{"title":"Books by Mark Polizzotti","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780826417756","title":"Highway 61 Revisited","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHighway 61 Revisited\u003c\/i\u003e resonates because of its enduring emotional appeal. Few songwriters before Dylan or since have combined so effectively the intensely personal with the spectacularly universal. In \"Like a Rolling Stone,\" his gleeful excoriation of Miss Lonely (Edie Sedgwick? Joan Baez? a composite \"type\"?) fuses with the evocation of a hip new zeitgeist to produce a veritable anthem. In \"Ballad of a Thin Man,\" the younger generation's confusion is thrown back in the Establishment's face, even as Dylan vents his disgust with the critics who labored to catalogue him. And in \"Desolation Row,\" he reaches the zenith of his own brand of surrealist paranoia, that here attains the atmospheric intensity of a full-fledged nightmare. Between its many flourishes of gallows humor, this is one of the most immaculately frightful songs ever recorded, with its relentless imagery of communal executions, its parade of fallen giants and triumphant local losers, its epic length  and even the mournful sweetness of Bloomfield's flamenco-inspired fills. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this book, Mark Polizzotti examines just what makes the songs on \u003ci\u003eHighway 61 Revisited\u003c\/i\u003e so affecting, how they work together as a suite, and how lyrics, melody, and arrangements combine to create an unusually potent mix. He blends musical and literary analysis of the songs themselves, biography (where appropriate) and recording information (where helpful). And he focuses on Dylan's mythic presence in the mid-60s, when he emerged from his proletarian incarnation to become the American Rimbaud. The comparison has been made by others, including Dylan, and it illuminates much about his mid-sixties career, for in many respects \u003ci\u003eHighway 61\u003c\/i\u003e is rock 'n' roll's answer to A Season in Hell.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56295015252341,"sku":"9780826417756","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780826417756_9b5113b9-5b59-45ad-a237-c1a2c1b6badc.jpg?v=1786015671"},{"product_id":"9780300285543","title":"Why Surrealism Matters","description":"An elegant consideration of the Surrealist movement as a global phenomenon and why it continues to resonate  “Mr. Polizzotti carefully balances the movement’s aspirations and attainments against its flaws and contradictions, hoping to recuperate Surrealism’s ‘critical and imaginative essence’ for the present. . . . The best concise account of the movement available.”—Michael Saler, Wall Street Journal   Selected by Art in America as an “Essential Book About Surrealism”   Why does Surrealism continue to fascinate us a century after André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism? How do we encounter Surrealism today? Mark Polizzotti vibrantly reframes the Surrealist movement in contemporary terms and offers insight into why it continues to inspire makers and consumers of art, literature, and culture.      Polizzotti shows how many forms of popular media can thank Surrealism for their existence, including Monty Python, Theatre of the Absurd, and trends in fashion, film, and literature. While discussing the movement’s iconic figures—including André Breton, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Man Ray, and Dorothea Tanning—he also broadens the traditionally French and male-focused narrative, constructing a more diverse and global representation. And he addresses how the Surrealists grappled with ideas that mirror current concerns, including racial and economic injustice, sexual politics, issues of identity, labor unrest, and political activism. Why Surrealism Matters provides a concise, engaging exploration of how, a century later, the “Surrealist revolution” remains as dynamic as ever.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56367753527669,"sku":"9780300285543","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300285543.jpg?v=1791212847"},{"product_id":"9781635422160","title":"The Emotions","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn analyst at the heart of the European Union revisits his past and anticipates the future after his father’s death, in this brilliant, nuanced novel of love, politics, masculinity, and memory.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA European civil servant specializing in strategic foresight, Jean Detrez works on the future with scientific rigor. However, the unexpected seems to invade his life, both professional and personal. The Brexit referendum, the election of Trump, the separation from his partner, the death of his father, but also a night inexplicably spent with a stranger. Questioning what to do with time, the one passing and the one to come, leads him from professional life where anticipation is a scientific discipline, to private life where the past troubles the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDo we want to know what the next few days or weeks have in store for us? Do we want to know if we are going to experience a new romantic or sexual adventure in the hours to come? Or how close death really is? This novel is an experiment in the ways in which fiction disrupts our representation of reality. Jean Deprez foresees events that do not occur, does not imagine those that will crush him, does not always perceive what he is experiencing, and is never certain that his reconstruction of the past is faithful to what happened.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369056776565,"sku":"9781635422160","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781635422160_c1b40f44-6e87-4328-a5f2-17c66c8b1949.jpg?v=1786023143"},{"product_id":"such-fine-boys-a-novel","title":"Such Fine Boys – A Novel","description":"Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano’s spellbinding tale of adolescent schoolmates and the vicissitudes of fate As a boarding school student in the early 1960s, Patrick Modiano lived among the troubled teenage sons of wealthy but self-involved parents. In this mesmerizing novel, Modiano weaves together a series of exquisitely crafted stories about such jettisoned boys at the exclusive Valvert School on the outskirts of Paris: abandoned children of privilege, left to create new family ties among themselves. Misfits and heroes, sports champions and good-hearted chums, the boys of Valvert misbehave, run away, get expelled, and engage in various forms of delinquency and disappearance. They emerge into adulthood tragically damaged, still tethered to their adolescent selves, powerless to escape the central loneliness of their lives in an ever-darkening spiral of self-delusion and grim consequence.      A meditation on nostalgia, the pitfalls of privilege, and the vicissitudes of fate, this book fully demonstrates the powerful mix of sadness, mystery, wonder, and ominous danger that characterizes Modiano’s most rewarding fiction.     Special feature: J. M. G. Le Clézio’s foreword, here in English for the first time, provides a rare and insightful appreciation of one Nobel laureate by another.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466639909237,"sku":"9780300223347","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300223347.jpg?v=1785654698"},{"product_id":"jerome-lindon","title":"Jérôme Lindon","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Echenoz is one of the contemporary literature's rare graceful magicians.” —\u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eJérôme Lindon\u003c\/i\u003e is a genre-defying meditation on the friendship and working relationship between Jean Echenoz and his editor, the founder of Les Editions de Minuit, Jerome Lindon. Lindon published the work of Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, and Robbe-Grillet, among so many other giants. This voice-driven ramble recounts in candid, understated, and hilarious glimpses Echenoz’s encounters with his publisher over a period of twenty years, and in the process reveals an intimate portrait of both of them. Echenoz’s spare, lyrical, and playful descriptions of early-morning phone calls and exchanges over lunch illuminate Lindon’s impulsiveness and impatience, his matter-of-fact generosity, and the humanity beneath his gruff exterior. In his unassuming way, Echenoz’s lets us in on how his own literary path was shaped by Jerome Lindon’s belief in him and explores the deep bonds between a writer and his publisher. A tender tribute.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510075302261,"sku":"9781962770699","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781962770699.jpg?v=1787130385"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-mark-polizzotti.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}