Plays on Words collects for the first time six satirical plays, five never before published, written in the early 1980s by American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, humorist, and surrealist Marvin Cohen. Also included are two short theater-related pieces ("How He/She Dramatizes His/Her Life" and "A Complaint as a Theatre Goer"), an excerpt from a 1981 interview, and a new brief preface written by Cohen for this collection.

Plays on Words

Humor & Entertainment

COHEN, MARVIN

Humor

Tough Poets Press

Nine recently discovered unpublished short serio-comedies from the 1960s and 1970s by essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, humorist, and surrealist Marvin Cohen, one of America's most innovative postmodern writers.

Questions to Ask Before Proceeding

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

Others, Including Morstive Sternbump: A Novel

Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Reviews of the original 1976 edition: "[Like] something out of the brain of a poetic trash compactor fed on ten years' accumulation of The New York Review of Books and As the World Turns. Cohen is bewitched by the novelty of the novel. He uses plot and language not to tell a story, but to discover and utilize all the lavish possibilities and pleasures these provide. This book is a writer's lark, yet also a benign ramble through the Disneyland of a literary man's literature." (Soho Weekly News) "[Cohen] has put his sophisticated hand into the wiring of the language and twisted it impishly. ... The reward for your attention is that you hear a new voice and a new kind of surreal music." (The New York Times Book Review) This new paperback edition of Others, Including Morstive Sternbump has been completely reformatted and contains the full text of the original version published in 1976. In addition, it includes the transcript of the 23-minute December 24, 1976 Reader's Almanac interview with Marvin Cohen conducted by Walter James Miller courtesy of New York Public Radio (WNYC 93.9 FM), as well as a new brief introduction by the author. Marvin Cohen, now 85, was one of the most innovative voices in American literature during the 1960s and 1970s. He authored 9 books, two of them published by New Directions, and his short fiction and essays appeared in more than 80 publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times,The Village Voice, The Nation, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Fiction, The Hudson Review, Quarterly Review of Literature, Transatlantic Review, and New Directions annuals. Staged readings of his 1980 play, The Don Juan and the Non-Don Juan, featured such actors as Richard Dreyfuss, Keith Carradine, Jill Eikenberry, and Wallace Shawn. During Cohen's heyday, his writing was praised for its originality, sincerity, and humor. Here's what the New York Times Book Review had to say about his 1967 debut, The Self-Devoted Friend: "It is rare these days — perhaps, any days — to come across a work that not only reveals a striking, fresh talent, but stands outside current literary preoccupations. What Mr. Cohen has is his own: a joy in language, and an eye, at once innocent and shrewd, for the paradoxes inherent in the human condition. He puts both language and people through their paces, stands them on their heads, and hugs them to his heart in what amounts as a tour de force of serio-comedy, a sort of superb clowning in which pathos and absurdity intertwine as they do in a Charlie Chaplin film."

Others, Including Morstive Sternbump

50th-anniversary edition of critically acclaimed writer Marvin Cohen's debut fiction. Not quite a novel, the book is best described as a series of humorous philosophical dialogues between the narrator and his "other" self, touching on a vast array of subjects such as birth, love, art, nature, religion, death, and everything in between.  A mere 1,500 hardcover copies of The Self-Devoted Friend were printed in London by publisher Rapp & Carroll Limited in 1967, 750 of which were imported by New Directions Publishing for distribution in the United States. According to Cohen, New Directions publisher James Laughlin explained his decision behind the very limited edition by saying it was "only for the happy few." Despite its overwhelmingly positive critical reception, no further copies of the book were ever produced. Completely reformatted, this new paperback edition contains the full text of the original and the author has also written a new brief introduction.  “When I was an unpublished writer 55 years ago, I lived in the same crummy tenement as Marvin Cohen in New York, and got to know him and his extraordinary writing. To me he was the Beckett of Avenue B — funnier, more accessible, but just as determined to show us the world in a new way. Cohen is the chronicler of frustration, and The Self-Devoted Friend is just one of his masterpieces.” Paul Theroux  “It is rare these days — perhaps, any days — to come across a work that not only reveals a striking, fresh talent, but stands outside current literary preoccupations. What Mr. Cohen has is his own: a joy in language, and an eye, at once innocent and shrewd, for the paradoxes inherent in the human condition. He puts both language and people through their paces, stands them on their heads, and hugs them to his heart in what amounts as a tour de force of serio-comedy, a sort of superb clowning in which pathos and absurdity intertwine as they do in a Charlie Chaplin film.” The New York Times Book Review  “Cohen surrealistically juxtaposes ideas, seeks irrational and fantastic links, but for the high purposes of verbal comedy and linguistic entertainment.” The New Statesman (London)  “Marvin Cohen’s wacky humor has something of Thurber, something of Steinberg, Buster Keaton, the surrealists, the pataphysicians. The Self-Devoted Friend is a book that should be read immediately by all who gladly recognize themselves to be half crazy.” Thomas Merton  “Such discontinuous fictions as Finnegans Wake or Naked Lunch or Marvin Cohen’s The Self-Devoted Friend would store more suitably than nineteenth-century novels.” Richard Kostelanetz

The Self-Devoted Friend

"Cohen is a superfan, and he has written an intellectual manual for his co-religionists. They know who they are and they will cherish this manual. But anyone who has spent a soft, green afternoon, his shirt open at the throat to the sun, the whistles and chatter of the infield drifting up to the edge of his mind, watching, absorbing, taking in a baseball game, will cherish it." — From the introduction by Jim Bouton, former Major League pitcher and author of the 1970 controversial bestseller Ball Four.  Originally published in 1974 as Baseball the Beautiful: Decoding the Diamond, this new paperback edition has been completely reformatted and contains the full text of the original version. According to the bio that Marvin Cohen, now 86, wrote for his website, the original publisher took the liberty of changing the book's now restored title "for commercial feasibility and to bring in the lumbering lowbrow audience."  This new edition also contains a later essay that did not appear in the original, and the author has also written a new foreword.

Baseball as Metaphysics

Sports & Outdoors

Baseball

Located in the lower Hudson Valley, Middletown was first settled in 1760 and quickly grew into a thriving dairy farming center. With the arrival of the pioneering New York and Erie Rail Road in 1843, Middletown continued to flourish, and by 1888, it became a city. Hundreds of residents found employment in the growing railroad industry as well as at the sprawling Middletown State Hospital, with its advanced facilities at one time boasting over 100 buildings. Middletown Revisited documents the rich history of a city that has continued to grow over generations.

Middletown Revisted (Images of America: New York)

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Arcadia Publishing

The Monday rhetoric of the love club, and other parables (A New Directions book)

New Directions Pub. Corp

For a specific description of this book, please see each individual seller offering.

The Monday Rhetoric of the Love Club, & Other Parables

New Directions

Self-devoted Friend

Rapp & Carroll

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by COHEN, MARVIN. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by COHEN, MARVIN