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Will McMorran's Top Book Recommendations
Want to know what books Will McMorran recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Will McMorran's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
Selected early works from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.
Throughout his work, Doug Wright has often combined the personal, the social, and the political, in the process unearthing fundamental truths about life and art while casting an unblinking eye on the dark--and darkly funny--side of human nature. Gathered here are three of Wright's early plays, including Interrogating the Nude, a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of the uproar surrounding the debut of Marcel Duchamp's work in America; Watbanaland, a satiric dissection of yuppie desire and a haunting...
moreThroughout his work, Doug Wright has often combined the personal, the social, and the political, in the process unearthing fundamental truths about life and art while casting an unblinking eye on the dark--and darkly funny--side of human nature. Gathered here are three of Wright's early plays, including Interrogating the Nude, a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of the uproar surrounding the debut of Marcel Duchamp's work in America; Watbanaland, a satiric dissection of yuppie desire and a haunting...
Recommended by Will McMorran, and 1 others. Will McMorranQuills (Source)
2
Sexuality is power' - so says the Marquis de Sade, philosopher and pornographer extraordinaire. His virtuous Justine keeps to the rules laid down by men, her reward rape and humiliation; his Juliette, Justine's triumphantly monstrous antithesis, viciously exploits her sexuality. In a world where all tenderness is false, all beds are minefields.
But now Sade has met his match.
With invention and genius, Angela Carter takes on these outrageous figments of his extreme imagination, and transforms them into symbols of our time - the Hollywood sex goddesses, mothers and... more
But now Sade has met his match.
With invention and genius, Angela Carter takes on these outrageous figments of his extreme imagination, and transforms them into symbols of our time - the Hollywood sex goddesses, mothers and... more
Recommended by Will McMorran, and 1 others. 3
In Sade/Fourier/Loyola, eminent literary theorist Roland Barthes offers a fascinating treatise on the nature of philosophical creation. Barthes examines the parallel impulses of Loyola, the Jesuit saint, Sade, the renowned and sometimes pornographic libertine philosopher, and Fourier, the utopian theorist. All three, he makes clear, have been founders of languages--Loyola, the language of divine address; Sade, the language of erotic freedom; and Fourier, the language of social perfection and happiness. Each language is an all-enveloping system, a "secondary language" that isolates the... more
Recommended by Will McMorran, and 1 others. 4
Incest is a chilling tale of sexual experimentation and philosophical exploration carried to its most logical—and devastating—extreme. Marquis de Sade’s semi-autobiographical protagonist, Monsieur de Franval, is rich, handsome, intelligent, and thoroughly immoral. When he marries a pious woman and fathers a daughter, he is determined to educate his progeny to be “free.” The ultimate proof of his daughter’s unfettered liberty? That she become his secret lover. But when the beautiful and accomplished daughter spurns an eligible young bachelor, instead declaring her intention to remain... more
Recommended by Will McMorran, and 1 others. 5
A new translation of Sade's most notorious, shocking and influential novel.
This disturbing but hugely important text has influenced countless individuals throughout history: Flaubert and Baudelaire both read Sade; the surrealists were obsessed with him; film-makers like Pasolini saw parallels with twentieth-century history in his writings; and feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Angela Carter clashed over him. This new translation brings Sade's provocative novel into Penguin Classics for the first time, and will reignite the debate around this most controversial of writers. less
This disturbing but hugely important text has influenced countless individuals throughout history: Flaubert and Baudelaire both read Sade; the surrealists were obsessed with him; film-makers like Pasolini saw parallels with twentieth-century history in his writings; and feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Angela Carter clashed over him. This new translation brings Sade's provocative novel into Penguin Classics for the first time, and will reignite the debate around this most controversial of writers. less
Recommended by Will McMorran, and 1 others. Don't have time to read Will McMorran's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.
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