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Memphis Afternoons (Paperback)
Loot Price: R384
Discovery Miles 3 840
You Save: R70
(15%)
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Memphis Afternoons (Paperback)
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List price R454
Loot Price R384
Discovery Miles 3 840
You Save R70 (15%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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James Conaway knew there was something wrong with his father before
he let himself think too deeply about it.The signs were there, in
unfocused phone calls and cryptic letters. Then on a reporting trip
to his hometown Conaway had to face facts: his father was in the
early stages of Alzheimer's, a dreaded illness that inspired this
beautifully written memoir of family and the South. As memory left
his father, the author was moved to recreate the world they had
shared, memory being the bulwark against oblivion. Many of these
fragments are outrageously funny. The book takes us back to a
society where the rules of southern gentlemanliness were still in
effect, if barely. Propriety had always fought a dubious battle
with bourbon, and now was being defeated by the likes of Elvis
Presley and Jack Kerouc. With rueful wit Conaway artfully renders a
youth of hunting and fishing giving way to brawling, debutante
parties, and literary exploration. The story's told against a
wistful background of an older generation with belated appreciation
for its hopes, ideals and diminished postwar reality. Conaway
writes of the idiosyncrasies of family life with a keen yet tender
sense of the absurd, particularly the sometimes loving, mysterious
relationship with his father. Linking the generations is an
antiquated but powerful code of conduct, recalled here with
extraordinary vividness and humor. Jim Lehrer in The Washington
Post - "Profound... hilarious... honest and serious... proof that
the gods look more favorably on some writers than they do on
others... conaway moves through his family and life in Memphis in
the '40s and '50s with the flow and grace of an impressionist
painter." Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains, House) -
"Exemplary... absorbing... sad and funny... It awakens our own
memories, makes our own lives more available to us." Rick Bass (The
Ninemile Wolves) "I'm crazy about this book, and implore the nation
to read it... about the shuddering magnificence, the depthlessness,
of the human heart."
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