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97-434: In 2023 The Library of America published his Collected Works . In the introduction editor Jay Jennings observes,"Charles Portis is now recognized as a singular American genius, a writer whose deadpan style, picaresque plots, and unforgettable characters have drawn a passionate following among readers and writers." Portis has been described as "one of the most inventively comic writers of western fiction". Charles Portis

194-405: A B-picture for a venal movie mogul ( Michael Lerner ). Fink is modeled on playwright Clifford Odets , and the character W.P. Mayhew ( John Mahoney ) is based on William Faulkner . Barton Fink was a critical success, earning Oscar nominations and winning Best Director, Best Actor and Palme d'Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival . It was their first film with cinematographer Roger Deakins ,

291-448: A Best Original Screenplay and a Best Actress Oscar for McDormand. Roger Ebert wrote that "it rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense, and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen. To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them, and have made a movie that is completely original, and as familiar as an old shoe – or

388-426: A chain gang , journey home to recover bank-heist loot the leader has buried—but they have no clear perception of where they are going. The film highlighted the comic abilities of George Clooney as the oddball lead character Ulysses Everett McGill, and of Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro , his sidekicks. The film's bluegrass and old-time soundtrack, offbeat humor and digitally desaturated cinematography made it

485-532: A "gentle but dark" period comedy (set in 1967) with a low budget. The film is based loosely on the Coens' childhoods in an academic family in the largely Jewish suburb of Saint Louis Park, Minnesota ; it also drew comparisons to the Book of Job . Filming took place late in the summer of 2008, in the neighborhoods of Roseville and Bloomington, Minnesota , at Normandale Community College , and at St. Olaf College . The film

582-601: A Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit , one of the top box-office hits of 1969. True Grit was released on June 11, 1969, earning US$ 14.25 million at the box office. A second film version , written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld debuted in December 2010. Portis published several short pieces in The Atlantic Monthly , including

679-588: A committee of the Council on Library Resources and subsequently by the American National Standards Institute . Each volume is printed on thin but opaque acid-free paper, allowing books ranging from 700 to 1,600 pages to remain fairly compact (although not as small as those in La Pléiade). The paper used means the books will last a very long time without crumbling or yellowing. All volumes in

776-475: A critical and commercial hit. It was the first feature film to use all-digital color grading. The film's soundtrack CD was also successful, spawning a concert and concert/documentary DVD, Down from the Mountain . The Coens next produced another noirish thriller, The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). The Coens directed the 2003 film Intolerable Cruelty , starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones ,

873-641: A degree in journalism in 1958. Portis began writing in college, for both the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville student newspaper, Arkansas Traveler , and the Northwest Arkansas Times . One of his tasks was to redact the colorful reporting of "lady stringers " in the Ozarks , a task credited as a source for the vivid voice that he created years later for his character Mattie Ross in True Grit . After Portis graduated, he worked for various newspapers as

970-618: A girl Norwood woos and wins on the bus ride back to the South. Like Norwood , his novel True Grit (1968) was first serialized in condensed form in The Saturday Evening Post . The story is told in first person from the perspective of Yell County native Mattie Ross. At the time of the novel's events, she is a prim, shrewd, strong-willed, Bible-quoting 14-year-old girl. When her father is murdered in Fort Smith, Arkansas , by Tom Chaney,

1067-485: A hired hand, she sets out to bring the killer to justice. She recruits Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn — in whom Mattie sees one possessed of "grit" — to help her hunt down Chaney (who has joined an outlaw band) to "avenge her father’s blood". Both Norwood and True Grit were adapted as movies, with fellow Arkansan Glen Campbell and Kim Darby in leading roles in the two films. Both pictures were commercially successful. John Wayne won an Academy Award and

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1164-488: A key collaborator for the next 25 years. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) is an homage to the screwball comedies of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks . Co-written with Raimi, the film follows a mailroom clerk ( Tim Robbins ) who is promoted to president of the Hudsucker corporation by a cynical director ( Paul Newman ) in a scheme to devalue the company's stock; a fast-talking newspaperwoman ( Jennifer Jason Leigh ) tries to scoop

1261-506: A level of greatness is sometimes associated with whether they have the imprimatur of the Library of America. Writing for The Sewanee Review , the academic Michael Gorra has said that "the Library has shaped and indeed expanded our sense of what counts as American literature ... what makes the Library of America so valuable is the risks it takes around the edges of what used to be American literature". The Library of America has attracted

1358-453: A little too humorous and a little too 'regional' to attract the kind of attention that leads to National Book Awards and excerpts in textbook anthologies. Too many 'pale cranks,' bushwhackers, and 'jackleg preachers.'" However, in 2023 the Library of America published his Collected Works. Portis lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he died of Alzheimer's disease on February 17, 2020, at

1455-454: A miniature-golf course." Geoff Andrew wrote: "the lives and times of Hi, Ed and friends are painted in splendidly seedy colours, turning Arizona into a mythical haven for a memorable gaggle of no-hopers, halfwits and has-beens. Starting from a point of delirious excess, the film leaps into dark and virtually uncharted territory to soar like a comet." The film featured McDormand, William Forsythe , Sam McMurray , Randall "Tex" Cobb and marked

1552-642: A native with a spear. Lassie Come Home (1943) was reinterpreted as their Ed... A Dog , with Ethan playing the mother role in his sister's tutu . They also made original films like Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go , Lumberjacks of the North and The Banana Film . Joel and Ethan graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976, respectively, and from Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts . After Simon's Rock, Joel spent four years in

1649-448: A number of criticisms as well, including accusations of selection biases in favor of literary and political trends and the questionable inclusion of certain writers ostensibly non-canonical. An offshoot series put out in 1989 by Vintage Books that was associated with the Library of America name was faulted as overly commercial and exploitative. Even the marketing for the main series has been reproved as overbearing, in that it exaggerated

1746-596: A reporter, including the Memphis Commercial Appeal and almost two years at the Arkansas Gazette , for which he wrote the "Our Town" column. He then moved to New York City, where he worked for four years at the New York Herald Tribune . Here he briefly dated Nora Ephron . His work led him to return to the South frequently to cover civil rights stories during the early 1960s. After serving as

1843-461: A rubber-soled hunting boot from Land's End, more likely." The Big Lebowski (1998) is a crime comedy about Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski ( Jeff Bridges ), a Los Angeles slacker who is involved in a kidnapping case after being mistaken for a millionaire of the same name ( David Huddleston .) It features Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lebowski's flunky, Goodman and Buscemi as The Dude's bowling buddies and Julianne Moore as his "special lady friend". It

1940-683: A son, Pedro McDormand Coen, from Paraguay when he was six months old. McDormand has acted in a number of Coen Brothers films: Blood Simple , Raising Arizona , Miller's Crossing , Barton Fink , Fargo , The Man Who Wasn't There , Burn After Reading , and Hail, Caesar! For her performance in Fargo , she won the Academy Award for Best Actress . Ethan married film editor Tricia Cooke in 1993. They have two children: daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob. The two describe their relationship as “nontraditional”; Cooke identifies as both queer and

2037-471: A throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s. It focuses on hotshot divorce lawyer Miles Massey and a beautiful divorcée whom Massey managed to prevent from receiving any money in her divorce. She vows to get even with him while, at the same time, he becomes smitten with her. Intolerable Cruelty received generally positive reviews, although it is considered one of the duo's weaker films. Also that year, they executive produced and did an uncredited rewrite of

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2134-455: A young, naïve ex-Marine living in Ralph, Texas. He is persuaded by con man Grady Fring (the first of several such characters created by Portis) to transport two automobiles to New York City. Norwood encounters a variety of people on the way to New York and back, including ex- circus midget Edmund Ratner ("the world’s smallest perfect fat man"), Joann ("the college-educated chicken"), and Rita Lee,

2231-1145: Is Galliard . The LOA publishes selected titles in paperback, mainly for the college textbook market. Coen brothers Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957), together known as the Coen brothers ( / ˈ k oʊ ə n / ), are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Among their most acclaimed works are Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). The brothers generally write, direct and produce their films jointly, although due to DGA regulations, Joel received sole directing credit while Ethan received sole production credit until The Ladykillers (2004), from which point on they would be credited together as directors and producers; they also shared editing credits under

2328-419: Is a return to noir themes, but in some respects it was a departure for the Coens; with the exception of Stephen Root , none of the stable of regular actors appears in the film. No Country received nearly universal critical praise, garnering a 94% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes . It won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture , Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay , all of which were received by

2425-538: Is also a writer of short stories, theater and poetry. They are known for their distinctive stylistic trademarks including genre hybridity. No Country for Old Men , A Serious Man and Inside Llewyn Davis were included on the BBC 's 2016 poll of the greatest motion pictures since 2000 . In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Fargo among the 100 greatest American movies . Richard Corliss wrote of

2522-447: Is as close to the kind of thing [Wilson] envisaged as it could conceivably be." The designer of the appearance of Library of America books is Bruce Campbell. When the first LOA volumes appeared in 1982, the "Book Design & Manufacturing" column of Publishers Weekly headlined that the series's physical appearance was "a triumph of the bookmaker's art". The LOA uses paper that meets guidelines for permanence originally set out by

2619-497: Is especially dazzling. So is the fact that Mr. Coen, unlike many people who have directed great-looking film noir efforts, knows better than to let handsomeness become the film's entire raison d'être. In addition to its stylishness, Blood Simple has the kind of purposefulness and coherence that show Mr. Coen to be headed for bigger, even better, things." Joel's direction was recognized at the Sundance and Independent Spirit awards. It

2716-465: Is well-known for its compact primary source collections with their minimalist black covers. These collections have long been a trusty resource for historians, writers, and anyone else interested in a variety of historical and literary eras, especially the American founding and early republic." The Library of America has received considerable praise for its endeavors. After the initial series were published,

2813-590: The Los Angeles Times , and by a book prize committee . Newsweek magazine said in 2010 that "For three decades, the LOA has done a splendid job of making good on" its initial goals. Writing for the New York Times Book Review , the essayist and teacher William Deresiewicz has referred to the Library of America as "our quasi-official national canon". Indeed, whether an American writer has achieved

2910-465: The Palme d'Or for Barton Fink at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival . The Coens have written films for other directors, including Sam Raimi 's Crimewave (1985), Angelina Jolie 's World War II biopic Unbroken (2014) and Steven Spielberg 's Cold War drama Bridge of Spies (2015). They produced Terry Zwigoff 's Bad Santa (2003) and John Turturro 's Romance and Cigarettes (2005). Ethan

3007-405: The 88th Academy Awards . The Coens directed the film Hail, Caesar! , about a " fixer " in 1950s Hollywood trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanishes during filming. It stars Coen regulars George Clooney , Josh Brolin , Frances McDormand , Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton , as well as Channing Tatum , Ralph Fiennes , Jonah Hill , and Alden Ehrenreich . The film

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3104-745: The Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2, opening to mostly enthusiastic reviews. The initial run closed on February 10, 2008, but the same production was moved to a new theatre for a commercial off-Broadway run at the Bleecker Street Theater in New York City. Produced by The Atlantic Theater Company, it ran there from March 2008 through June 1, 2008. and Art Meets Commerce. In May 2009, the Atlantic Theater Company produced Coen's Offices , as part of their mainstage season at

3201-559: The Bradley Foundation to enable the two-volume The Debate on the Constitution set. The response to the series continued to grow over time; between 1993 and 1996, the publisher's frontlist sales doubled. By 1996, the Library of America was getting two-thirds of its sales via subscription programs and one-third through bookstores. While for a long time the series only published the works of authors who had passed on, this changed in

3298-501: The Civil War era was did not go unnoticed; one of the publisher's most ambitious later efforts, a multi-volume collection of first-person narratives, revolved around the same topic, as did such volumes as a collection of letters that Grant wrote to his wife Julia . The publisher aims to keep classics and notable historical and genre works in print permanently to preserve America's literary and cultural heritage. Previously, often only

3395-445: The FX network. It is created by Noah Hawley and executive produced by the brothers. The Coens also contributed to the screenplay for Unbroken , along with Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson . The film is directed by Angelina Jolie and based on Laura Hillenbrand 's non-fiction book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010) which itself

3492-518: The London bureau chief of the New York Herald Tribune , he left journalism in 1964. Portis next returned to Arkansas and began writing fiction full-time. In his first novel, Norwood (1966), he showed his preference for travel narratives with deadpan dialogue, combined with amusing observations on American culture. Set sometime from 1959 through 1961, the novel revolves around Norwood Pratt,

3589-471: The Norton Critical Editions , Library of America volumes provide no introductory essays or critical examinations of the work involved. This is per Wilson's original design. At times this omission can lead to frustration based on the inability to know the basis upon which material for a volume was selected. Each volume also includes a chronology of the author's career or significant incidents in

3686-493: The 2005 novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy . Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss ( Josh Brolin ), living near the Texas/Mexico border, stumbles upon, and decides to take, two million dollars in drug money. He must then go on the run to avoid those trying to recover the money, including sociopathic killer Anton Chigurh ( Javier Bardem ), who confounds both Llewelyn and local sheriff Ed Tom Bell ( Tommy Lee Jones ). The plotline

3783-528: The Christmas black comedy Bad Santa , which garnered positive reviews. In 2004, the Coens made The Ladykillers , a remake of the British classic by Ealing Studios . A professor, played by Tom Hanks , assembles a team to rob a casino. They rent a room in an elderly woman's home to plan the heist. When the woman discovers the plot, the gang decides to murder her to ensure her silence. The Coens received some of

3880-446: The Coen brothers have tied the record for the most nominations by a single nominee (counting an "established duo" as one nominee) for the same film. Orson Welles set the record in 1941 with Citizen Kane being nominated for Best Picture (though at the time, individual producers were not named as nominees), Best Director, Best Actor , and Best Original Screenplay . Warren Beatty received

3977-580: The Coens and Raimi. Joel and Raimi also made cameos in Spies Like Us (1985). The brothers wanted to follow their debut with something fast-paced and funny. Raising Arizona (1987) follows an unlikely married couple: ex-convict H.I. ( Nicolas Cage ) and police officer Ed ( Holly Hunter ), who long for a baby but are unable to conceive. When furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona ( Trey Wilson ) appears on television with his newly born quintuplets and jokes that they "are more than we can handle", H.I. steals one of

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4074-423: The Coens, as well as Best Supporting Actor received by Bardem. The Coens, as "Roderick Jaynes", were also nominated for Best Editing , but lost. It was the first time since 1961 (when Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for West Side Story ) that two directors received the Academy Award for Best Director at the same time. In January 2008, Ethan Coen's play Almost an Evening premiered off-broadway at

4171-578: The Coens: "Dexterously flipping and reheating old movie genres like so many pancakes, they serve them up fresh, not with syrup but with a coating of comic arsenic." Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) were born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota , a suburb of Minneapolis . Their mother, Rena ( née Neumann; 1925–2001), was an art historian at St. Cloud State University , and their father, Edward Coen (1919–2012),

4268-401: The LOA "would publish volumes of Paris Hilton 's and William Shatner 's memoirs, and possibly those of Jersey Shore ' s Snooki ." Images of the faux volumes were included. In his 2001 book Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future , LOA co-founder Jason Epstein , who by his own account had lost out in an internal power struggle and departed the venture, sharply criticized

4365-595: The LOA text of Richard Wright 's Native Son restored a number of passages that had been previously cut to make the work more palatable to the Book-of-the-Month Club . The LOA also commissioned a new translation of Alexis de Tocqueville 's Democracy in America by Arthur Goldhammer for their edition of the text. Library of America volumes of letters tend to be representative rather than exhaustive in terms of inclusion criteria. Unlike some other series such as

4462-458: The Library of America's finances and what he saw as the publication of unnecessary anthologies and authors whose qualifications for the series were suspect. He concluded: The Library of America has now published substantially all the work for which it was created and for which rights are available. Its obligation hereafter is to husband its resources so that this work remains in print and accessible to readers, and to ensure that funds are on hand for

4559-642: The Linda Gross Theater. Burn After Reading , a comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was released September 12, 2008, and portrays a collision course between two gym instructors, spies and Internet dating. Released to positive reviews, it debuted at No. 1 in North America. In 2009, the Coens directed a television commercial titled "Air Freshener" for the Reality Coalition. They next directed A Serious Man , released October 2, 2009,

4656-645: The United States, Inc. ) Publishers associated in some way with the creation include Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer , and Roger W. Straus Jr. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren , C. Vann Woodward , R. W. B. Lewis , Robert Coles , Irving Howe , and Eudora Welty . Funding at the start came from two sources, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation , in

4753-974: The age of 86. Novels Nonfiction Short fiction, articles, etc. The Library of America The Library of America ( LOA ) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature . Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation , the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow , Frederick Douglass to Ursula K. Le Guin , including selected writing of several U.S. presidents . Anthologies and works containing historical documents, criticism, and journalism are also published. Library of America volumes seek to print authoritative versions of works; include extensive notes, chronologies, and other back matter; and are known for their distinctive physical appearance and characteristics. The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided

4850-569: The alias Roderick Jaynes . The duo started directing separately in the 2020s, resulting in Joel's The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) and Ethan's Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind (2022) and Drive-Away Dolls (2024). They have been nominated for 13 Academy Awards together, plus one individual nomination for each, sharing Best Original Screenplay for Fargo , and Best Picture , Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men . They won

4947-407: The author's name, rendered in a fountain-pen-like hand, help give the clothbound volumes a timeless feel" Aaron remained in his position until 1985, and was responsible for navigating the shoals between the orthodoxies of literary criticism and a wider view of what the Library of America could publish. He was followed as president by executive director Hurley. In 2017, she retired as president and

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5044-459: The best-known works of an author remained in print, as exemplified by Stephen Crane , whose novels and short stories were but whose poetry and journalism were not. As LOA chief executive Cheryl Hurley stated in 2001, "We're not only a publisher, we're a cultural institution." Although the LOA sells more than a quarter-million volumes annually, with the original seed money having run out, the publisher depends on individual contributions to help meet

5141-473: The case of the anthology volumes. Indeed, Library of America volumes are noted for their chronologies; The New York Times has called them "predictably superb". The author and journalist Gloria Emerson 's review of the Reporting World War II volumes notes that they include "an excellent chronology of the war". The poet and literary critic Stephen Yenser , in reviewing of volume about the work of

5238-419: The costs of preparing, marketing, manufacturing, and maintaining its books. In one large form of donation, as of 2001 a $ 50,000 contribution could sponsor a particular book being kept in print. Some books published as additions to the series are not kept in print in perpetuity. Library of America volumes are prepared and edited by recognized scholars on the subject. Notes on the text are normally included and

5335-468: The critic Charles Champlin wrote that "The volumes in the series are in fact marvels of scholarship, unobtrusively displayed, and a prime effort has been to work from the text that reflects the author's final word." The aforementioned poet and critic Stephen Yenser has called the Library of America "invaluable"; that same term has been used to describe Library of America by the Cox News Service , by

5432-401: The degree to which the preservation of American literature was in peril and the degree to which the Library of America was saving it. The LOA has been satirized by the essayist Arthur Krystal as "confer[ing] value on writers by encasing their work in handsome black-jacketed covers with a stripe of red, white, and blue on the spine." The oft-perceived requirement that writers have passed from

5529-432: The first of many collaborations between the Coens and John Goodman . Miller's Crossing (1990) is a gangster film inspired by Dashiell Hammett 's Red Harvest (1929) and The Glass Key (1931). It stars Gabriel Byrne as Irish mobster Tom Reagan and features Albert Finney , Marcia Gay Harden , Steve Buscemi , Jon Polito and John Turturro . The film was released almost simultaneously with Goodfellas and

5626-445: The late 1990s when Eudora Welty was published, soon to be followed by Philip Roth . Similarly, the rule that authors had to be American-born was later relaxed when Vladimir Nabokov was added to the list. While a nonprofit entity, the Library has not been immune to commercial considerations, often going further into genre works such as detective fiction and science fiction than some of its founders would have imagined. Besides

5723-580: The life of Dave Van Ronk . The film stars Oscar Isaac , Justin Timberlake , and Carey Mulligan . It won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival , where it was highly praised by critics. They received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song for "Please Mr. Kennedy", which is heard in the film. Fargo , a television series inspired by their film of the same name, premiered in April 2014 on

5820-421: The long series of proposals and discussions that led up to the creation of the Library of America. Another founder was the textual scholar G. Thomas Tanselle ; he too had been involved in the discussions prior to creation, and after that he chaired the committee that was the arbiter of LOA textual policy. "Its black dust jackets with an image of the author and a simple red, white, and blue stripe running below

5917-440: The main series have the same trim size , 4 + 7 / 8 inches (120 mm) by 7 + 7 / 8 inches (200 mm), dimensions that are based on the golden section . The weight of each volume is around 2 pounds (0.9 kg). For the hardcover editions, the binding cloth is woven rayon , and the books are Smyth-sewn . Each includes a ribbon bookmark . Pages in the books will lie flat when open. The uniform typeface

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6014-446: The memoir "Combinations of Jacksons" and the story "I Don't Talk Service No More". His final published work was the collection Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany , including journalism and other non-fiction, short stories, and a single play, Delray's New Moon . Subjects include the civil rights movement, a road trip in Baja, and Elvis Presley 's visit to his aging mother. Some of

6111-549: The model for the LOA, which was long a dream of critic and author Edmund Wilson . During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a long saga of rival literary outfits attempting to assemble and finding funding for much the same thing. The founding of the Library of America took place in 1979, with the creation of an entity known as Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. (This remains the entity under which LOA notes, chronologies, and other auxiliary materials are copyrighted; and, officially, employees work for Literary Classics of

6208-455: The most lukewarm reviews of their careers in response to this film. They directed two short films for two separate anthology films — Paris, je t'aime ( Tuileries , 2006) starring Steve Buscemi , and To Each His Own Cinema ( World Cinema , 2007) starring Josh Brolin . Both films received highly positive reviews. No Country for Old Men , released in November 2007, closely follows

6305-447: The one-act comedy Talking Cure , which was produced on Broadway in 2011 as part of Relatively Speaking , an anthology of three one-act plays by Coen, Elaine May , and Woody Allen . In 2011, the Coen brothers won the $ 1 million Dan David Prize for their contribution to cinema and society. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) is a treatise on the 1960s folk music scene in New York City's Greenwich Village , and very loosely based on

6402-404: The poet Elizabeth Bishop , noted that the chronology was "so packed with pertinent details it amounts to a mini-biography". The notes and chronologies are often put together by LOA staff members and in some cases have informed the perspective of the guest editors working on the volume in question. LOA staff have also sometimes helped scholars working on related projects. "The Library of America

6499-468: The position's significance. The only exception to this rule is if the co-directors are an "established duo". Since 2004 they have been able to share the director credit and the Coen brothers have become only the third duo to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director . With four Academy Award nominations for No Country for Old Men for the duo ( Best Picture , Best Director , Best Adapted Screenplay , and Best Film Editing as Roderick Jaynes),

6596-455: The publication of twentieth-century writers as rights permit. What Edmund Wilson would think of the series as it has evolved is unknowable, but writing for The Antioch Review in 1986, the fellow Paul M. Wright ventures that "We might reasonably infer that he would be pleased but not, I think, entirely pleased." Less reservedly, the editor and commentator Norman Podhoretz , writing for Commentary in 1992, said that "the Library of America

6693-430: The quintuplets to bring up as their own. Pauline Kael noted its "cornpone-surreal quality" and wrote that the Coens "are going with their strengths. They're making a contraption, and they're good at it because they know how to make the camera behave mechanically, which is just right here—it mirrors the mechanics of farce ... The Sunsets look marvellously ultra-vivid; the paint doesn't seem to be dry—it's like opening day at

6790-445: The ransom, which he plans to split with the kidnappers (Buscemi and Peter Stormare ). Complications ensue, and local cop Marge Gunderson (McDormand) starts to investigate. Produced on a small budget of $ 7 million, Fargo was a critical and commercial success, with particular praise for its dialogue and McDormand's performance. The film received several awards, including a BAFTA award and Cannes award for direction, and two Oscars :

6887-630: The same nominations, first for Heaven Can Wait in 1978 and again in 1981 with Reds . Alan Menken also then achieved the same feat when he was nominated for Best Score and triple-nominated for Best Song for Beauty and the Beast in 1991. Most recently Chloé Zhao matched this record in 2021 when she was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing for Nomadland (which also starred McDormand in her third Oscar-winning role). Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. In 1995, they adopted

6984-483: The scene led to one wry comment that "one sympathizes with the directors of a publishing venture increasingly dependent on the idea that great American writers just can't die fast enough." The series even prompted a mocking poem that began: It's like heaven: you've got to die To get there. And you can't be sure. The publisher might go out of business. In an April Fools' Day swipe at the Library of America's selection standards, another satirical piece proclaimed that

7081-469: The script for Suburbicon in 1986. The film was eventually directed by George Clooney and began filming in October 2016. It was released by Paramount Pictures in the fall of 2017. The Coens directed The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , a Western anthology starring Tim Blake Nelson , Liam Neeson , and James Franco . It began streaming on Netflix on November 16, 2018, after a brief theatrical run. It

7178-410: The source texts identified; these notes have been called "fascinating in themselves". This is part of the extensive back matter typically included with each volume, behind which large amounts of research and scholarship are conducted. Efforts are made to correct errors and omissions in previous editions and create a definitive version of the material. For instance, under the guidance of Bercovitch,

7275-494: The story. Critics praised the production design but criticized the tone. It was a box office bomb ($ 30 million budget, $ 3 million gross in the US). The brothers bounced back with the "homespun murder story" Fargo (1996), set in their home state of Minnesota . In it, car salesman Jerry Lundegaard ( William H. Macy ), who has serious financial problems, has his wife kidnapped so that his wealthy father-in-law ( Harve Presnell ) will pay

7372-431: The tale of a bar owner ( Dan Hedaya ) who hires a detective ( M. Emmet Walsh ) to kill his wife and her lover ( Frances McDormand and John Getz , respectively). It contains elements that point to their future direction: distinctive homages to genre movies (in this case noir and horror ), plot twists layered over a simple story, snappy dialogue and dark humor . Janet Maslin wrote: "The camera work by Barry Sonnenfeld

7469-547: The total amount of $ 1.8 million. The initial president of the new entity was the American academic Daniel Aaron , who had been a friend of Wilson's since the 1950s. The executive director was Cheryl Hurley, who had worked at the Modern Language Association . Other founding officers included the literary critic Richard Poirier , as vice president, and the publisher Jason Epstein , as treasurer. Epstein, and later Aaron and Poirier, had all been involved in

7566-537: The undergraduate film program at New York University , where he made a 30-minute thesis film, Soundings . In 1979, he briefly enrolled in the graduate film program at the University of Texas at Austin , following a woman he had married who was in the graduate linguistics program. The marriage soon ended in divorce and Joel left UT Austin after nine months. Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1979. His senior thesis

7663-647: The works of Federico Fellini to the Sons of Hercules films) aired on a Minneapolis station, the Tarzan films , and comedies ( Jerry Lewis , Bob Hope and Doris Day ). In the mid-1960s, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with their neighborhood friend Mark Zimering ("Zeimers") as the star. Cornel Wilde 's The Naked Prey (1965) became their Zeimers in Zambezi , which featured Ethan as

7760-549: The works of many individual writers, the series includes anthologies such as (in a different format from the above illustration) Writing Los Angeles . The Library of America introduced coverage of American journalism with the 1995 two-volume set Reporting World War II , which not only garnered positive reviews, but soon became one of the publisher's five best-selling offerings to that point, the others being volumes about Abraham Lincoln , Ulysses S. Grant , William Tecumseh Sherman , and Walt Whitman . That those others all concerned

7857-590: The works originally appeared in such publications such as the New York Herald Tribune and Saturday Evening Post . New York Times book reviewer Carlo Rotella said, "You can enjoy Escape Velocity as a stand-alone collection, but a Portis miscellany will always be read too as a key to the experiences and craft lessons that shaped the novels." Writing of Portis, Aaron Gilbreath has observed that his literary obscurity might, like him, remain forever hidden, because "he won't surface long enough to let reporters ask him about it." It has been suggested that Portis's novels "were

7954-765: Was a barrister in the Inns of Court in London before retiring to Hove with their grandmother. Edward Coen was an American citizen born in the United States, but grew up in Croydon , London and studied at the London School of Economics . Afterwards he moved to the United States, where he met the Coens' mother, and served in the United States Army during World War II . The Coens developed an early interest in cinema through television. They grew up watching Italian films (ranging from

8051-537: Was a 41-page essay, "Two Views of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy", which was supervised by Raymond Geuss . After graduating from New York University , Joel worked as a production assistant on a variety of industrial films and music videos. He developed a talent for film editing and met Sam Raimi while assisting Edna Ruth Paul in editing Raimi's first feature film, The Evil Dead (1981). The duo made their debut with Blood Simple (1984). Set in Texas , it tells

8148-483: Was a Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota . The brothers have an older sister, Deborah, who is a psychiatrist in Israel. In regards to whether our background influences our film making ... who knows? We don't think about it ... There's no doubt that our Jewish heritage affects how we see things. Both sides of the Coen family were Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews . Their paternal grandfather, Victor Coen,

8245-617: Was announced in March 2019 that Joel Coen would be directing an adaptation of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand . The film, titled The Tragedy of Macbeth , was Joel's first directorial effort without his brother, who was taking a break from films to focus on theater. The film premiered at the 2021 New York Film Festival . The 2022 Cannes Film Festival had a special screening of Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind , an archival documentary film directed solely by Ethan Coen and edited by his wife Tricia Cooke . In 2022, it

8342-476: Was announced that Ethan Coen would be directing Drive-Away Dolls for Focus Features and Working Title from a script he co-wrote with Cooke. It would be Ethan's first narrative film without his brother. The film was released in February 2024. The Coen brothers' own film production company, Mike Zoss Productions located in New York City, has been credited on their films from O Brother, Where Art Thou? onwards. It

8439-538: Was another critical and commercial success. The title was borrowed from the Preston Sturges film Sullivan's Travels (1941), whose lead character, movie director John Sullivan, had planned to make a film with that title. Based loosely on Homer 's Odyssey (complete with a Cyclops , sirens , et al. ), the story is set in Mississippi in the 1930s and follows a trio of escaped convicts who, after absconding from

8536-484: Was based on the life of Louis Zamperini . It was released on December 25, 2014, to average reviews. The Coens co-wrote, with playwright Matt Charman , the screenplay for the dramatic historical thriller Bridge of Spies , about the 1960 U-2 Incident . The film was directed by Steven Spielberg , and released on October 4, 2015, to critical acclaim. They were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay at

8633-529: Was born in 1933 in El Dorado, Arkansas , the son of Alice (Waddell) and Samuel Palmer Portis. He was raised and educated in various towns in southern Arkansas, including Hamburg and Mount Holly . During the Korean War , Portis enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and reached the rank of sergeant . After receiving his discharge in 1955, he enrolled in the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville . He graduated with

8730-444: Was followed in 2018 by John Kulka, who was given the title of editorial director. The first volumes were published in 1982, ten years after Wilson's death. They were priced moderately. The launch was accompanied by considerable amounts of publicity. Public response was in terms of sales positive from the beginning; by 1986, the non-profit was breaking even, although it accepted special grants for specific projects, such as one from

8827-566: Was influenced by Raymond Chandler 's The Big Sleep (1939) and Robert Altman 's The Long Goodbye . It has become a cult classic . An annual festival, Lebowski Fest , began in 2002, and many adhere to the philosophy of " Dudeism ". Entertainment Weekly ranked it 8th on their Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years list in 2008. It was the first collaboration between the Coens and T Bone Burnett , credited as "Music Archivist". The Coen brothers' next film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000),

8924-715: Was named after Mike Zoss Drug, an independent pharmacy in St. Louis Park since 1950 that was the brothers' beloved hangout when they were growing up in the Twin Cities . The name was also used for the pharmacy in No Country for Old Men . The Mike Zoss logo consists of a crayon drawing of a horse, standing in a field of grass with its head turned around as it looks back over its hindquarters. Up to 2003, Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing, due to guild rules that disallowed multiple director credits to prevent dilution of

9021-554: Was nominated for the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay . True Grit (2010) is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Charles Portis . Filming was done in Texas and New Mexico. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Mattie Ross along with Jeff Bridges as Marshal Rooster Cogburn . Matt Damon and Josh Brolin also appear in the movie. True Grit was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Picture. Ethan Coen wrote

9118-419: Was not a commercial success, but received positive reviews. Christopher Orr calls it "a distillation of all the tropes and themes and moods of the classic gangster film." It was the Coens' first collaboration with production designer Dennis Gassner . They followed it with Barton Fink (1991); set in 1941, it follows a New York playwright, the eponymous Fink (Turturro), who moves to Los Angeles to write

9215-399: Was released on February 5, 2016. In 2016, the Coens gave to their longtime friend and collaborator John Turturro the right to use his character of Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski in his own spin-off, The Jesus Rolls , which he would also write and direct. The Coens have no involvement in the production. In August 2016, the film began principal photography. The Coens first wrote

9312-454: Was replaced by Max Rudin, who was already the entity's publisher. Hanna M. "Gila" Bercovitch served as founding editor, senior editor, and then editor-in-chief until her death in 1997. Upon her passing, Henry Louis Gates said that "It is hard to find anyone who has been more central to institutionalizing the canon of American literature." She was followed as editor-in-chief by the poet and critic Geoffrey O'Brien . He retired in 2017, and

9409-401: Was the first film shot by Sonnenfeld, who collaborated with the Coens on their two subsequent films and went on to be a director. It marked the first of many collaborations between the Coens and composer Carter Burwell . It was also the screen debut of McDormand, who went on to feature in many of the Coens' films (and marry Joel). Their next project was Crimewave (Raimi, 1985), written by

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