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.
In this sequel to
Rabbit, Run, John Updike resumes the spiritual quest of his anxious
Everyman, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Ten years have passed; the impulsive
former athlete has become a paunchy thirty-six-year-old conservative,
and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid turmoil of
technology, fantasy, drugs, and violence. Rabbit is abandoned by his
family, his home invaded by a runaway and a radical, his past reduced to
a ruined inner landscape; still he clings to semblances of decency and
responsibility, and yearns to belong and to believe.
The hero of
John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, ten years after the events of Rabbit Redux,
has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as the chief sales
representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer,
Pennsylvania. The time is 1979: Skylab is falling, gas lines are
lengthening, and double-digit inflation coincides with a deflation of
national self-confidence. Nevertheless, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom feels in
good shape, ready to enjoy life at last—until his wayward son, Nelson,
returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to the
lot. New characters and old populate these scenes from Rabbit’s middle
age as he continues to pursue, in his zigzagging fashion, the rainbow of
happiness.
100
Trade Paperback
Good Condition
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (B2)
D.H. Lawrence's great autobiographical novel is a
provocative portrait of an artist torn between love for his possessive
mother and desire for two young beautiful women. Set in the
Nottinghamshire coal fields of Lawrence's own boyhood, the story of
young Paul Morel's growing into manhood in a British working-class
family rife with conflict reveals both an inner and an outer world
seething with intense emotions. Gertrude is Paul's puritanical mother
who concentrates all her love and attention on her son Paul. She
nurtures his talents as a painter - and when she broods that he might
marry someday and desert her, he swears he will never leave her.
Inevitably, Paul does fall in love, but with two women - and is unable
to choose between them. Written early in Lawrence's literary career,
Sons and Lovers possesses all the powers of description, insistent
sensuality, and scathing social criticism that are the special hallmarks
of his genius. "A work of striking originality," writes the critic F.R.
Leavis, by "the greatest creative writer in English of our time."
60
Trade Paperback
Good Condition
Labels: Classics
The portrait of a lady by Henry James (B2)
Spirited, beautiful young American Isabel Archer journeys to Europe to,
in modern terms, "find herself." But what she finds there may prove to
be her undoing, especially when an infinitely sophisticated lady plots
against her.
35
Paperback
Good Condition
35
Paperback
Good Condition
Labels: Classics
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (B2)
When Lucy Honeychurch travels to Italy with her cousin, she meets George
Emerson, a bohemian and an atheist who falls in love with her. Upon her
return to England, she is forced to choose between free-spirited George
and her more conventional fiancé, Cecil Vyse. The story is both a
romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th
century.
100
Hardbound
Good Condition
100
Hardbound
Good Condition
Labels: Classics
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers (B1)
In
these two chilling stories, Henry James shows himself to be a master of
haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension. The Turn of the Screw tells
of a young governess sent to a country home to take charge of two
orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within
the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent
forces are stalking the children in her care. Obsession of a more
worldly variety lies at the heart of The Aspern Papers, the tale of a
literary historian determined to get his hands on some letters written
by a great poet-and prepared to use trickery and deception to achieve
his aims.
120
Trade Paperback
Very Good Condition
120
Trade Paperback
Very Good Condition
Labels: Classics
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