Villages: A Novel by John Updike (Signed)

Inscribed on the front endpaper by the author. The dust jacket has wrinkling on the bottom edge, price unclipped. Red cloth boards are bumped just a tad on the lower two corners. First edition. All orders packed with care, dust jackets protected by Brodart sleeve, independent bookseller since 2011

From Publisher:

A delightful, witty, passionate novel that follows its hero from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century--from a master of American letters and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

John Updike's twenty-first novel, a bildungsroman, follows Owen Mackenzie from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts.

In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen's education (Bildung) is not merely technical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their female citizens, works to disengage him from his youthful innocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmed existence.

The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what light they can. At one juncture he reflects, "How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!" His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages: "A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall."

This delightful, witty, passionate novel runs from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century.

Product Info

ISBN: 1400042909

ISBN-13: 9781400042906

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc

Year: 2004-10-19

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Signed

Seller Info

ScottCraninIvyRidgeBooks

Address: 421 Elm St Fayetteville, New York

Website: https://www.ivyridgebooks.com

Country: United States