The Vices - A Novel

Zusatztext 77557341 Informationen zum Autor Lawrence Douglas teaches at Amherst College. He is the author of the novel The Catastrophist (Other Press, 2006), a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, The Memory of Judgment (Yale University Press, 2001), a widely acclaimed study of war crimes trials; and coauthor of a book of humor, Sense and Nonsensibility (Simon & Schuster, 2004). His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, The Hudson Review, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and Harper’s. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, Douglas lives in Sunderland, Massachusetts. Klappentext Oliver Vice! forty-one! prominent philosopher! scholar! and art collector! is missing and presumed dead! over the side of Queen Mary 2.Troubled by his friend's possible suicide! the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas' new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice's life history. Douglas! moving backward through time! tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession! as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family's rich and bizarre history. At the heart of the family are Francizka! Oliver's handsome! overbearing! vaguely anti-Semitic Hungarian mother! and his fraternal twin brother! Bartholomew! a gigantic and troubled young man with a morbid interest in Europe's great tyrants. As the narrator finds himself drawn into a battle over the family's money and art! he comes to sense that someone-or perhaps the entire family-is hiding an unsavory past. Pursuing the truth from New York to London! from Budapest to Portugal! he remains oblivious to the irony of the search: that in his need to understand Vice's life! he is really grappling with ambivalence about his own. By the time we made it to the parking lot, we’d taken tentative strides toward sobriety. Winter in the past day had snuck up on us. I squinted into the sunlight, dagger sharp and empty of heat. A wicked wind made swirls and eddies of dust and cigarette butts. Oliver thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and bunched his shoulders, but his coat remained unzipped. He looked at me; his eyes, behind the formidable newscaster’s glasses, were tearing from the cold. A blast of wind made him nearly swallow his words. “Did I tell you that I was recently dumped by my therapist?”    I shook my head, suppressing a shiver.    “I started seeing him about two years ago, when Sophia and I got involved. He’s really an excellent therapist, smart and insightful, a dead ringer for Gene Wilder. But gradually he became so fed up with my endless frantic rehashing of the same problems, so dispirited by my compulsive tendency to seek advice which I then ignore or declare myself incapable of implementing, so perplexed by my penchant for self-examination without profitable end, and so alarmed by my inability or refusal to restrain my thoughts, which overheat and go nowhere, like bats flapping around a closed attic, that he recently began a session with the simple declaration, ‘I don’t think I’m helping you. I don’t think I’m capable of helping you.’ He apologized and we shook hands; I even tried to cheer him up—he did as good as job as anybody could have…” Oliver smiled wanly and pointed a single finger toward his temple, not pistol-like, but as one might to a curious artifact in a museum: “Sick.” Zusammenfassung Oliver Vice! forty-one! prominent philosopher! scholar! and art collector! is missing and presumed dead! over the side of Queen Mary 2 .Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide! the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas! moving backward through time! tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession! as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family’s rich and bizarre history. At the heart of the ...

Product details

• Authors: Lawrence Douglas
• Publisher: Other press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.08.2011
• EAN: 9781590514153
• ISBN: 978-1-59051-415-3
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 141 mm x 210 mm x 23 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature