This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2020) |
Author | Stephen Wright |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | War |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 2006 |
Media type | |
Pages | 323 |
ISBN | 9780679451174 |
The Amalgamation Polka (2006) is the fourth novel by the writer Stephen Wright. It is set during the time of the American Civil War. The plot concerns the story of Liberty Fish and his travels after joining the Union army. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The title refers to a 19th-century lithograph showing a social gathering in which the participants, unusually for the time, are both white and black. It is captioned “This blending of the two races (Caucasian and African) by amalgamation is just what is needed for the perfection of both.” [8]
Liberty Fish is the son of two passionate abolitionists but whose grandparents were cruel slave-owners. The plot follows him from his birth to young adulthood, his enlistment in the Union army, and his quest to find his grandparents who he blames for the despair his mother feels. The tone has hints of dark humor and at times can be heavily surreal.
The Los Angeles Times gave the novel a positive review; critic Mark Rozzo noted: “The effect here is of Wright’s harnessing the supersaturated prose of the period—the stuff that Edmund Wilson once derisively called 'coagulated'—to a modern, post-Vietnam sensibility accustomed to flying body parts…. In these battle scenes, we feel as if we’ve stumbled across the infernal manuscripts of a long-lost literary talent, as if the scary ellipses of The Red Badge of Courage were being filled in by a chronicler as ravenous for bodily data—in this case, Minie balls thunking into men, frothing chest wounds—as Whitman.” [9] The New York Times compared the story to the obvious Heart of Darkness , but also said, " Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a better bet (on the plot). Most of the people Liberty meets (and not just in the South) are what the Cheshire Cat would call 'mad,' from a shaggy hermit to the Georgia farmer who secedes from the Confederacy by reclaiming his little plot of land in the name of the Union."
Morgan Freeman is an American actor and producer. He is known for his distinctive deep voice and roles in a wide variety of film genres. Throughout a career spanning five decades, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award. Freeman has also been awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2008, an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2011, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2012, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018.
Michael Chabon is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. Born in Washington, D.C., he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1984. He subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine.
Sean Justin Penn is an American actor and film director. He has won Academy Awards for his roles in the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the biopic Milk (2008).
Jeffrey Jacob Abrams is an American filmmaker and composer. He is best known for his works in the genres of action, drama, and science fiction. Abrams wrote and produced such films as Regarding Henry (1991), Forever Young (1992), Armageddon (1998), Cloverfield (2008), Star Trek (2009), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal is an American actor. Born into the Gyllenhaal family, he is the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, and his older sister is actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. He began acting as a child, making his acting debut in City Slickers (1991), followed by roles in his father's films A Dangerous Woman (1993) and Homegrown (1998). His breakthrough roles were as Homer Hickam in October Sky (1999) and as a psychologically troubled teenager in Donnie Darko (2001).
S. S. Van Dine is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright when he wrote detective novels. Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York, and under the pseudonym he created the fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in films and on the radio.
Ross S. Bagdasarian, known professionally by his stage name David Seville, was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor, best known for creating the cartoon band Alvin and the Chipmunks. Initially a stage and film actor, he rose to prominence in 1958 with the songs "Witch Doctor" and "The Chipmunk Song ", which both became Billboard number-one singles. He produced and directed The Alvin Show, which aired on CBS in 1961–62.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 dark fantasy novel by Ray Bradbury. It is about two 13-year-old best friends, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, and their nightmarish experience with a traveling carnival that comes to their Midwestern home, Green Town, Illinois, on October 24. In dealing with the creepy figures of this carnival, the boys learn how to combat fear. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr. Dark", who seemingly wields the power to grant the townspeople's secret desires. In reality, Dark is a malevolent being who, like the carnival, lives off the life force of those they enslave. Mr. Dark's presence is countered by that of Will's father, Charles Halloway, the janitor of the town library, who harbors his own secret fear of growing older because he feels he is too old to be Will's dad.
Tananarive Priscilla Due is an American author and educator. Due won the American Book Award for her novel The Living Blood. She is also known as a film historian with expertise in Black horror. Due teaches a course at UCLA called "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic", which focuses on the Jordan Peele film Get Out.
The Wright 3 is a 2006 children's mystery novel written by Blue Balliett and illustrated by Brett Helquist. It was released in April 1, 2006, and is the sequel to Balliett's 2004 children's novel Chasing Vermeer. It chronicles how Calder, Petra, and Tommy strive to save the Robie House in their neighborhood, Hyde Park, Chicago. The underlying plot elements include 3-D pentominoes, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the Robie House Fibonacci numbers, The Invisible Man, and mysterious occurrences.
Evergreen Cemetery and Crematory is a cemetery and crematorium located at 1137 North Broad Street, Hillside, Union County, New Jersey. Parts of it are in Hillside, Elizabeth, and Newark.
Ronald Wayne Burkle is an American businessman. He is the co-founder and managing partner of The Yucaipa Companies, LLC, a private investment firm that specializes in U.S. companies in the distribution, logistics, food, retail, consumer, hospitality, entertainment, sports, and light industrial sectors.
Stephen Wright is a novelist based in New York City known for his use of surrealistic imagery and dark comedy. His work has varied from hallucinatory accounts of war, a family drama among UFO cultists, carnivalesque novel on a serial killer, to a picaresque taking place during the Civil War.
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.
Paul J. Levine is an American author of crime fiction, particularly legal thrillers. Levine has written 22 mystery novels which include two series of books known by the names of the protagonists. The Jake Lassiter series follows the former football player turned Miami lawyer in a series of fourteen books published over a thirty-year span beginning in 1990. The four-book Solomon vs. Lord series published in the mid-2000s features Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, a pair of bickering Miami attorneys who were rivals before they became law partners and lovers. Levine has also written four stand-alone novels and 20 episodes of the television drama series JAG. With JAG executive producer Don Bellisario, he also created and produced First Monday, a 2002 CBS series inspired by one of Levine's novels.
Keith Maillard is a Canadian-American novelist, poet, and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. He moved to Canada in 1970 and became a Canadian citizen in 1976.
Jeremy Duns is a British author of spy fiction and the history of espionage.
The Overton Window is a political thriller by political commentator Glenn Beck. The book, written with the assistance of contributing writers, was released on June 15, 2010.
11/22/63 is a novel by American author Stephen King about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963. It is the 60th book published by Stephen King, his 49th novel and the 42nd under his own name. The novel required considerable research to accurately portray the late 1950s and early 1960s. King commented on the amount of research it required, saying "I've never tried to write anything like this before. It was really strange at first, like breaking in a new pair of shoes."
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress is the last novel by writer Beryl Bainbridge published in 2011 following her death. As explained in the postscript:
Beryl Bainbridge was in the process of finishing The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress when she died on 2 July 2010. Her long-time friend and editor, Brendan King prepared the text for publication from her working manuscript, taking into account suggestions Beryl made at the end of her life. No additional material has been included.