Download or read book Body Soul written by Frank Conroy and published by HMH. This book was released on 1993-09-29 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This saga of a son of the working class who grows into a piano prodigy is “hypnotically readable . . . The best story I know of in a long, long time” (Vanity Fair). As a boy, Claude Rawlings looks up through the grated window of his basement apartment to watch the world go by. Poor, lonely, supported by a taxi-driver mother whose eccentricities spin more and more out of control, he faces the terrible task of growing up on the margins of life, destined to be a spectator of that great world always hurrying out of reach. But there is an out-of-tune piano in the small apartment, and in unlocking the secrets of its keys, as if by magic, Claude discovers himself. He is a musical prodigy. Body & Soul is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a gift. The gift is not without price—the work is relentless, the teachers exacting—but the reward is a journey that takes him to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful, private schools, a gilt-edged marriage, and Carnegie Hall. Claude moves through this life as if he were playing a difficult composition, swept up in its drama and tension, surprised by its grace notes. Music, here, becomes a character in its own right, equaled in strength only by the music of Frank Conroy’s own unmistakable and true voice. Bristling with character and invention, Body & Soul is Dickensian in its range and richness. This is a novel with all the emotional appeal and moral gravity of a classic bildungsroman, but with a tone as contemporary as a jazz riff—an unforgettable achievement by one of the great writers of our time.
Download or read book Body and Soul by Frank Conroy Book Analysis written by Bright Summaries and published by BrightSummaries.com. This book was released on 2016-10-12 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this clear and detailed reading guide, we’ve done all the hard work for you! Body and Soul focuses on Claude Rawlings, a young boy being raised by a single mother who abandons him. He has a difficult childhood, but everything changes when he finds an old piano and discovers his incredible talent. The story follows Claude for the next two decades of his life, as his talent develops and he begins to find his way in life and love. Find out everything you need to know about Body and Soul in just a few minutes! This practical and insightful reading guide includes: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you in your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!
Download or read book Body Soul written by Frank Conroy and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1993 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As A Boy, Claude Rawlings looks up through the grated window of his basement apartment to watch the world go by. Poor, lonely, supported by a taxi-driver mother whose eccentricities spin more and more out of control, he faces the terrible task of growing up on the margins of life, destined to be a spectator of that great world always hurrying out of reach. But there is an out-of-tune piano in the small apartment, and in unlocking the secrets of its keys, as if by magic, Claude discovers himself. He is a musical prodigy." "Body & Soul is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a gift. The gift is not without price - the work is relentless, the teachers exacting - but the reward is a journey that takes him to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful, private schools, a gilt-edged marriage, and Carnegie Hall. Claude moves through this life as if he were playing a difficult composition, swept up in its drama and tension, surprised by its grace notes. Music, here, becomes a character in its own right, equaled in strength only by the music of Frank Conroy's own unmistakable and true voice." "Bristling with character and invention, Body & Soul is Dickensian in its range and richness. This is a novel with all the emotional appeal and moral gravity of a classic bildungsroman, but with a tone as contemporary as a jazz riff - an unforgettable achievement by one of the great writers of our time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Stop Time written by Frank Conroy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1977-02-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy's passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy's wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father's early death and a son's exhilarating escape into manhood.
Download or read book Dogs Bark but the Caravan Rolls On written by Frank Conroy and published by HMH. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “superb blend of personal essays and journalistic articles” on everything from fatherhood to writing workshops to jazz musicians (Chicago Sun-Times). “At once subtle and dazzling,” these pieces—collected from such publications as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, and GQ—serve as both a wide-ranging journey through topics like art and music and an autobiographical look into the life of one of our most acclaimed literary figures, the author of such books as Stop-Time and Body & Soul and a director of the renowned Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa (Publishers Weekly). “[An] interesting and well-done anthology. Conroy takes on such topics as learning to play pool, fatherhood, the value of now-disappearing small towns in instilling family values, the enthusiasms of jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, and, of course, the Writers’ Workshop.” —Library Journal “Highly enjoyable and illuminating . . . Dogs Bark is simply one of the best books published in a long, long time.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Download or read book A Monk Swimming written by Malachy McCourt and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this darkly humorous New York Times–bestselling memoir, the Irish American writer and actor shares charming stories from his first decade in the US. Malachy McCourt left behind a childhood of poverty and painful memories of his father and mother in Limerick, Ireland, when he followed his brother, Frank, to America in 1952. In A Monk Swimming, McCourt recounts the decade that followed. With not much else to his name other than his sharp wit and knack for storytelling, McCourt was unsure what he would do after arriving in New York City. He worked as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn docks, became the first celebrity bartender in a Manhattan saloon, performed on stage with the Irish Players, and told tales to Jack Paar on The Tonight Show. Although McCourt gained success, money, women, and, eventually, children of his own, he still carried memories of the past with him. So, he fled again. He found himself in the Manhattan Detention Complex, otherwise known as the Tombs. He was arrested several times: poolside in Beverly Hills, in Zurich with gold-smugglers, and again in Calcutta with sex workers. McCourt’s journey also took him to Paris, Rome, and even Limerick again, until finally he was forced to grapple with his past. Praise for A Monk Swimming “[A] funny, oddly winning book.” —The New York Times “A rollicking good read that, as the Irish say, would make a dead man laugh.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Malachy McCourt, who has habitually regurgitated English in glorious colors to his fellow Irishmen and New Yorkers, here makes his vivid, whimsical, raucous, murderous joy and voice available to the rest of us in tales of riot and glory which build on the story of the McCourts’ early life so dazzlingly told in Angela’s Ashes by his brother Frank.” —Thomas Keneally, author of the international bestseller Schindler’s List
Download or read book A Study Guide for Frank Conroy s Body and Soul written by Cengage Learning Gale and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study Guide for Frank Conroy's "Body and Soul," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
Download or read book Mentor written by Tom Grimes and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2010-07-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate look at the writing life, the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop, the fickle publishing world, and an extraordinary friendship with Frank Conroy. A chance encounter between two writers, one young, one older, develops into a wonderful friendship neither expected. Frank Conroy, author of the classic memoir Stop-Time, meets Tom Grimes, an aspiring writer and an applicant to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which Conroy directs. First as teacher and student--and gradually as friends—their lives become entwined, and through both successes and disappointments, their bond deepens. Exquisitely written, Mentor is an honest and heartbreaking exploration of the writing life and the role of a very important teacher.
Download or read book Midair written by Frank Conroy and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1986 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A long-awaited collection of stories from the author of Stop-time.
Download or read book Disturbances in the Field written by Lynne Sharon Schwartz and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A more-than-welcome return to a classic idea of the novel . . . A wonder to read” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). The field is all around us. It’s our needs and our wants. This is what George tells Lydia. A disturbance, however, is something that keeps us from grasping and attaining the things we need. Usually, we can adapt to these disturbances and move forward. But, what happens if a disturbance becomes too great to move past? In this entrancing tale of loss and understanding, acclaimed author Lynne Sharon Schwartz plots the course of a woman’s life, through the cycles of love, loss, and acceptance. Lydia’s early life is marked by calm constants: a house in Cape Cod, a philosophy group in college. These remain her touchstones as she becomes a busy wife, mother, and music teacher. But when her family’s world is suddenly shattered, she struggles to regain her equilibrium. Will she be able to find her way in such a radically altered field?
Download or read book Reading for My Life written by John Leonard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Right up until his death in 2008, John Leonard was a lion in American letters. A passionate, erudite, and wide-ranging critic, he helped shape the landscape of modern literature. He reviewed the most celebrated writers of his age—from Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion to Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon. He championed Morrison’s work so ardently that she invited him to travel with her to Stockholm when she accepted her Nobel Prize. He also contributed many pieces on television, film, politics, and the media, which continue to surprise and impress with their fervor and prescience. Reading for My Life is a monumental collection of Leonard’s most significant writings—spanning five decades—from his earliest columns for the Harvard Crimson to his final essays for The New York Review of Books. Here are Leonard’s best writings—many never before published in book form—on the cultural touchstones of a generation, each piece a testament to his sharp wit, fierce intelligence, and lasting love of the arts. Definitive reviews of Doris Lessing, Vladimir Nabokov, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tom Wolfe, Don DeLillo, Milan Kundera, and Philip Roth, among others, display his passion and nearly encyclopedic knowledge of literature in the second half of the twentieth century. His essay on Ed Sullivan and the evolution of television remains a classic. Throughout Leonard’s reviews and essays is a dedicated political spirit, pleading for social justice, advocating for the women’s movement, and forever calling attention to writers whose work challenged and excited him. With an introduction by E. L. Doctorow and remembrances by Leonard’s friends, family, and colleagues, including Gloria Steinem and Victor Navasky, Reading for My Life stands as a landmark collection from one of America’s most beloved and influential critics.
Download or read book The Water Is Wide written by Pat Conroy and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2002-03-26 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “miraculous” (Newsweek) human drama, based on a true story, from the renowned author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw Island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence unless, somehow, they can learn a new way. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher—until one man gives a year of his life to the island and its people. Praise for The Water Is Wide “Miraculous . . . an experience of joy.”—Newsweek “A powerfully moving book . . . You will laugh, you will weep, you will be proud and you will rail . . . and you will learn to love the man.”—Charleston News and Courier “A hell of a good story.”—The New York Times “Few novelists write as well, and none as beautifully.”—Lexington Herald-Leader “[Pat] Conroy cuts through his experiences with a sharp edge of irony. . . . He brings emotion, writing talent and anger to his story.”—Baltimore Sun
Download or read book Over His Dead Body written by Leslie Glass and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2003-02-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this delightfully infectious novel of love and intrigue, Leslie Glass puts a sly and sexy spin on two of life’s most devastating certainties: death and taxes. Cassandra Sales is a woman with a gift for nurturing things—her husband, the successful wine importer; her two adult children; the fabulous flowers in her garden. After twenty-six years of marriage, however, Cassie’s husband, Mitch, is spending more time skipping abroad than remaining at home with her. Tired of being a modest Long Island housewife who can’t even remember what it’s like to be kissed, Cassie has a face-lift to recapture her youthful allure. The surprise for her husband goes awry when Mitch returns home early from a business trip. When he sees the post-op horror show, he collapses on the spot. The resulting coma may spare Mitch from the tax audit he’s facing, but Cassie is forced to step in and research the facts of her own life. What she discovers about Mitch and the family business shocks her to the core: her “loving” husband was preparing to divorce her, swindle her out of tons of money, and run off with another woman. As Cassie recuperates, she realizes what she’s after is revenge. Big time. But she soon learns that the road to retribution can lead to unforeseen and often deadly complications. In Over His Dead Body, Leslie Glass blends supreme suspense and warm-hearted romantic comedy into a perfect mélange that is as inevitable as. . . death and taxes.
Download or read book The Prince of Tides written by Pat Conroy and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1986 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his most brilliant and powerful novel, Pat Conroy tells the story of Tom Wingo, his twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the family into which they were born. Set in New York City and the lowcountry of South Carolina, the novel opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister's suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah's psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself. With passion and a rare gift of language, the author moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos' only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein's husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah's mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family. Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry and a lost way of life. His lyric gifts, abundant good humor, and compelling storytelling are well known to readers of The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline. The Prince of Tides continues that tradition yet displays a new, mature voice of Pat Conroy, signaling this work as his greatest accomplishment.
Download or read book The Last American Man written by Elizabeth Gilbert and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-08-17 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _____________ 'It is almost impossible not to fall under the spell of Eustace Conway ... his accomplishments, his joy and vigor, seem almost miraculous' - New York Times Review of Books 'Gilbert takes a bright-eyed bead on Eustace, hitting him square with a witty modernist appraisal of folkloric American masculinity' - The Times 'Conversational, enthusiastic, funny and sharp, the energy of The Last American Man never ebbs' - New Statesman _____________ A fascinating, intimate portrait of an endlessly complicated man: a visionary, a narcissist, a brilliant but flawed modern hero At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape to the wild. Away from the crushing disapproval of his father, he lived alone in a teepee in the mountains. Everything he needed he built, grew or killed. He made his clothes from deer he killed and skinned before using their sinew as sewing thread. But he didn't stop there. In the years that followed, he stopped at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder challenges. He travelled the Mississippi in a handmade wooden canoe; he walked the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail; he hiked across the German Alps in trainers; he scaled cliffs in New Zealand. One Christmas, he finished dinner with his family and promptly upped and left - to ride his horse across America. From South Carolina to the Pacific, with his little brother in tow, they dodged cars on the highways, ate road kill and slept on the hard ground. Now, more than twenty years on, Eustace is still in the mountains, residing in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instil in people a deeper appreciation of nature. But over time he has had to reconcile his ambitious dreams with the sobering realities of modernity. Told with Elizabeth Gilbert's trademark wit and spirit, The Last American Man is an unforgettable adventure story of an irrepressible life lived to the extreme. The Last American Man is a New York Times Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.
Download or read book The Stones of Summer written by Dow Mossman and published by Sterling Publishing Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Episodic coming of age saga.
Download or read book Violin written by Anne Rice and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1999-09-07 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the grand manner of Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice's new novel moves across time and the continents, from nineteenth-century Vienna to a St. Charles Greek Revival mansion in present-day New Orleans to dazzling capitals of the modern-day world, telling a story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation.
