| The Enormous Room Contributor(s): Cummings, E. E. (Author), Hynes, Samuel (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 0141181249 ISBN-13: 9780141181240 Publisher: Penguin Group OUR PRICE: $15.30 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 1999 Annotation: Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings rebelled against the prevailing values of his Harvard and Unitarianism-steeped milieu. His relentless search for personal freedom led him to Greenwich Village in early 1917, where he established himself as a Modernist, composing his sui generis poems and abstract paintings. Later that year, he impulsively joined the war, serving in a Red Cross ambulance unit on the Western Front. His free-spirited, combative ways, however, soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Unexpectedly, under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever-elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room (1922), the fictional account of his four-month confinement, reads like a Pilgrim's Progress of the spirit, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Yet Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his experience: to lose everything -- all comforts, all possessions, all rights and privileges -- is to become free, and so to be saved. Drawing on the diverse voices of his colorful prisonmates -- Emile the Bum, the Fighting Sheeney, One-Eyed Dah-veed -- Cummings weaves a "crazy-quilt" of language, which makes The Enormous Room one of the most evocative instances of the Modernist spirit and technique, as well as "one of the very best of the war-books" (T. E. Lawrence). |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures - History | Military - World War I - Biography & Autobiography | Historical |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 98011675 |
| Series: Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics |
| Physical Information: 0.68" H x 5.12" W x 7.76" (0.54 lbs) 304 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1900-1949 - Chronological Period - 1900-1919 |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In 1917 young Edward Estlin Cummings went to France as a volunteer with a Red Cross ambulance unit on the western front. But his free-spirited, insubordinate ways soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room, his account of his four-month confinement, reads like a latter-day Pilgrim's Progress, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his existence: to lose everything is to become free, and so to be saved. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. |