20th century
A01=Peter De Vries
adolescence
american author
Author_Peter De Vries
Category=FBA
comic
culture
debate
eighth grade
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
family
fathers and sons
fiction
fictional works
funniest
humor
irony
literary
literature
middle school
north dakota
original
pain
parenting
religion
satire
sorrow
teenagers
theology
united states of america
visionary
wit
young adult
Product details
- ISBN 9780226143897
- Weight: 284g
- Dimensions: 13 x 20mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2005
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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With a new Foreword by Derek De Vries It is 1963 in an unnamed town in North Dakota, and Anthony Thrasher is languishing for a second year in eighth grade. Prematurely sophisticated, young Anthony spends too much time reading Joyce, Eliot, and Dylan Thomas but not enough time studying the War of 1812 or obtuse triangles. A tutor is hired, and this "modern Hester Prynne" offers Anthony lessons that ultimately free him from eighth grade and situate her on the cusp of the American sexual revolution. Anthony's restless adolescent voice is perfectly suited to De Vries's blend of erudite wit and silliness - not to mention his fascination with both language and female anatomy - and it propels Slouching Towards Kalamazoo through theological debates and quandaries both dermatological and ethical to soar on the De Vriesian hallmark of scrambling conventional wisdom for comic effect.
Peter De Vries (1910-93), the man responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms as "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow," was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic." But De Vries's life and work was informed as much by sorrow as by wit, and that dynamic is nowhere better seen than in his classics Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb. First published in 1983 and 1961, respectively, these novels reemerge with their sharp satire and biting pain undiluted by time.
