Bøker av Michael Coffey

An instruction manual on Eternal Youth. Includes discussion on a method of implementing Eternal Youth and the implications of Eternal Youth.

Beckett’s Children is a lyrical blend of personal memoir, father–son dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their long-rumored status as father and daughter. Although Howe has denied the rumor, the possibility that it might be true leads Coffey to a highly original appreciation of her work and a fascinating focus on the dozens of unattended children who wander through Beckett’s oeuvre.The saga of Coffey’s adult son, at various moments on the run in the Indiana woods or incarcerated, shines light on life without parental connection in a cold America. As an adoptee himself, Coffey looks to literature for traces of his own origin story and lineage, a heritage held in secret by a closed adoption system but which, through books and cultural signs, he has been able to decipher in his own way. Provocative and beautifully expressed, Beckett’s Children suggests a new approach to the textual worlds of two highly respected artists, providing a revelatory perspective on both American poetics and the vibrant world of Beckett studies.

- First book by master sculptor and craftsman Michael Coffey- Memoir that spans from the Great Depression, to the tumult of New York City in the 1960s and 1970s, to a long, dedicated career making some of the most high sought after pieces of wood furniture- A highly sophisticated reflection on the relationship between art and lifeMichael Coffey: Sculptor and Furniture Maker in Wood unsettles the conventional distinction between craftsman and artist, which is often assumed to be the difference between creating something new, as opposed to reproducing old forms. Inspired by but not beholden to artist-craftsmen such as George Nakashima, Wendell Castle, and Jack Rogers Hopkins, Coffey's handmade, one-of-a-kind works seamlessly combine the irregular forms of nature, an aesthetic built on the variable and unexpected, with a deep sense for the haptic and functional qualities of wood. This book includes not only a generous reproduction of Coffey's body of work, but also an in-depth autobiographical reflection on how his formative experience, from his rural and bohemian childhood to community organizing, and to the discovery of his passion for woodworking, molded him into the sculptor and artisan he is today. Coffey makes all his work in his western Massachusetts studio, deeply integrating his life and practice. This reflects the work itself, as this book makes clear, Coffey's pieces that are both uniquely sculptural but also highly functional, recognizing the complex relationship people have with the objects they choose for their space. His pieces are meant to be lived in.

Michael Coffey examines how the timing of baseball's perfect games have reflected American history and addresses how these rare incidents of ultimate performance exhibit how the game and the country have simultaneously evolved.

From the assassination of the Archduke, through Hitler's rise and demise, to Saddam Hussein's doomed invasion of Kuwait -- Military Blunders is a blow-by-blow account of this century's most ill-fated military events. What were they and why did they happen?

This study appraises the work of all the Roman satirists, from the 2nd century BC, to the end of the reign of Hadrian in AD 138. The satirists' work is shown to reflect the constantly changing society in which they lived, and its topics range from the morally earnest to the bawdy.