books – Page 14 – commonplacebook.com

“The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennet Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought.

The list below is the catalog as of March 1999, consisting of about 250 titles.

Adair, Virginia Hamilton. Ants on the Melon

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams

Alcott, Louisa May. Modern Magic

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno

Alighieri, Dante. Paradiso

Alighieri, Dante. Purgatorio

Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg Ohio

Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio

Angell, Roger, ed. Nothing But You

Aristotle. Rhetoric and Poetics

Austen, Jane. Complete Novels of Jane Austen V 1

Austen, Jane. Complete Novels of Jane Austen V 2

Austen, Jane. Emma

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey

Austen, Jane. Persuasion

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility

Bradley, Omar. A Soldier’s Story

Baldwin, James. Fire Next Time

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It On the Mountain

Balzac, Honore de. Lost Illusions

Bausch, Richard. Selected Stories Of Richard Bausch

Beardsley, Monroe C.. European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche

Beerbohm, Max. Zuleika Dobson

Boorstin, Daniel J.. Daniel J. Boorstin Reader

Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths

Bronte, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre Tiein Edition

Bronte, Charlotte. The Professor

Bronte, Charlotte. Shirley

Bronte, Charlotte. Villette

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology Audio

Cupid and Pysche and Other fables

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Burton, Richard. The Arabian Nights

Burtt, Edwin A.. English Philosophers From Bacon to Mill

Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh

Calisher, Hortense. The Novellas of Hortense Calisher

Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Capote, Truman. A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & A Thanksgiving Visitor

Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood

Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop

Cather, Willa. My Antonia

Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote

Chandler, Raymond. Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales

Foote, Anton Chekhov edited by Shelby. Early Short Stories

Foote, Anton Chekhov edited by Shelby. Later Short Stories

Chekhov, Anton. Longer Stories from the Last Decade

Chopin, Kate. Awakening and Other Stories

Colette, Rossant. Bella Vista

Colette, Rossant. My Mother’s House and Sido

Confucius. Wisdom of Confucius

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness/Youth/Typhoon

Conrad, Joseph. Nostromo

Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent

Cozzens, James Gould. Guard of Honor

Crane, Stephen. Red Badge of Courage

Crane, Stephen. Red Badge of Courage Audio

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage

Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders BBC tie-in edition

Donne, John. Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne

Donne, John. Going to Bed and Other Poems

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species

Darwin, Charles. Origin of the Species

Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders

Dickens, Charles. American Notes

Dickens, Charles. Christmas Carol & Other Stories

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend

Dickens, Charles. Tale of Two Cities

Dickinson, Emily. Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Dinesen, Isak. Out of Africa

Dinesen, Isak. Seven Gothic Tales

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime

Lincoln, Abraham. The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Best Short Stories of Dostoyevsky

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Brothers Karamozov

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment

Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie

Dryden, John. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans V 1

Dryden, John. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans V 2

Bois, W. E. B. Du. Souls Of Black Folk

Dumas, Alexandre. Count of Monte Cristo

Einstein, Albert. Ideas and Opinions

Eliot, George. Middlemarch

Ellison, Ralph. Collected Essays

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Writings

Exley, Frederick. A Fan’s Notes

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!

Faulkner, William. Go Down Moses

Faulkner, William. Selected Short Stories

Faulkner, William. Sound and the Fury

Faulkner, William. Three Novels of the Snopes Family

Faulkner, William. Wild Palms

Feynman, Richard. Character of Physical Law

Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones

Fielding, H.. Tom Jones

Fitzgerald, Scott. This Side of Paradise

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary

Foote, Shelby. Beleaguered City

Foote, Shelby. Gettysburg

Foote, Shelby. Stars In Their Courses

Forman, Sir Denis. A Night at the Opera

Forster, E. M.. Room With A View/Howards End

Fowles, John. The Magus

Freud, Sigmund. Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud

Freud, Sigmund. Interpretations of Dreams

Gibbon, Edward. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V 1

Gibbon, Edward. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V 2

Gibbon, Edward. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V 3

Godolphin, Francis. Great Classical Myths

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Sorrows of Young Werther

Gogol, Nikolai. Dead Souls

Grant, Ulysses S.. Personal Memoirs

Graves, Robert. I, Claudius

Greene, Graham. Quiet American

Hansberry, Lorraine. Raisin In The Sun

Hardy, Thomas. Collected Novels V 1

Hardy, Thomas. Collected Novels V 2

Hardy, Thomas. Return of the Native

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Complete Novels and Selected Tales V 1

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Complete Novels and Selected Tales V 2

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Hawthorne Treasury

Holbrooke, Richard. To End a War

Hugo, Victor. Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables

Irving, John. The World According to Garp

Jacobs, Jane. Death and Life of Great American Cities

James, Henry. Washington Square

James, Henry. Wings of the Dove

James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience

Jefferson, Thomas. Life and Selected Writings

Jewett, Sarah Orne. Country of The Pointed Firs

Jose, F. Sionil. Dusk

Joyce, James. Dubliners

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Joyce, James. Ulysses

Jung, Carl G.. Basic Writings

Kafka, Franz. Selected Short Stories

Kant, Emanuel. Philosophy of Emanuel Kant

Keats, John. Complete Poems of Keats

Kempton, Murray. Part of Our Time

Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine

Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching

Lawrence, D.H.. Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Lawrence, D.H.. Sons and Lovers

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques

Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street

Liebling, A. J.. Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris

Liebling, A.J.. The Road Back to Paris

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild, White Fang & To Build a Fire

Mailer, Norman. Executioner’s Song

Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d’Arthur

Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur

Mandelstam, Nadezhda. Hope Against Hope

Mann, Thomas. Death In Venice

Mann, Thomas. Dr. Faustus

Mann, Thomas. Magic Mountain

Maugham, W. Somerset. Of Human Bondage

Maxwell, William. They Came Like Swallows

McCullers, Carson. Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

McKeon, Richard. Introduction to Aristotle

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick

Melville, Herman. Piazza Tales

Robinson, E.A.. The Poetry of E.A. Robinson

Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer

Mitchell, Joseph. Bottom of the Harbor

Mitchell, Joseph. Joe Gould’s Secret

Mitford, Nancy. Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate

Murasaki, Lady. Tale of Genji

Murray, Albert. South to a Very Old Place

Naipaul, V.S.. A Bend in the River

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Nietzsche

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Norris, Frank. McTeague

O’Hara, John. Appointment in Samarra

O’Hara, John. Novellas of John O’Hara

O’Hara, John. A Rage to Live

O’Hara, John. We’ll Have Fun

O’Neill, Eugene. Nine Plays by Eugene O’Neill

Thompson, Hunter S.. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories

Henry, O.. Best Short Stories: O. Henry

Review, The Paris. Beat Writers at Work

Parker, Dorothy. Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker

Parkman, Francis. Montcalm and Wolfe

Percy, Walker. The Last Gentleman

Perret, Geoffrey. Ulysses S. Grant

Plato. Symposium

Plimpton, George, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Poe, Edgar Allen. The Raven and the Monkey’s Paw

Poe, Edgar Allen. Complete Tales and Poems

Porter, Katherine Anne. Pale Horse, Pale Rider

Prescott, William H.. The History of the Conquest of Mexico

Prescott, William H.. The History of the Conquest of Peru

Pritchett, V. S.. Cab at the Door and Midnight Oil

Pritchett, V. S.. The Pritchett Century Selected and with a Foreward by Oliver Pritchett

Pritchett, V.S.. The Pritchett Century

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time, Volume II

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time, Volume III

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: V 1 Swann’s Way

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: V 2 Within a Budding Grove

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: V 3 Guermantes Way

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: V 4 Sodom and Gomorrah

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: V 5 Captive/The Fugitive

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: V 6 Time Regained/Guide to Proust

Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way

Reed, John Avalon. Collected Works of John Reed

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose

Roosevelt, Theodore. Hunting Trips of a Ranchman & The Wilderness Hunter

Roosevelt, Theodore. The Naval War of 1812

Ross, Lillian. Picture

Roth, Philip. Goodbye Columbus

Salter, James. Sport and a Pastime

Scott, Sir Walter. Ivanhoe

Shakespeare, William. Complete Comedies of Shakespeare

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet

Shakespeare, William. Histories and Poems of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare, William. King Lear

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth

Shakespeare, William. Othello

Shakespeare, William. Tragedies of William Shakespeare

Steiner, Mary Shelley with an introduction by Wendy. Frankenstein

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Complete Poems of Shelley

Smith, Adam. Wealth of Nations

Smith, Thorne. Topper

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. Cancer Ward

Augustine, St.. City of God

Stein, Gertrude. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Stendhal. The Charterhouse of Parma

Stendhal. Red and the Black

Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey

Stoker, Bram. Dracula

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Styron, William. Confessions of Nat Turner

Styron, William. Sophie’s Choice

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels

Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers

Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons

Taylor, Peter. Old Forest & Other Stories

Thompson, Hunter S.. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Other Writings

Thurber, James. Thurber Carnival

Thurman, Wallace. Infants of the Spring

Tobias, Andrew. Best Little Boy in the World

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace

Tomkins, Calvin. Living Well Is the Best Revenge

Toomer, Jean. Cane

Trollope, Anthony. The Way We Live Now

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Twain, Mark. Diary of Adam and Eve

Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi

Vidal, Gore. 1876

Vidal, Gore. Burr

Vidal, Gore. Empire

Vidal, Gore. Hollywood

Vidal, Gore. Lincoln

Vidal, Gore. Washington, D.C.

Voltaire, Francois. Candide and Philosophical Letters

Wagner, Phyllis. Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

Walton, Izaak. The Compleat Angler

Walton, Isaak. The Compleat Angler

Wells, H. G.. Island of Dr. Moreau

Welty, Eudora. Selected Stories of Eudora Welty

West, Nathanael. Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust

Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence

Wharton, Edith. New York Novels, with Foreword by Louis Auchincloss

Wheeler, Sara. Terra Incognita

Wheeler, Sara. Travels in a Thin Country

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilde, Oscar. Picture of Dorian Grey

Wilde, Oscar. Salome

Wilson, Edmund. Axel’s Castle

Editor, Sondra Kathryn Wilson,. The Crisis Reader

Yeats, William Butler. Irish Fairy and Folktales

Yourcenar, Margaret. Memoirs of Hadrian

The Library of America

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1999
Post category:Reading Lists

History and Mission Statement

(from LOA web site, 3/99):

“The Library of America was founded in 1979 to undertake a historic endeavor: to help preserve the nation’s cultural heritage by publishing America’s best and most significant writing in durable and authoritative editions.”

“The idea for The Library of America was first discussed some thirty years ago by scholars and literary critics who were concerned that many works by America’s finest writers were either out of print or nearly impossible to find. Without a deliberate publishing effort to preserve American writing, many important works would virtually disappear and be lost to future generations. Deprived of an important part of their cultural inheritance, Americans would lose a collective sense of the country’s literary accomplishments. The Pleiade series published in France provided a model, and discussion of a similar American series continued until the late 1970s, when seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation was secured to create The Library of America. The first volumes were published in 1982. Like the historic preservation movement, which originated in the 1920s with concerns about architectural heritage, The Library of America seeks to restore and pass on to future generations our nation’s literary heritage. This entails something never attempted before: not only publishing these volumes but keeping them permanently in print and widely available to readers.

“In the years since The Library of America’s inception it has come to be recognized by both scholars and the general public as the national edition of our country’s literature.”

Everyman’s Library

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1999
Post category:Reading Lists

“Everyman’s Library, founded in 1906 and relaunched in 1991 [by Alfred E. Knopf, a division of Random House], aims to offer the most complete library in the English language of the world’s classics. Each volume is printed in a classic typeface on acid-free, cream-wove paper with a sewn full cloth binding.” This is the March 1999 catalog, which includes about 275 titles.

Random House Modern Library’s Top 100 Nonfiction Books

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1999
Post category:Reading Lists

in 1998, the Modern Library released its list of the best 100 novels of the 20th Century amid much controversy over both what they put in and what they left out.

They’re back – with the Top 100 Nonfiction books of the 20th Century. So go ahead and argue what should have been left out and what deserved to be included.

1. Education of Henry Adams – Henry Adams, Edmund Morris

2. Varities of Religious Experiences – William James

3. Up from Slavery – Booker T. Washington

4. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

5. Silent Spring – Rachael Carson, Ellen Burstyn, Rachel L. Carson

6. Selected Essays – T. S. Eliot

7. The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA – James D. Watson

8. Speak, Memory : An Autobiography Revisited (Everyman’s Library (Cloth), 188) – Vladimir Nabokov

9. American Language, Supplement One – H. L. Mencken

10. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Great Minds Series) – John Keynes

11. The Lives of a Cell : Notes of a Biology Watcher – Lewis Thomas

12. The Frontier in American History – Frederick Jackson Turner

13. Black Boy : (American Hunger) (Perennial Classics) – Richard Wright

14. Aspects of the Novel – Edward Morgan Forster

15. The Civil War : A Narrative : Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, Red River to Appomattox (3 Vol. Set) – Shelby Foote

16. The Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman

17. The Proper Study of Mankind : An Anthology of Essays – Henry Hardy(Editor), et al

18. The Nature and Destiny of Man : A Christian Interpretation : Human Nature (2 Vol Set)(Library of Theological Ethics) – Reinhold Niebuhr, Robin W. Lovin (Introduction)

19. Notes of a Native Son – James Baldwin

20. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein

21. Elements of Style – William Strunk, E. B. White

22. An American Dilemma : The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Black and African-American Studies) – Gunnar Myrdal, Bok Sissela (Introduction)

23. Principia Mathematica to 56 (Cambridge Mathematical Library) [ABRIDGED] – Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead

24. Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould

25. The Mirror and the Lamp : Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. – Meyer Howard. Abrams

26. Pluto’s Republic : Incorporating the Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intutition – Peter Medawar

27. The Ants – Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson

28. A Theory of Justice. – John Rawls

29. Art and Illusion : A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation – Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, Ernest H. Gombrich

30. Making of the English Working Class – Edward P. Thompson

31. The Souls of Black Folk – W. E. B. Dubois, et al

32. Principia Ethica (Great Books in Philosophy) – G. E. Moore

33. Philosophy and Civilization. – John Dewey

34. On Growth and Form – D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

35. Ideas and Opinions – Albert Einstein

36. The Age of Jackson – Arthur Meier Schlesinger

37. The Making of the Atomic Bomb – Richard Rhodes

38. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon : A Journey Through Yugoslavia (Twentieth-Century Classics) – Rebecca West

39. Autobiographies (Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol 3) – William H. O’Donnell(Editor), et al

40. Science and Civilization in China : Chemistry and Chemical Technology : Part 6 : Military Technology, Missiles and Sieges (Vol 5) – Joseph Needham, et al

41. Good-Bye to All That : An Autobiography – Robert Graves

42. Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell

43. Autobiography of Mark Twain – Charles Neider(Editor)

44. Children of Crisis – Robert Coles

46. The Affluent Society – John Kenneth Galbraith

47. Present at the Creation : My Years in the State Department – Dean Acheson

48. The Great Bridge : The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge – David G. McCullough

49. Patriotic Gore : Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War – Edmund Wilson

50. Samuel Johnson – Walter Jackson Bate

51. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X, Alex Haley

52. The Right Stuff – Tom Wolfe

53. Eminent Victorians – Lytton Strachey

54. Working : People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do – Studs Terkel

55. Darkness Visible : A Memoir of Madness – William Styron

56. The Liberal Imagination : Essays on Literature and Society – Lionel Trilling

57. Second World War – Winston Churchill, John Keegan (Illustrator)

58. Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass (Vintage International) – Isak Dinesen

59. Jefferson, the Virginian (Jefferson and His Time, Vol 1) – Dumas Malone

60. In the American Grain – William Carlos Williams, H. Gregory (Designer)

61. Cadillac Desert : The American West and Its Disappearing Water – Mark Reisner, Marc Reisner

62. The House of Morgan : An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance – Ron Chernow

63. Sweet Science – A.J. Liebling

64. The Open Society and Its Enemies : The Spell of Plato – Karl Raimund Popper

65. Art of Memory – Frances A. Yates

66. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism – R. H. Tawney

67. A Preface to Morals – Walter Lippmann

68. The Gate of Heavenly Peace : The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980 – Jonathan D. Spence

69. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Thomas S. Kuhn

70. The Strange Career of Jim Crow – Comer Vann Woodward

71. The Rise of the West : A History of the Human Community With a Retrospective Essay – William H. McNeill

72. The Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels

73. James Joyce – Richard Ellmann

74. Florence Nightingale : 1820-1910 – Cecil Woodham-Smith

75. Great War and Modern Memory – Paul Fussell

76. The City in History – Lewis Mumford

77. Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era – James M. McPherson

78. Why We Can’t Wait – Martin Luther, Jr. King

79. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris

80. Studies in Iconology Humanistic Themes in the Art – Erwin Panofsky

81. The Face of Battle – John Keegan

82. The Strange Death of Liberal England – George Dangerfield, Peter Stansky

83. Vermeer – Lawrence Gowing, et al

84. A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam – Neil Sheehan

85. West With the Night – Beryl Markham

86. This Boy’s Life : A Memoir – Tobias Wolff

87. A Mathematician’s Apology – G. H. Hardy

88. Six Easy Pieces : Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (Helix Book.) – Richard P. Feynman, Paul Davies, Robert B. Leighton

89. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Perennial Classics) – Annie Dillard

90. Golden Bough – James George Frazer

91. Shadow and Act – Ralph Waldo Ellison

92. The Power Broker : Robert Moses and the Fall of New York – Robert A. Caro

93. American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It – Richard Hofstadter

94. Contours of American History – William Appleman Williams

95. The Promise of American Life – Herbert Croly

96. In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences – Truman Capote

97. The Journalist and the Murderer – Janet Malcolm

98. The Taming of Chance – Tim Hacking, Ian Hacking

99. Operating Instructions : A Journal of My Son’s First Year – Anne Lamott

Writer’s Paradise

Post author:HFM
Post published:September 3, 1999
Post category:Books Jokes Religion

Author Unknown

A writer dies and due to a bureaucratic snafu in the the afterworld, she is allowed to choose her own fate: heaven or hell for all eternity. Being a very shrewd dead person, she asks St. Peter for a tour of both. The first stop is hell where she sees rows and rows of writers sitting chained to desks in a room as hot as a thousand suns. Fire licks the writer’s fingers as they try to work, demons whip their backs with chains. Your general hell scene.

"Wow, this sucks," quoth the writer. "Let’s see some heaven."

In a moment, they were whisked to heaven and the writer saw rows and rows of writers chained to desks in a room as hot as a thousand suns. Fire licks the writer’s fingers as they try to work, demons whip their backs with chains. It looks and smells even worse than hell.

"What gives, Pete?" the writer asked. "This is worse than hell."

"Yes," St. Peter replied, "but here your work gets published."

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Cooking Diary

Post author:HFM
Post published:September 3, 1999
Post category:Books Jokes

Author Unknown

October 3
Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4
Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.