Bøker av Peter Wolfe

Similarly to Bach's cycle The Well-tempered Clavier or to Chopin's 24 Preludes, and similarly to his own collection published in 2019, the Wolf-temperiertes Klavier, Peter Wolf penned 24 piano pieces again. His Jazz Preludes set examples for improvisation and make use of the entire stylistic spectrum of jazz, ranging from the gospel (Anthem, No. 7) to blues (Windlass, No. 1), bebop (Crime, No. 11), Latin jazz (Tropical Night, No. 6), and, of course, the world of ballads (Nostalgia, No. 4 and Question Without Answer, No. 16). The individual movements are no mere style exercises or piano technique exercises but, like Debussy's preludes, they are expressive character pieces: musical images of a phenomenon, an emotion, a behavior pattern, a personal experience reflected by their titles.

By mid-career, many successful writers have found a groove and their readers come to expect a familiar consistency and fidelity. Not so with Henry Green (1905-1973). He prefers uncertainty over reason and fragmentation over cohesion, and rarely lets the reader settle into a nice cozy read. Evil, he suggests, can be as instructive as good. Through Green''s use of paradoxical and ambiguous language, his novels bring texture to the flatness of life, making the world seem bigger and closer. We soon stop worrying about what Hitler''s bombs have in store for the Londoners of Caught (1943) and Back (1946) and start thinking about what they have in store for each other. Praised in his lifetime as England''s top fiction author, Green is largely overlooked today. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of his work for a new generation of readers.

Peter Wolfe's study of Penelope Fitzgerald characterizes her work as having unerring dramatic judgment, a friendly and fluid style, and lyrical and precise descriptive passages. In this survey of Fitzgerald's life and career, he explains how shet brings resources of talent and craft, thought and feeling, courage and vulnerability, to her writing.