By Fran Mason

From the preface: “The film gangster, therefore, represents a seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century culture, forming the focus for a range of tensions that have dominated the discourses of industrialised society. These range from the role of the individual within an increasingly rationalised society, the impact of urban space (and its association with the fracturing discourses of modernity and postmodernity), the tension between tradition and the modern, the opposition between labour and pleasure, and particularly the relationship between ideology and freedom.

NY. Palgrave Macmillan. 2002. 203p. CONTAINS MARK-UP.

By Kingsley Amis

From the cover: Throughout his notable career as a novelist, poet and literary critic, Kingsley Amis was often concerned — the less understanding some might say obsessed--with the use and abuse of the English language. Do we know what the words we employ really mean? Do we have the right to use them fi we don't? Should an "exciting" new program be allowed to "hit” your television screen? When is it acceptable to split an infinitive? And just when is one allowed to begin a sentence with "and"? The enemies of fine prose may dismiss such issues as tiresome and pedantic, but Kingsley Amis, like all great novelists, depended upon these very questions to separate the truth from the lie, both in literature and in life. A Parthian shot from one of the most important figures in postwar British fiction, this volume represents Amis's last word on the state of the language. More frolicsome than Fowler's Modern Usage, lighter than the Oxford English Dictionary, and replete with the strong opinions that have made Amis so popular- and so controversial….”

NY. St. Martin’s Press. 1997. 272p.