How It Ended - New and Collected Stories

Zusatztext 69189573 Informationen zum Autor The author of seven novels and two collections of essays on wine, Jay McInerney is a regular contributor to New York , The New York Times Book Review , The Independent and Corriere della Sera . His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker , Esquire , Playboy , and Granta . In 2006, Time cited his 1984 debut, Bright Lights, Big City , as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century. He was the recipient of the 2006 James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing and his novel The Good Life received the Prix Littéraire at the Deauville Film Festival in 2007. He lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, New York. Klappentext From the writer whose first novel! Bright Lights! Big City ! defined a generation! a collection of twenty-six stories! new and old! that trace the arc of his career for nearly three decades. Leseprobe The Madonna of Turkey SeasonIt came to seem like our own special Thanksgiving tradition-one of us inevitably behaving very badly. The role was passed around the table from year to year like some kind of ceremonial torch, or a seasonal virus: the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the breaking of glass, the hurling of accusations, the final nosedive into the mashed potatoes or the shag carpet. Sometimes it even fell to our guests-friends, girlfriends, wives-the disease apparently communicable. We were three boys who'd lost their mother-four if you counted Dad, five if you counted Brian's best friend, Foster Creel, who'd lost his own mother about the same time we did and always spent Thanksgiving with us-and for many years there had been no one to tell us not to pour that pivotal seventh drink, not to chew with our mouths open, not to say fuck at the dinner table.We kept bringing other women to the table to try to fill the hole, but they were never able to impose peace for long. Sometimes they were catalysts, and occasionally they even initiated the hostilities-perhaps their way of trying to fit in. My father never brought another woman to the table, though many tried to invite themselves, and our young girlfriends remarked on how handsome he was and what a waste it was. “I had my great love, and how could I settle for anything less?” he'd say as he poured himself another Smirnoff and the neighbor widows and divorcées dashed themselves against the windowpanes like birds.Sometimes, although not always, the mayhem boiled up again at Christmas, in the sacramental presence of yet another turkey carcass, with a new brother or guest in the role of incendiary device, though memories of the most recent Thanksgiving were often enough to spare us the spectacle for another eleven months. I suppose we all had a lot to be thankful for, socioeconomically speaking, but for some reason we chose to dwell instead on our grievances. How come you went to Aidan's high school play and not mine? How could you have fucked Karen Watley when you knew I was in love with her? We would arrive Tuesday night from prep school or college, or on Wednesday night from New York, where we were working at a bank while writing a play, or from Vermont, where we were building a log cabin with our roommate from Middlebury before heading up to Stowe at first snow for a season of ski bumming. Dad would take the latter part of the week off, until he retired, which was when things really became dangerous. The riotous foliage that briefly enflamed the chaste New England hills was long gone, leaving the monochromatic landscape of winter: the gray stone walls of the early settlers, the silver trunks of the maples, the white columns of birch.Manly hugs were exchanged at the kitchen door. Cocktails were offered and accepted. Girlfriends and roommates were introduced. The year of the big snow, footwear was scraped on the blade of the cast-iron ...

Relazione

Extremely entertaining. . .  elegant, subtle, shapely and reflective. . . . Perfect specimens. The New York Times

How It Ended reminds us how impressively broad McInerney s scope has been and how confidently he has ranged across wide swaths of our national experience.... He possesses the literary naturalist s full tool kit: empathy and curiosity, a peeled eye and a well-tuned ear, a talent for building narratives at once intimate and expansive, plausible and inventive. Sam Tanenhaus, The New York Times Book Review, front page

A master of short fiction . The characters [McInerney] crafts are so strong, the reader continues to care about them after the last page is turned. The Miami Herald
 
Brim[s] with all the attendant guilt and thrills and self-defeating impulses of an extramarital tryst . Brilliant. The Boston Globe
 
Fresh and smart . Without losing his early jokey way with language or his ironic wit, [McInerney] finds new depths of understanding. The Oregonian
 
McInerney's star burns as bright as ever. Vanity Fair
 
Immediately enveloping . This collection highlights a powerful contemporary American writer. The Plain Dealer

Alongside old hits . . . [How It Ended includes] an impressive selection of new work that touches upon his usual themes: money, marriage, and the social jostling involved in both. . . . McInerney s characters are engaging because they are continually falling into a trap that even their wealth cannot protect them from: They cannot tell the difference between living fully, and living without limits. The Dallas Morning News
 
As this new collection stylishly demonstrates, McInerney writes with elegance and wit. . . . Surprising and affecting. Houston Chronicle
 
[McInerney s] stories are so immediately enveloping and powerful that we don t notice how few words he uses to conjure his rich, complicated characters. . . . How It Ended is more than a victory lap for McInerney. The Plain Dealer
 
Superb examples of the form. Slate
 
Jay McInerney s collection displays his growth as a writer. . . . Heavy on sexual betrayal and social climbing. USA Today
 
[McInerney] is so much fun to read, especially in short story form. The Detroit News
 
They are hyped and hungover, rueful party animals and sapped social climbers, wayward spouses and strangers in the night. . . . Characters in Jay McInerney s How It Ended are fresh, fraught personalities. O, The Oprah Magazine
 
A century from now, cultural historians will plumb the works of Jay McInerney to discern what life was like in the two decades between the explosion of Wall Street wealth and the grim aftermath of 9/11. His keen-eyed depiction of that period is generously displayed in How it Ended. . . . Perceptive and real. BookPage
 
Sure crowd-pleasers. San Francisco Chronicle
 
Sharp and precisely observed. . . . What s impressive is just how good sometimes extraordinarily so McInerney has been. . . . Precision is precisely what separates the short story from the novel.  It s the art of letting the detail stand in for the whole, and this is where many of the stories in How It Ended make the cut as fine examples of their form. The Toronto Star

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Jay McInerney
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 06.04.2010
• EAN: 9780307387950
• ISBN: 978-0-307-38795-0
• Pagine: 416
• Dimensioni: 135 mm x 207 mm x 25 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi