novelist Richard Russo, this collection will stand as its author's final masterpiece.

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