The Varieties of Romantic Experience

Zusatztext “Formidable. . . . Cohen balances . . . robust black comedy with moments of quietly profound feeling.” – The Atlantic Monthly “With the perfect pitch of Chekhov satire . . . Cohen can extend a series of metaphors like taffy.” – The New York Times Book Review “Captivating. . . . Memorable. . . .These stories are lean yet rich with the complexity of human experience.” – San José Mercury News “Ruefully funny. . . . The temptation with Cohen is to go on quoting him all day.” – San Francisco Chronicle “A blaze of silken prose . . . eager for life! bursting with emotion! alive to impressions and sensitive to the poise! the sinew and the flavor of the individual phrase.” – The Buffalo News Informationen zum Autor Robert Cohen Klappentext In the title story of this dazzling comic collection! a psychology professor delivers a lecture that segues into a confession of an embarrassing affair. An elderly man worried that his life is going downhill heads to an Indian casino in hopes of some relief. A recently divorced man arrives half an hour late to a bachelor party to find that the frightened groom has sent everyone else home. A reclusive writer visits a small college at the invitation of a former student! and nothing goes right. Funny and generous! these stories are virtuoso performances-moving forays into disconcertingly familiar territory that line the often slippery boundaries between masculinity and humanity in American life. Leseprobe The Next Big Thing If it had been up to Howard, he'd have been there the first day it opened. That was how he saw it: arriving at dawn, glass doors flying open with a sigh, he and Bella strolling arm in arm across the virgin carpet, entering like lords. It would not exactly be a novelty--he'd been down to Atlantic City six or seven times over the years--but possibly it would feel like one. The senses were gullible that way. They received and received and received, and still at the end of the day there was this indiscriminate hunger for more. But it hadn't been up to him, of course. There was a long list of things that weren't up to Howard Udovin at this point. He was sixty-six years old and his business had failed. His stocks were precarious, his best friends were dead, his wife refused to take him seriously, and now there were two balloons in his chest just to keep his heart from collapsing. That was how things were. The balloons he was aware of all the time, two thin, colorless membranes upon which the unruly weight of his life depended. Children's toys. And yet to accommodate their presence required some very adult adjustments. For instance, he'd had to liquidate the inventory. That was an adjustment. He'd had to give up smoking. More adjustment. Tennis. Coffee, scotch, red meat, peanuts, ice cream, shellfish-- okay, a lot of adjustment. Even sex, which thanks to the blood thinners he'd had to give up, at least for a while, even that. Bad luck, yes. A difficult situation to be sure. But where realities were concerned one learned to compromise. What was reality anyway? A leash around your neck that tightened as you got older. As for the sex, he only missed it sometimes. In bed now he just closed his eyes and lay there like a baby. Nothing was asked of him, nothing expected. That was the upside of his condition: how little was expected of him, even by himself. And now, after that incident on the Triborough last March, he'd been relieved of his driver's license too, so if he wanted to go anywhere he had to persuade Bella to take him. This meant waiting until she was in the right mood, which it so happened was practically never. For a woman as moody as Bella, you'd think that every so often the law of averages would prevail and one of her moods would swing into harmony with one of yours. But no. Bella's moods remained obdura...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Robert Cohen
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 08.04.2003
• EAN: 9781400031849
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-3184-9
• Pagine: 224
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 203 mm x 14 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi