Bøger af Brewster Chamberlin

Author and intellect Brewster Chamberlin invites you along on his personal journey through the culturally rich landscapes of Greece and France. From the author of The Time in Tavel: An Informal Illustrated Memoir of a Sojourn in Provence; Paris Now and Then: Memoirs, Opinions, and a Companion to the City of Light for the Literate Traveler; and Mediterranean Sketches. Fictions, Memories and Metafictions. "Illuminating!" says social commentator and art critic Hollis George.

An intellectually stimulating collection of other people's opinions, comments, and critiques of Paris. Chamberlin describes these snippets as "citations which illuminated one or another aspect of Parisian life and culture, or appealed to my sense of humor, however twisted this may seem to some readers." From the author of A Piece of Paris: The Grand XIVth; Paris Now and Then; and Kultur auf Trümmern.

Peregrine's Island is the third volume in the four volume series The Berlin Book. This volume follows the career of the German-American writer, John Schade, the main character of volume one Schade's Passage. He returns to the USA after his tour of duty in Berlin as a cultural affairs officer in the American sector with a pile of notes for a novel about the exile experience of anti-Nazi Germans including his own family. Disappointed with the sales of and lack of royalties from the book, he moves to Key West at the southeastern end of the Florida Keys in 1947 to live cheaply and write a second novel. On the island he meets new friends including Perri who becomes his lover, the photo journalist Francesca, the part time hooker Silver, the blind newsbringer Anselmo, the writer Samuel Mithman (who appears briefly in volumes one & two), and the Jewish German now American sailor Franz Friedmann who becomes a close friend but leaves to join the nascent Israeli navy in the war between the new Jewish state and its Arab neighbors. Matters involving Berlin catch up with Schade throughout the book: His former cultural affairs colleague in that city, William Makepeace, visits to urge him to return to Berlin and write about the Soviet blockade of the western sectors; characters he knew in the city write him giving news of the situation there; and representatives of Israel visit to convince him to talk to gentiles in Miami in an effort to raise money to fund hospitals and support the war effort. The torrid tropical atmosphere of the island leads to all sorts of sensual and sexual experiences for the characters. In the end, Schade finishes the novel and is once again drawn back to the ruptured former capital of Germany, the narrative of which will be contained in volume four, Ursula's Triumph.

Schade's Passage is the first volume of a four-volume novel revolving around and in the city of Berlin in the 20th century (The Berlin Book). This volume traces the lives of various characters of various nationalities in the defeated rubble of Berlin from July 1945 to December 1946 as they come to terms with their personal and cultural situations attempting to create or recreate a stable and secure form of existence in the chaotic first years of peace on the European continent. Immediately after the end of hostilities they all somehow realize that the war may be over but the peace had not yet begun. The four allies, the USA, Britain, France and the Soviet Union's military governments attempt to rule their zones of Germany and their sectors of Berlin with a unified policy of de-nazification, reeducation, the punishment of war criminals and the introduction of democratic forms of government. This attempt includes the cultural sphere (book publishing, radio, newspapers, stage performances, movies, concert and popular music and nightclubs). The book is concerned with this aspect of life in the former capital of the nazi empire. It's characters include American, British, French and Soviet military government officers and civilians whose mission is to cleanse the cultural milieus of the city whose assignments bring them into often close contact with German cultural figures attempting to rejuvenate their careers. The tensions among the victors as to how this policy is to be carried out rises as their different goals become clearer. The Germans attempt to manipulate the differences for their own advantage which leads to the realization that the American non-fraternization policy of limited contact with the city's citizens is unenforceable. Sexual favors exchanged for food, protection and/or performance licenses break through the misguided attempt to maintain a distance between victor and vanquished. Forms of love and affection and greed triumph over behavior control mechanisms invented in the victors' capitals. Eventually things settle down to allow a minimum of cultural and political life within an atmosphere of mistrust, rising political tensions, especially regarding forms of government, the treatment of millions of refugees, and the conflict between those surviving Jews who wish to emigrate to Palestine and build a Jewish homeland and those who do not want to complete the nazis' project to free Germany of Jews, but rather rebuild the Jewish community in the city and the country. Woven into these over-arching problems and solutions are the stories of the individual characters and how they react and behave, the Germans to re-establish themselves whether or not they are burdened by a nazi past, the victorious allies to implement official policy without becoming heartless officials in the course of their duties. Sizzling sex scenes complement the official activities and the relationship between victor and defeated. How could it be otherwise?

A unique collection of short stories, poems, and plays by the author of Love's Poison and Other Poems, A Paris Chapbook, and Radovic's Dilemma. A Mediterranean Thriller. "A sojourn into the interesting mind of an imaginative intellectual," writes former Florida Times-Union book critic Pamela Paige.

Schadow's Meditations, volume 2 of the Berlin Book, is a parallel volume to Schade's Passage, not a sequel, though major characters appear in both books. Emil Schadow is a conservative history professor who survives the war after the Nazis ignominiously throw him out of the university. Looking back in his old age he writes about his life and times including his pre-1914 affair with the young, radical sculptor Helga Opladen that ends in bitter tragedy, his guilt about not resisting the Hitler dictatorship and his distanced relationship with his deceased wife and son. His memories of friends and colleagues are presented throughout, as well as commentaries on some of his opinions and actions by John Schade and the often mysterious William Makepeace, characters from Volume 1. The book is complemented by a diary kept by Helga covering her life from her days in the artist milieu of Paris up to her death in the revolutionary year 1919.

Brewster Chamberlin readily admits one of the great pieces of buona Fortuna in his life was the 14 months he spent with Lynn-Marie Smith in a small village in the South of France just northwest of the old walled city of Avignon. This sprightly memoir is the story of those deeply enriching and adventurous months in a landscape both enchanted and occasionally dangerous, filled with the wildly magical scenes Van Gogh, Lawrence Durrell and other painters and writers have so vividly captured in their Provence-inspired work. Chamberlin's narrative takes the reader from the couple's first jaunty but seemingly frivolous thoughts about living in France generated by equal amounts of wine, food and frustration with life in Washington, through the serious matter of actually moving there and living through the vicissitudes of daily life in a countryside and language with which the couple possessed only a shaky acquaintance.

If Bookshelves GroanIf bookshelves groanIt must be with pleasure - Imagine being weighed downBy beauty and truth in print - Let us prayBuckled by Joyce and PrévertTesting the strength of your muscles - What delicious agonyStrain my tendons, PetrarchWith all your mental Laura lust.After allIt is what one carries that counts.Paris, November 14, 1987These Haiku-like poems and longer verses represent nighttime thoughts and inspirations written down while reading Sam Hamill's translations in The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bash¿, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets. Some of them are actually based on the work of these poets, but most are simply inspired by them. Others come from the author's own musings.

A series of chronological entries documenting Lawrence Durrell's life (1912-1990) and writing career, preceded by "Antecedents" (1851-1910), and followed by "Aftermath" (1991-2019), listing the main events connected with his reputation since his death. There is a 16-page "Index of Persons".

Few if any writers have made a mark as broad and deep as Ernest Hemingway, whose life and work-and even image-continue to permeate American culture more than a half-century after his death in 1961. And never has there been a chronology of the writer's life and times as comprehensive, detailed, and useful as The Hemingway Log.