ISBN: 9781514277935

A rambunctious modern novel by the twentieth century's most inventive poet. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings rebelled against the prevailing values of h… Plus…

A rambunctious modern novel by the twentieth century's most inventive poet. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings rebelled against the prevailing values of his Harvard and Unitarianism-- steeped milieu. His relentless search for personal freedom led him to Greenwich Village in early 1917, where he established himself as a Modernist, composing his sui generis poems and abstract paintings. Later that year, he impulsively joined the war, serving in a Red Cross ambulance unit on the Western Front. His free-spirited, combative ways, however, soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Unexpectedly, under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever-elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room (1922), the fictional account of his four-month confinement, reads like a Pilgrim's Progress of the spirit, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Yet Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his experience: to lose everything--all comforts, all possessions, all rights and privileges--is to become free, and so to be saved. Drawing on the diverse voices of his colorful prisonmates--Emile the Bum, the Fighting Sheeney, One-Eyed Dah-veed--Cummings weaves a crazy-quilt of language, which makes The Enormous Room one of the most evocative instances of the Modernist spirit and technique, as well as one of the very best of the war-books (T. E. Lawrence). Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Classics>Coll Classics>Coll Classics, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781514277935

A prose work of literary art. There had never been anything quite like it before and there has never been anything like it since. —Richard S. Kennedy In print continuously since 1922… Plus…

A prose work of literary art. There had never been anything quite like it before and there has never been anything like it since. —Richard S. Kennedy In print continuously since 1922, The Enormous Room is one of the classic American literary works to emerge from World War I, in a grouping that includes John Dos Passo's Three Soldiers and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Drawing on his experiences in France as a volunteer ambulance driver, Cummings takes us through a series of mistakes that led to his being arrested for treason and sent to prison. Out of this episode Cummings produced a unique work—a story of oppression, injustice, and imprisonment presented in a high-spirited manner as if it were a lark, a work of new linguistic energy that celebrates the individual and opposes all structures that stifle him. This edition restores to the work much material that was deleted from the manuscript for the book's 1922 publication and is illustrated with drawings Cummings made while imprisoned in France. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Classics>Coll Classics>Coll Classics, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781514277935

Paperback, [PU: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform], He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation. He was entom… Plus…

Paperback, [PU: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform], He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation. He was entombed by the French Government. It took the better part of three months to find him and bring him back to life-with the help of powerful and willing friends on both sides of the Atlantic. The following documents tell the story: 104 Irving Street, Cambridge, December 8, 1917. President Woodrow Wilson, White House, Washington, D. C. Mr. President:, Anthologies (non-poetry)<