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One of the most influential and compelling books in American
literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D.
Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This
edition--introduced by noted American writer John
Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work,
originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived
from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the
lively "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" and "Brute Neighbors"
to the serene "Reading" and "The Pond in the Winter." Other famous
sections involve Thoreau's visits with a Canadian woodcutter and
with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his
bean field. This is the complete and authoritative text of
Walden--as close to Thoreau's original intention as all available
evidence allows. This is the authoritative text of Walden and the
ideal presentation of Thoreau's great document of social criticism
and dissent.
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The Seducer's Diary (Paperback)
Soren Kierkegaard; Edited by Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong; Foreword by John Updike
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R343
R283
Discovery Miles 2 830
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"In the vast literature of love, "The Seducer's Diary" is an
intricate curiosity--a feverishly intellectual attempt to
reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound
masked as a boast," observes John Updike in his foreword to Soren
Kierkegaard's narrative. This work, a chapter from Kierkegaard's
first major volume, "Either/Or," springs from his relationship with
his fiancee, Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard fell in love with the young
woman, ten years his junior, proposed to her, but then broke off
their engagement a year later. This event affected Kierkegaard
profoundly. Olsen became a muse for him, and a flood of volumes
resulted. His attempt to set right, in writing, what he feels was a
mistake in his relationship with Olsen taught him the secret of
"indirect communication." "The Seducer's Diary," then, becomes
Kierkegaard's attempt to portray himself as a scoundrel and thus
make their break easier for her.
Matters of marriage, the ethical versus the aesthetic, dread,
and, increasingly, the severities of Christianity are pondered by
Kierkegaard in this intense work."
The first book of prose published by either James Thurber or E.
B. White, Is Sex Necessary? combines the humor and genius of both
authors to examine those great mysteries of life -- romance, love,
and marriage. A masterpiece of drollery, this 75th Anniversary
Edition stands the test of time with its sidesplitting spoof of
men, women, and psychologists; more than fifty funny illustrations
by Thurber; and a new foreword by John Updike.
John Updike’s twentieth novel, like his first, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), takes place in one day, a day that contains much conversation and some rain. The seventy-eight-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer named Kathryn, and recapitulates, through the story of her own career, the triumphant, poignant saga of postwar American art. In the evolving relation between the two women, the interviewer and interviewee move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother, therapist and patient, predator and prey, supplicant and idol. The scene is central Vermont; the time is the early spring of 2001.
From the Hardcover edition.
By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of
God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about what it really
takes to become a doctor. "The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious
novel that turned into a cult phenomenon. Singularly
compelling...brutally honest."-The New York Times Struggling with
grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch
and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking
senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how
to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings. A phenomenon
ever since it was published, The House of God was the first
unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training
to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and
black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it
has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever
written. With an introduction by John Updike
John Updike's short story collections are occasions for celebration
-- the pleasures to be found in them are great indeed. This
marvelous volume contains one gem after another, stories to be
savored one at a time and returned to again and again.
Here is trust betrayed -- and fulfilled. Here are parents
struggling to maintain that fragile claim on their offspring's
childish awe....Here are husbands and wives as only Updike knows
them, leaving each other, loving each other, often at the same
time. Here are passion ignited and quenched, absurd hope, regret at
the last minute. Here is life as we live in it, in twenty-two
stories of uncommon beauty and pathos from a master storyteller at
the peak of his brilliant career.
"Rabbit, Run "is the book that""established John Updike as one of
the major American novelists of his--or any other--generation. Its
hero is Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball
star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six
years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and
thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family
duty--even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace.
Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to
the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward
his own salvation as straight as a ruler's edge.
Written in diary form, "The Diary of Adam and Eve" is an ingenious,
witty, and ultimately delightful retelling of the dawn of human
creation with many a grain of truth for today's gender disputes.
Master storyteller Mark Twain hilariously recreates the very first
days, portraying Adam as something of a recluse, and a man who is
ill prepared for the arrival of Eve, a talkative, emotional, and
highly charged female. Yet in time, and after many moments of
conflict, they begin to learn to live together and come to realize
that men and women can, in fact, exist in harmony.
The last priest is on the run. During an anti-clerical purge in one of the southern states of Mexico, he is hunted like a hare. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the little world 'whisky priest' is nevertheless impelled towards his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers. A baleful vulture of doom hovers over this modern crucifixion story, but above the vulture soars an eagle - the inevitability of the Church's triumph.
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Marry Me (Paperback)
John Updike
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R372
R303
Discovery Miles 3 030
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Sally is big, blonde and pampered. She's married to Richard. But
she loves Jerry. Jerry loves Sally in return, but he's also still
in love with his wife Ruth. Who's been sleeping with Richard ... As
a hot, feverish summer of snatched weekends, secret phone calls and
illicit lovemaking on the beach comes to a head, it turns out
everyone knows more than they've been letting on. And that no one
knows quite when to stop.
Using details of the ancient Scandinavian legends that were the inspiration for Hamlet, John Updike brings to life Gertrude's girlhood as the daughter of King Rorik, her arranged marriage to the man who becomes King Hamlet, and her middle-aged affair with her husband's younger brother. As only he could, Updike recasts a tale of medieval violence and presents the case for its central couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude's warmth and lucidity, Claudius's soldierly yet peaceable powers of command are seen afresh against a background of fond intentions and familial dysfunction, on a stage darkened by the ominous shadow of a sullen, disaffected prince.
"IT WILL LEAVE YOU STUNNED AND BREATHLESS. . . . With grand ambition, [Updike] not only tracks the fortunes and falls of an American family through four generations and eight decades but also creates a shimmering, celluloid portrait of the whole century as viewed through the metaphor of the movies."
--Miami Herald
"AN IMPORTANT AND IMPRESSIVE NOVEL: a novel that not only shows how we live today, but also how we got there. . . . A book that forces us to reassess the American Dream and the crucial role that faith (and the longing for faith) has played in shaping the national soul."
--The New York Times
"STIRRING AND CAPTIVATING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN . . . [This] new novel displays a depth and a narrative confidence that make one sigh with sweet anticipation. This is the Updike of the Rabbit books, who can take you uphill and down with his grace of vision, his gossamer language, and his merciful, ironic glance at the misery of the human condition. "
--The Boston Globe
"AWESOME . . . Updike's genius, his place beside Hawthorne and Nabokov have never been more assured, or chilling."
--The New Yorker
"POWERFUL."
--The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY brings together the best -- fifty-six extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed achievements in this quintessentially American literary genre. This expanded edition includes a new story from The Best American Short Stories 1999 to round out the century, as well as an index including every story published in the series. Of all the writers whose work has appeared in the series, only John Updike has been represented in each of the last five decades, from his first appearance, in 1959, to his most recent, in 1998. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose the finest stories from the years since 1915. The result is "extraordinary . . . A one-volume literary history of this country's immeasurable pains and near-infinite hopes" (Boston Globe).
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Villages (Paperback)
John Updike
1
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R215
R172
Discovery Miles 1 720
Save R43 (20%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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Owen Mackenzie's life story abounds with sin and seduction,
domesticity and debauchery. His marriage to his college sweetheart
is quickly followed by his first betrayal and he embarks upon a
series of affairs. His pursuit of happiness, in a succession of
small towns from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, brings him to the
edge of chaos, from which he is saved by a rescue that carries its
own fatal price.
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Terrorist (Paperback)
John Updike
2
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R240
R192
Discovery Miles 1 920
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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In his extraordinary and highly charged new novel, John Updike
tackles one of America's most burning issues - the threat of
Islamist terror from within. Set in contemporary New Jersey,
Terrorist traces the journey of one young man, from radicalism to
fundamentalism to terrorism, against the backdrop of a fraying
urban landscape and an increasingly fragmented community. In
beautiful prose, Updike dramatizes the logic of the fundamentalist
terrorist - but also suggests ways in which we can counter it, in
our words and our actions . . .
The air of Eastwick breeds witches - women whose powerful longings
can stir up thunderstorms and fracture domestic peace. Jane,
Alexandra and Sukie, divorced and dangerous, have formed a coven.
Into the void of Eastwick breezes Darryl Van Horne, a charismatic
magus of a man who entrances the trio, luring them to his
mansions...
It's 1979 and Rabbit is no longer running. He's walking, and
beginning to get out of breath. That's OK, though - it gives him
the chance to enjoy the wealth that comes with middle age. It's all
in place: he's Chief Sales Representative and co-owner of Springer
motors; his wife, at home or in the club, is keeping trim; he wears
good suits, and the cash is pouring in. So why is it that he finds
it so hard to accept the way that things have turned out? And why,
when he looks at his family, is he haunted by regrets about all
those lives he'll never live?
Trio marks the first time these three shorter Pinget works are
collected in a single volume. From the sublime surrealism of
Between Fantoine and Agapa, through the Faulknerian take on rural
life in That Voice, to the musical rhythm and flow of Passacaglia,
this collection charts the varied career of one of the French New
Novel's true luminaries.The space between the fictional towns of
Fantoine and Agapa is akin to Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County: an
area where provincialism is neither romanticized nor parodied;
where intrigue -- often violent intrigue -- confronts the bucolic
ideal held both by insiders and outsiders; and where reality is
shaped not by events, but by talk and gossip, by insinuation and
conjecture. Written over the course of his career, these three
novels are by turns hilarious and dark, surreal and painstakingly
accurate; together they demonstrate the consistent quality of
Pinget's versatility.
The first book in his award-winning 'Rabbit' series, John Updike's
Rabbit, Run contains an afterword by the author in Penguin Modern
Classics. It's 1959 and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, one time high
school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is
trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile,
alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded
glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things,
he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Pennsylvania,
beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from
his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, 'after
you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of
takes the kick out of being second-rate'. John Updike (1932-2009)
was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard
College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford, England, at the Ruskin
School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member
of staff at The New Yorker. Updike was the author of twenty-one
novels as well as numerous collections of short stories, poems and
criticism, and is one of only three authors to win more than one
Pulitzer Prize. His most famous works are the Harry 'Rabbit'
Angstrom series, all of which are published in Penguin Modern
Classics: Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit is Rich
(1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990). If you enjoyed Rabbit, Run, you
might like Don DeLillo's Americana, also available in Penguin
Modern Classics. 'It is sexy, in bad taste, violent and basically
cynical. And good luck to it' Angus Wilson, Observer 'That special
polish, that brilliance; Updike is among the best' Malcolm Bradbury
'Brilliant and poignant ... By his compassion, clarity of insight,
and crystal-bright rose, [Updike] makes Rabbit's sorrow his and our
own' Washington Post
Taking its title from the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", IN THE
BEAUTY OF THE LILIES traces one family's profound journey through
four generations--and across the spiritual landscape of
twentieth-century America. It is one of John Updike's fullest and
finest work of fiction.
When the three witches - now old, remarried and widowed - decide to
go back to Eastwick to spend a summer together, many things have
changed. Darryl Van Horne is gone. Their husbands and lovers have
gone. The lithe and supple bodies with which they wrecked marriages
and wreaked havoc many years before have gone - and have been
replaced with the quiet aches and encumbrances of age. But a
chemistry still crackles between the three and magic still lingers
in the Eastwick air, and soon it becomes clear that there are those
around them who remember them, and wish them ill. The Widows of
Eastwick takes the mischief and enchantment of The Witches of
Eastwick and reshapes it in a new emotional landscape, resulting in
a sensitive study of the passing of youth and a darkly funny novel
that shines with luminous sexual reminiscences and satirical
observations about modern America.
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