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Arising out of the Third International Symposium held in New
Jersey, this book represents the state-of-the-art in ocean
management. An international group of contributors cover such
topics as: regional seas and embayments; new concepts in the
governance of ocean space assessment standards and issues; ocean
resources and sustainable development; ocean space development; and
related technologies. From the Baltic to the Caribbean, from the
Adriatic to the Atlantic, the problems of ocean management are
fully discussed, and proposals made to meet the challenges of the
next decade. This book should be of interest and use to anyone
working in coastal and ocean management.
Arising out of The Third International Symposium held in New
Jersey, this book represents the state-of-the-art in ocean
management. From the Baltic to the Caribbean, from the Adriatic to
the Atlantic, the problems of ocean management are fully discussed,
and proposals made to meet the challenges of the next decade. This
book will be of immense interest and use to anyone working in
coastal and ocean management and is an invaluable work reference.
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Mrs Bridge (Paperback)
Evan S Connell
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R270
R211
Discovery Miles 2 110
Save R59 (22%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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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
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.
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.
With superb delivery and subtle clarity, Connell allows us to see
and feel Muhlbach's emerging mania, with its impending tension and
sudden exhilaration. He illustrates how a new fixation alters our
lens on life and shapes our actions.
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.
Melvin Isaacs, aged seventeen, became a Navy Air Force cadet in
1942. His course of training as a flyer was an education in fear
and death, even though it had its wonderfully comic times and a
sense of comradeship that was new to him. Perhaps it was in the
air--for Melvin loved to fly--that the first feelings of aloneness
stirred his mind. Melvin, who queried the whys and wherefores of
his regimented training life, became, despite all efforts to
conform, a maverick. This portion of the novel is a touching and
true mixture of human comedy and tragedy, and it also embodies
scenes of flight and danger that are unmatched for pure vividness
and sensate realism.
The story of Melvin after the war is a continuation of the
absurdities that can pursue a man so constituted that he must think
for himself. And here the implications of the novel become clear.
It is partly the age-old story of a father and son in conflict, of
an older generation's notions that are insupportable to the
younger, a human dilemma that has no possible resolution. It is
also the story of Melvin's final rejection of war, of his
unshakeable conviction that a man today must think and act for the
good of the planet, Stephen Decatur's slogan notwithstanding. With
too many excellences to catalogue and extol, the novel has a total
effect of a new voice telling a new story of this old familiar
world.
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.
The mysterious bonds between opposites come into sharp relief as we
follow the course of Muhlbach and Lambeth's relationship. An
uncomfortable visit to the ballet, an abortive country vacation,
brief but sparkling happy moments, and Muhlbach's final, shocking
discovery add up to a mosaic of vignettes, rendering the characters
startlingly real.
"Double Honeymoon" explores the built-in dangers of a love affair
between a cautious, conservative, middle-aged widower and a
neurotic, high-strung, self-destructive girl. But far from just
another May-September romance, the book is a keen examination of
the dilemma posed by two people who are attracted to each other,
yet unable to come together because of the profound differences in
their backgrounds and outlooks. With a sure hand, Evan Connell
demonstrates just how profound those differences can be.
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.
Though this historical recreation is medieval in style, Connell
succeeds in infusing his diarists with alchemic wisdom, ancient
appeal, and felt humanness. A work of rigid art and astute mimicry,
Connell's work is intelligent and remarkable, medieval yet
applicable to modernity. Alchymic Journals is, at its core, a study
of humanity from the mind of one of America's greatest writers.
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.
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Mr Bridge (Paperback)
Evan S Connell
1
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R282
R264
Discovery Miles 2 640
Save R18 (6%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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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