Carl Rollyson has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.
The Last Days of Sylvia Plath
Summary
A new, vivid account of the final months of the esteemed writer’s life In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House of Hughes. Drawing on recently available court records, archives, and interviews, and reevaluating the memoirs of the formidable Hughes contingent who treated Plath as a female hysteric, Carl Rollyson rehabilitates the image of a woman too often viewed solely within the confines of what Hughes and his collaborators wanted to be written. Rollyson is the first biographer to gain access to the papers of Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse at Smith College, a key figure in the poet’s final days. Barnhouse was a therapist who may have been the only person to whom Plath believed she could reveal her whole self. Barnhouse went beyond the protocols of her profession, serving more as Plath’s ally, seeking a way out of the imprisoning charisma of Ted Hughes and friends he counted on to support a regime of antipathy against her. The Last Days of Sylvia Plath focuses on the train of events that plagued Plath’s last seven months when she tried to recover her own life in the midst of Hughes’s alternating threats and reassurances. In a siege-like atmosphere, a tormented Plath continued to write, reach out to friends, and care for her two children. Why Barnhouse seemed, in Hughes’s malign view, to be his wife’s undoing, and how Hughes, his cohorts, and biographers parsed the events that led to the poet’s death form the charged and contentious story this book has to tell. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Carl Rollyson (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
American Isis
Summary
The life and work of Sylvia Plath has taken on the proportions of myth. Educated at Smith, she had an epically conflict-filled relationship with her mother, Aurelia. She then married the poet Ted Hughes and plunged into the Sturm und Drang of married life in the full glare of the world of English and American letters. Her poems were fought over, rejected, accepted and, ultimately, embraced by readers everywhere. Dead at 30, she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven while her children slept. Her poetry collection entitled Ariel became a modern classic. Her novel The Bell Jar has a fixed place on student reading lists. American Isis is the first Plath biography benefiting from the new Ted Hughes archive at the British Library, which includes 41 letters between Plath and Hughes as well as a host of unpublished papers. The Sylvia Plath that Carl Rollyson brings to us in American Isis is no shrinking violet overshadowed by Ted Hughes; she is a modern-day Isis, a powerful force that embraced high and low culture to establish herself in the literary firmament.
©2013 Carl Rollyson (P)2013 Tantor
Pablo Picasso: A Biography for Beginners
Summary
Picasso has often been called the greatest artist of this century. This biography defines his greatness: his accomplishment and versatility as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, ceramicist, and designer. Most of the innovations in 20th century art are associated not only with his work but with the legend he built of himself as the quintessential modern artist. Rollyson, an experienced biographer who has taught Picasso in college classrooms, explores the artist's early years in Spain, the treatment of women in his art and his life, and the influence of contemporary French writers on his experimentation with a number of different styles. Picasso's greatest works of art, such as Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and Guernica become focal points of this biography, establishing the artist's central place in international culture. Rollyson concludes with an assessment of Picasso's importance and the qualities of his best work that are likely to continue to influence artists in the future. With a detailed timeline, annotated bibliography, videography, glossary, and listing of important websites, this biography is the place to start for an introduction to Picasso's life and work.
©2009 Carl Rollyson (P)2015 Carl Rollyson
Biography
Summary
Carl Rollyson's Biography: A User's Guide is an informative and entertaining text for those interested in biography. No aspect of the genre, from A to Z, goes uncovered: issues around authorized and unauthorized biography, censorship, libel, fair use, public domain (referred to as "PD" by publishers and editors), and a great deal more - including examples drawn from published biographies, as well as general and specific assessments of the biographer's art. Mr. Rollyson demonstrates that biography has more dimensions than are generally gleaned from book reviews and academic discourse. In a lively and provocative style, he argues with other biographers and critics, avoiding the polite and vague tones of many reference books on the subject.
©2008 Carl Rollyson (P)2016 Carl Rollyson
Reading Susan Sontag
Summary
The first book to survey the broad range of Ms. Sontag's work, including full discussions of her fiction. One can ask for no better guidebook.
©2001 Carl Rollyson (P)2016 Carl Rollyson
Marilyn Monroe Day by Day
Summary
From hefty biographies and fact-based novels to photograph collections and memoirs, more books have been written about Marilyn Monroe than any other female over the past century. However, no biography - regardless how authoritative - can contain all of the facts and events of an individual’s life, and Marilyn’s is no exception. In Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events, Carl Rollyson provides a documentary approach to the life and legend of this singular personality. With details of her childhood, her young adult years, her ascent to super-stardom, and the hour-by-hour moments leading to her tragic early death, this volume supplements - and, in some cases, corrects - the accounts of previous biographies. In addition to restoring what is left out in other narratives about Marilyn’s life, this book also illuminates the gaps and discrepancies that still exist in our knowledge of her. Drawing on excerpts from her diaries, journals, letters, and even checks and receipts - as well as reports of others - Rollyson recreates the day-to-day world of a woman who still fascinates us more than 50 years after her death. In addition to the calendar, Rollyson also profiles important figures in Marilyn’s life and includes a brief biography of the actress, providing a context for the timeline. An annotated bibliography of books and websites highlights the most reliable sources about Marilyn. With its vivid recreation of the key events in her life, Marilyn Monroe Day by Day is the perfect book for fans who can’t get enough of this cultural icon.
©2014 Carl Rollyson (P)2019 Carl Rollyson