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Showing 1 - 10 of 10 matches in All Departments
Evan S. Connell is by any measure one of America's greatest living writers. His restraint, concision, and perfect pitch lend themselves stunningly to the short story form. He intuitively senses when to explain and when to let silence stand in speech's stead. His characters--among them, a wanderer back from Spain, the corpulent Mr. Bemis, Katia and her lion--ring true not because the stories are filled with monumental events, but because they center on seemingly insignificant experiences that remain in the mind, imbued with a meaning ever difficult to define. Often we are left to float in their wake, ending in an ellipsis of sorts. Yet by Connell's mastery, even the voices that speak only once resonate beyond the final page.
Evan S. Connell's Mrs Bridge is an extraordinary tragicomic portrayal of suburban life and one of the classic American novels of the twentieth century. Mrs Bridge, an unremarkable and conservative housewife in Kansas City, has three children and a kindly lawyer husband. She spends her time shopping, going to bridge parties and bringing up her children to be pleasant, clean and have nice manners. And yet she finds modern life increasingly baffling, her children aren't growing up into the people she expected, and sometimes she has the vague disquieting sensation that all is not well in her life. In a series of comic, telling vignettes, Evan S. Connell illuminates the narrow morality, confusion, futility and even terror at the heart of a life of plenty. The companion novel Mr Bridge, telling the story from the other side of the marriage, is also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'A perfect novel ... Its tone - knowing, droll, plaintive, shuttling rapidly between pain and hilarity - elevates it to its own kind of specialness ... One of those books that can suffuse a room with happiness when someone brings it up' Meg Wulitzer, The New York Times 'Intimate ... affecting ... a very funny book' Joshua Ferris
Acclaimed author Evan S. Connell sends us through the complete
experience of a man initially intrigued and then enslaved by art: a
curious interest, a rapt fixation, and the becoming of a
connoisseur. "The Connoisseur trails the evolution of Muhlbach, an
insurance executive on a business trip in Taos, New Mexico, who
develops an obsession with pre-Columbian figurines after meandering
through a curio shop. Entranced yet bewildered by his sudden
affinity for a little figurine, Muhlbach succumbs to his intrigue
and, thirty dollars later, begins his journey as a connoisseur.
Another brilliant example of Evan Connell's art, "The Patriot"
deals with an American boy who grew to maturity with World War II.
He had learned his father's patriotism, and then, through the
impact of firsthand experience, formulated his own.
Karl Muhlbach, hero of Evan Connell's previous novel, The
Connoisseur, has a new obsession--a beautiful, nubile
girl-about-New York named Lambeth Brent, whose puzzling background
and swinging activities lead Muhlbach into dark areas, causing new
revelations of himself as a man to emerge.
Praise for Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel: "A unique tour de force." --The New York Times Book Review "One of the most remarkable books that I have read in a long time." --Kenneth Rexroth "Mr. Connell's Notes are what one intelligent, sensitive artist has been able to salvage from all experience as testimony to the rather pathetic integrity of the human species in the face of extinction. The book is no manual or tract, however, although its political meaning is unmistakable, but a work of art, even a work of high art." --Hayden Carruth
Capturing the spirit of arcane writing, Evan S. Connell delivers
spectacular and esoteric prose as he imagines the journals of seven
alchemists. The first is Paracelsus, the famous sixteenth-century
alchemist, who is followed by an array of distinct voices:
physicians, historians, alchemists, and philosophers. Each employs
a unique personality and point of view in a world of pre-scientific
thought, of the western world about to step into modernity.
From the best-selling author of Son of the Morning Star and Mrs. Bridge comes a magisterial tale of a great and terrible campaign, recounting one soldier's experiences of the defining war of Christendom. "God wills it!" The year is 1095 and the most prominent leaders of the Christian world are assembled in a meadow in France. Deus lo volt! This cry is taken up, echoes forth, is carried on. The Crusades have started, and wave after wave of Christian pilgrims rush to assault the growing power of Muslims in the Holy Land. Two centuries long, it will become the defining war of the Western world.
The companion novel to Mrs Bridge, this is a pitch-perfect portrayal of marriage and family life and a poignant dissection of the unexamined life. Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his narrow prejudices and complacent outlook, yet he is also troubled by existential doubts, dark undercurrents of desire and a yearning for something forever out of his reach. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations and of a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect. The companion novel, Mrs Bridge, telling the story from the other side of the marriage, is published in Penguin Modern Classics. 'With a delicate and subtle irony, Mr Connell shows us, first from her, then from his point of view, the little daily dramas of this ordinary family. It is very, very funny, often moving and sad, and written with an uncompromising realism that one rarely comes across. To me the Bridges were a revelation: I cannot recommend them too highly' Daily Telegraph
On a scorching June Sunday in 1876, thousands of Indian warriors - Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho - converged on a grassy ridge above the valley of Montana's Little Bighorn River. On the ridge five companies of United States cavalry - 262 soldiers, comprising officers and troopers - fought desperately but hopelessly. When the guns fell silent, no soldier - including their commanding officer, Lt Col. George Armstrong Custer - had survived. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history - 130 years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as 'one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers', wrote what continues to be the most reliable - and compulsively readable - account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his research and novelist's eye for story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.
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