The Italian American Reader: A Collection of Outstanding Fiction, Memoirs, Journalism, Essays, and Poetry

Bill Tonelli, Editor

ISBN 10: 0060006668 / ISBN 13: 9780060006662

Published by William Morrow & Company, Inc., Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., 2003

About this Item

First Printing. Bumping to top of DJ spine and correspondingly on boards, elsewise a bright, clean, tight copy sans rips/tears, stains, discoloration and interior markings. "The Italian American Reader" has been seven decades in the making. It could simply and accurately be described as a dazzlingly smart and lively collection of superb works by some of America's most gifted writers. All their surnames happen to end in vowels, true, but that need not affect your enjoyment of this volume one way or the other. America, too, is an Italian name ending in a vowel. Inside there are seventy excellent things for you to read-excerpts from novels and memoirs, short stories, essays, and poems-by the living and the dead, the famous and the obscure." 547 pages. Contributing authors include Don DeLillo, Gay Talese, Camille Paglia, Philip Caputo, Ray Romano, Mario Puzo, Ed McBain, Nicholas Pileggi, Jay Parini, Victoria Gotti, Evan Hunter, Tom Perrotta, Richard Russo, Mike Lupica, and many more. NOTE: Due to size and weight of the book additional shipping cost will be requested/required for EXPEDITED and OUT-OF-U.S. shipment. LF.

Seller Inventory # 008934

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Italian American Reader: A Collection of Outstanding Fiction, Memoirs, Journalism, Essays, and Poetry
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company, Inc., Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060006668
• ISBN 13: 9780060006662
• Binding: Hardbound
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

The Italian American Reader has been seven decades in the making. It could simply and accurately be described as a dazzlingly smart and lively collection of superb works by some of America's most gifted writers. All their surnames happen to end in vowels, true, but that need not affect your enjoyment of this volume one way or the other. America, too, is an Italian name ending in a vowel.

Inside, there are nearly seventy excellent things for you to read -- excerpts from novels and memoirs, short stories, essays, and poems -- by the living and the dead, the famous and the obscure. Some date back to the 1930s; others were freshly hatched in the twenty-first century. They are variously moving, funny, poignant, lusty, biting, reverent, witty, loving, angry, and wise. They deal in the most profound aspects of our lives no matter who we are: home, love, sex, family, food, work, God, death. Many feature familiar Italian American characters, settings, and themes, but not all.

No matter what they are about, they are all in the end about who and what we are, the essence of history and memory and blood. There are gangsters in here, but there are grandmas too, along side lovers and fighters, thinkers and doers, cops and robbers, poets and grocers, sinners and saints. There are plenty of moms and pops and aunts and uncles and cousins. Frank Sinatra and the Virgin Mary make appearances.

This anthology is a genuine landmark -- the first general-reader hardcover collection of writing by Italian American authors. It is part manifesto, part Sunday dinner -- a gathering of voices old and new, some speaking in the accents of another age, some completely contemporary and assured, all together for the first time. To stand with all the other popular media images we represent, now, at last, one exists in written form, the literature of Italian American lifethe past, present, and future, which is also America's future.

About the Author

Bill Tonelli is a journalist and magazine editor in New York. He is the author of The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America.