Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood ISBN: 0-8166-3862-4 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.55 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Isherwood's Neglected Masterpiece
Comment: "A Single Man" is one of the dozen or so genuine masterworks to appear in English since World War II. A quiet, unassuming story about a quiet, unassuming man (who bears a strong resemblance to the book's author), its painful and profound emotional undercurrents may escape the careless reader. This is writing so precise and clear that the characters -- George, Kenny, Charlotte -- come to exist in your mind almost as vividly as people in your own life. The book is partly modelled on "Ulysses," and so will be of extraordinary interest to students of Joyce, but I hasten to add that the novel is brief and easy-to-read. Indeed, I have read "A Single Man" countless times and will read it countless times more. Isherwood will always be best known for his "Berlin Stories" (and that largely because the musical and movie "Cabaret" was based on one of them), but this unforgettable short novel is his masterpiece.
Rating: 5
Summary: Life (Gay or Otherwise) as Spirited, Reflective Theater
Comment: On the surface it might not seem material for the "classic" book it becomes. It's one day in the life of George, a state-college professor in California, a gay transplanted Britisher and a gay widower in his fifties. But the novel glows with staginess, with theatrical perspective--how we act toward others, notice how others perceive us. (Shakespeare said all life is a stage, we players play our parts, etc....The modern sociologist Erwin Goffman more craftily saw human interaction dramatically, how we do "impression management," how we slyly "observe the unobserved observer" and the like....And semiotics studies signs, whether conventional--red light means danger--or deviant--subtle dress-cues). A SINGLE MAN exemplifies this life-as-theater; George notices, wonders, etc. This is good for its specific gay material (double life; stereotypes; coming out halfway or not; "do they know about me?" and the like. It's also good general human material. Now, this praise of the novel as theatrical revelations, is my own personal response, my insight? bias? both? ever since I read A SINGLE MAN 20 years ago. But beyond this, the novel is a ripping good tale. The breeders next door....love and loss....ageing plus gym-resilience and energy....our plastic education systems....Charlotte the female confidante.... bewitching young students, including Kenny.... and more. Surely one of the best dozen gay novels--as a novel.
Rating: 5
Summary: Read this book!
Comment: This short novel follows one day in the life of George, a 58-year-old English professor at San Tomas State College in Los Angeles, CA. From the moment he wakes up and shuffles to the bathroom, we are immediately thrust into his perception of life both as a gay man in the 1960s, and without his partner Jim who died in a car accident. His views are based upon both of these events, sometimes viewing the world as a big, happy joke, and other times as a very hostile place.
It's a great character study into something I think we don't read about too often: the life of a gay man in his fifties. Too often, gay books deal with men in their twenties and thirties, and if someone older than that appears, he's a caricature or stereotype of the dirty old man. George is very human and is presented in a very realistic manner.
Beautifully written. Definitely worth reading.
 |
Title: Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood ISBN: 0816638632 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood ISBN: 0811200701 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
 |
Title: Lost Years : A Memoir 1945 - 1951 by Christopher Isherwood ISBN: 0061180017 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst ISBN: 0679722564 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: A Way of Life, Like Any Other (New York Review Books Classics) by Darcy O'Brien, Seamus Heaney ISBN: 094032279X Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 09 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
