2008, ISBN: 9780664219123

Taschenbuch, Gebundene Ausgabe

Vintage Books. Good. 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2008. 358 pages. text buckled<br>Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bol t from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, hear… Mehr…

Vintage Books. Good. 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2008. 358 pages. text buckled<br>Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bol t from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, heart-wrenching, a nd funny, in the deepest shade of black. Mike Engleby says thing s that others dare not even think. A man devoid of scruple or sel f-pity, he rises without trace in Thatcher's England and scorches through the blandscape of New Labour. In the course of his brie f, incandescent career, he and the reader encounter many famous p eople - actors, writers, politicians, household names - but by fa r the most memorable is Engleby himself. Sebastian Faulks's new novel can be read as a lament for a generation and the country it failed. It is also a meditation on the limits of science, the cu rse of human consciousness and on the lyrics of 1970s' rock music . And beneath this highly disturbing surface lies an unfolding my stery of gripping narrative power. For when one of Mike's contemp oraries unaccountably disappears, the reader has to ask: is even the shameless Engleby capable of telling the whole truth? From t he Hardcover edition. Editorial Reviews Review One of the most impressive novelists of his generation. -Sunday Telegraph The be st novelist of his generation. -Scotsman Faulks is beyond doubt a master. -Financial Times From the Hardcover edition. About th e Author Sebastian Faulks is the author of seven previous novels, including Birdsong (1993), The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), Cha rlotte Gray (1998), On Green Dolphin Street (2001) and Human Trac es (2005). He is also the author of a biographical study, The Fat al Englishman (1996). From the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Re printed by permission. All rights reserved. One My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university. My c ollege was founded in 1662, which means it's viewed here as moder n. Its chapel was designed by Hawksmoor, or possibly Wren; its ga rdens were laid out by someone else whose name is familiar. The c hoir stalls were carved by the only woodcarver you've ever heard of. The captain of the Boat Club won a gold medal at an internati onal games last year. (I think he 's studying physical education. ) The captain of cricket has played for Pakistan, though he talks like the Prince of Wales. The teachers, or 'dons', include three university professors, one of whom was on the radio recently tal king about lizards. He's known as the Iguanodon. Tonight I won't study in my room because there's the weekly meeting of the Folk Club. Almost all the boys in my college go to this, not for the m usic, though it's normally quite good, but because lots of girl s tudents come here for the evening. The only boys who don't go are those with a work compulsion, or the ones who think folk music d ied when Bob Dylan went electric. There's someone I've seen a fe w times, called Jennifer Arkland. I discovered her name because s he stood for election to the committee of a society. On the poste rs, the candidates had small pictures of themselves and, under th eir names and colleges, a few personal details. Hers said: 'Secon d-year History exhibitioner. Previously educated at Lymington Hig h School and Sorbonne. Hobbies: music, dance, film-making, cookin g. Would like to make the society more democratic with more women members and have more outings.' I'd seen her in the tea room of the University Library, where she was usually with two other gir ls from her college, a fat one called Molly and a severe dark one , whose name I hadn't caught. There was often Steve from Christ's or Dave from Jesus sniffing round them. I think I'll join this society of hers. It doesn't matter what it's for because they're all the same. They're all called something Soc, short for Society . Lab Soc, Lit Soc, Geog Soc. There 's probably a knitting group called Sock Soc. I'll find out about Jen Soc, then go along so I can get to know her better. I won a prize to come to my college and it pays my fees; my family's poor. I took a train from schoo l one day after I'd sat the exams and had been called for intervi ew. I must have stayed in London on the way, but I have no memory of it. My memory's odd like that. I'm big on detail, but there a re holes in the fabric. I do remember that I took a bus from the station, though I didn't know then what my college looked like. I went round the whole city and ended up back at the station, havi ng made the round trip. Then I took a taxi and had to borrow some money from the porter to pay for it. I still had a pound note in my wallet for emergencies. They gave me a key to a bedroom; it was in a courtyard that I reached by a tunnel under the road. I i magined what kind of student lived there normally. I pictured som eone called Tony with a beard and a duffel coat. I tried really h ard to like the room and the college that was going to be mine. I imagined bicycling off to lectures in the early morning with my books balanced on a rack over the back wheel. I'd be shouting out to the other guys, 'See you there!' I'd probably smoke a pipe. I 'd also probably have a girlfriend - some quite stern grammar sch ool girl with glasses, who wouldn't be to everyone's taste. In f act, I didn't like the room I was in that night. It was damp, it was small and it felt as though too many people had been through it. It didn't seem old enough; it didn't seem 17th century, or mo dern: it was more like 1955. Also, there was no bathroom. I found one up the stairs. It was very cold and I had to stay dressed un til the bath was run. The water itself was very hot. Everything i n the room and on the stairs smelled slightly of gas, and lino. I slept fine, but I didn't want to have breakfast in the dining h all because of having to talk to the other candidates. I went alo ng the street and found a café and had weak coffee and a sausage roll, which I paid for from my spare pound. I re-entered the coll ege by the main gate. The porter was sullen in his damp lodge wit h a paraffin heater. 'G12, Dr Woodrow's rooms,' he said. I found it all right, and there was another boy waiting outside. He looke d clever. Eventually, the door opened and it was my turn. There were two of them in there: a big schoolmasterly man who showed me to a chair, then sat down at a desk; and a younger, thin man wit h a beard who didn't get up from his armchair. Teachers at my sch ool didn't have beards. 'You wrote well on Shakespeare. Do you v isit the theatre a good deal?' This was the big one talking. It s ounded too much like an ordinary conversation to be an interview. I suspected a trap. I told him there wasn't a theatre where we l ived, in Reading. I was watching him all the time. How grand, to be a Doctor of whatever and to weigh up and decide people 's fut ure. I'd once seen a set of table mats in a shop which had pictur es of men in different academic gowns: Doctor of Divinity, Master of Arts and so on. But this was the first real one I'd seen. He asked me a few more things, none of them interesting. '. . . the poetry of Eliot. Would you care to make a comparison between Eli ot and Lawrence?' This was the younger one, and it was his first contribution. I thought he must be joking. An American banker in terested in the rhythms of the Anglican liturgy and a pitman's so n who wanted to escape from Nottingham, maybe via sex, or by his crude paintings. Compare them? I looked at him carefully, but he showed no sign of humour so I gave an answer about their use of v erse forms, trying to make it sound as though it had been a reaso nable question. He nodded a few times and looked relieved. He did n't follow it up. The big one leafed through my papers again. 'Y our personal report,' he said at last, 'from your teacher . . . D id you have difficulties with him?' I hadn't been aware of any, I said. 'Is there anything that you'd like to ask us about life in college? We try to make everyone feel welcome.' It seemed wro ng not to ask something; it might look as though I didn't care. B ut I couldn't ask any of the things I really wanted to know. In t he silence we heard the college clock chime the halfhour. I felt them both looking at me. Then I felt a trickle of sweat on my spi ne. I hardly ever sweat normally, and it gave me an idea. 'What' s the thing with laundry?' 'What?' said the big one, gruffly. ' Do you have . . . Well, like, washing machines? Is it done centra lly or do I take it somewhere or what?' 'Gerald?' 'I'm not quit e sure,' said the younger one. 'Each undergraduate is assigned a moral tutor,' said the schoolmasterly one. 'A Fellow of the coll ege who can help you with all your personal and health questions. ' 'So he 'd be the one to ask?' 'Yes. Yes, I imagine so.' I th ought that now I'd broken the ice, it might be good to ask anothe r question. 'What about money?' I said. 'What?' 'How much money will I need?' 'I imagine your local authority will provide a gr ant. It's up to you how you spend it. Do you have questions about the work?' 'No. I read the prospectus.' 'Do you find the idea of Chaucer daunting?' 'No, I like Chaucer.' 'Yes, yes, I can se e that from your paper. Well, Mr Engle . . . er . . .' 'Engleby. ' 'Englebury. You can go now, unless . . . Gerald?' 'No, no.' 'Good. So we'll look forward to seeing you next autumn.' I didn' t see how they could let me go without telling me how it had gone . 'Have I won a prize?' I said. 'We shall be writing to your sch ool in due course. When we've completed the interview process. It 's an exceptional year.' I shook his offered hand, waved at the seated one and went out, down the oak stairs. What a pair of frau ds. In the evening I tear a ticket from a book and take it to th e college dining hall, which was designed by Robert Adam. You hav e to buy a book of thirty-five every term; you don't actually hav e to use them, but the cash you pay in advance keeps the kitchen going. I'm wearing a long black gown over my jeans and sweater an d there are candles in sconces on the painted plaster walls. We s tand up when a door behind the top table opens and the Fellows of the college come in to dine. The Master is an oceanographer, who once drew maps of undersea mountain ranges. He knows how Austral ia was once attached to China or how Ghana sweated in the foothil ls of the Andes. I think he imagines that New Zealand once broke free from Germany. The crystal glasses glitter in the candleligh t. They drink wine. We drink water, though you are allowed to ask for beer if you like. Stellings is the only man to do this. 'A pint of ale, please, Robinson,' he says to the stooping butler. ' Beer for you, Mike?' I shake my head. Stellings brews his own be er in a plastic barrel. He calls it SG (short for student's gin: drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence) and once forced me to drink it, even though it made me sick, with its powerful taste o f malt and raw alcohol, which he achieves by doubling the sugar i nput recommended on the side of the kit. There is no bathroom nea r his room, so I had to vomit into a plastic watering can on the landing. I sometimes don't take dinner in the dining hall. I've found some places I like better. One of them is a pub, a walk of ten or fifteen minutes away, over a green (there are a lot of gre ens or 'pieces' as they call them here), down a side street, up a back street. The beer there tastes much better than Stellings's homebrew. It's made by a brewery called Greene King. One of the K ing family, they say, is a famous novelist. The lights here are l ow, the floor is made of wooden boards; the other people are not from the university. They are what are called ordinary people, th ough each person is really too specific to be ordinary. It's quit e dark, and people talk softly. Although the barman knows me, he doesn't intrude. I often have a baked potato, or a cheese and ham pie, which is messy to eat because the melted cheese is stringy and there 's so much of it between the layers of filo pastry. I also drink gin and vermouth, mixed. I like red vermouth better th an white. When I've drunk two or three of these, I feel I underst and the world better. At least, I don't mind so much that I don't understand it; I can be tolerant of my ignorance. After three or four, I feel that my ignorance is not only tolerable, but possib ly in some way noble. Other times, I go into the middle of the t own. There's a bright Greek restaurant there, where it's embarras sing to be seen alone - but I like the food: they bring moussaka with rice and with chips and with Greek salad and pitta bread wit h olives and hummus, so if you're hungry it's a good place to go. Sometimes I don't eat for two or three days, so I need to load u p. With this Greek food I drink white wine that tastes of toilet cleaner, and they go together well. I also take drugs. I've trie d most things. My favourite is opium, though I've had it only onc e. It's really hard to get hold of and involves a palaver with a flame and a pipe. I bought it from a boy who got it from a Modern History Fellow in Corpus Christi who had recently been to the Fa r East. The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable. If while you were under its influence someone were to tell you about Zyklon B and your parents dying and life in a dementia ward or Passchendaele, you might be able to understand w hat they meant - but only in a hypothetical sense. You might be i nterested by this idea of 'pain', but in a donnish way. I mean, I 'm 'interested' in the special theory of relativity; the idea tha t there 's a dimension in which space rolls up and time distorts and you come back from a journey younger than you left is certain ly intriguing, but it doesn't have an impact on me, day by day. T hat's what opium does to suffering: makes it of hypothetical inte rest only. I mostly smoke marijuana, which I buy from a boy call ed Glynn Powers. I don't know where Glynn buys it, but he has sev eral kilos of it in the built-in bedside locker in his tiny room in the new Queen Elizabeth block, a short walk beyond Fellows' Pi eces (i.e. grass area reserved to dons)., Vintage Books, 2008, 2.5, Bantam. Good. 4.2 x 0.92 x 6.89 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1977. 564 pages. Text tanned<br>At last, this is your story. You'll rec ognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You'll see how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative change -- to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy's brilliant road map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual changes we go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s -- T he safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniforms and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 30 s -- illusions shaken, it's time to make, break, or deepen life c ommitments. The Forlorn 40s -- Dangerous years when the dreams of youth demand reassessment, men and women switch characteristics, sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity for self-di scovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s -- Best of life f or those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purpose. Edi torial Reviews From the Publisher At last, this is your story. Y ou'll recognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You'll se e how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative chan ge -- to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy's brilliant roa d map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual c hanges we go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s -- The safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniforms and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 30s -- illusions shaken, it's time to make, break, or deep en life commitments. The Forlorn 40s -- Dangerous years when the dreams of youth demand reassessment, men and women switch charact eristics, sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity fo r self-discovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s -- Best of life for those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purp ose. From the Inside Flap At last, this is your story. You'll re cognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You'll see how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative change -- to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy's brilliant road map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual changes w e go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s -- The safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniform s and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 3 0s -- illusions shaken, it's time to make, break, or deepen life commitments. The Forlorn 40s -- Dangerous years when the dreams o f youth demand reassessment, men and women switch characteristics , sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity for self-d iscovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s -- Best of life for those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purpose. Ab out the Author To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com From the Trade P aperback edition. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1. MADNESS AND METHOD without warning, in the middle of my thirties, i had a breakdown of nerve. It never occurred to me that while winging along in my happiest and most productive s tage, all of a sudden simply staying afloat would require a massi ve exertion of will. Or of some power greater than will. I was t alking to a young boy in Northern Ireland where I was on assignme nt for a magazine when a bullet blew his face off. That was how f ast it all changed. We were standing side by side in the sun, rel axed and triumphant after a civil rights march by the Catholics o f Derry. We had been met by soldiers at the barricade; we had vom ited tear gas and dragged those dented by rubber bullets back to safety. Now we were surveying the crowd from a balcony. How do t he paratroopers fire those gas canisters so far? I asked. See th em jammin' their rifle butts against the ground? the boy was sayi ng when the steel slug tore into his mouth and ripped up the brid ge of his nose and left of his face nothing but ground bone meal. My God, I said dumbly, they're real bullets. I tried to think h ow to put his face back together again. Up to that moment in my l ife I thought everything could be mended. Below the balcony, Bri tish armored cars began to plow into the crowd. Paratroopers jack knifed out of them with high-velocity rifles. They sprayed us wit h steel. The boy without a face fell on top of me. An older man, walloped on the back of the neck with a rifle butt, stumbled up the stairs and collapsed upon us. More dazed bodies pressed in un til we were like a human caterpillar, inching on our bellies up t he steps of the exposed outdoor staircase. Can't we get into som ebody's house! I shouted. We crawled up eight floors but all the doors to the flats were bolted. Someone would have to crawl out o n the balcony in open fire to bang on the nearest door. Another b oy howled from below: Jesus, I'm hit! His voice propelled me acro ss the balcony, trembling but still insulated by some soft-walled childhood sac that I thought provided for my own indestructibili ty. A moment later, a bullet passed a few feet in front of my nos e. I hurled myself against the nearest door and we were all taken in. The closets of the flat were already filled with mothers an d their clinging children. For nearly an hour the bullets kept co ming. From the window I saw three boys rise from behind a barrica de to make a run for it. They were cut down like dummies in a sho oting gallery. So was the priest who followed them, waving a whit e handkerchief, and the old man who bent to say a prayer over the m. A wounded man we had dragged upstairs asked if anyone had seen his younger brother. Shot dead, was the report. Something like this had happened to my own brother in Vietnam. But the funeral t ook place in the bland Connecticut country- side, and I was a few years younger. So neatly had the honor guard tricornered the vic tim's flag, it looked like a souvenir sofa pillow. People had pat ted my hands and said, We know how you must feel. It made me thin k of the strangers who were always confiding in me that they were scheduled for surgery or taking it easy after a heart attack. Al l I had for their pain were the same words: I know how you must f eel. I had known nothing of the sort. After the surprise massacr e, I was one among trapped thousands cringing in the paper-walled bungalows of the Catholic ghetto. All exits from the city were s ealed. Waiting was the only occupation. Waiting for the British a rmy to perform a house-to-house search. What will you do if the soldiers come in here firing? I asked the old woman who was harbo ring me. Lie on me stomach! she said. Another woman was using t he telephone to confirm the names of the dead. Once upon a time I was a Protestant of strong faith; I tried to pray. But that sill y game of childhood kept running through my mind . . . if you had one wish in the whole world . . . I decided to call my love. He would say the magic words to make the danger go away. Hi! How ar e you? His voice was absurdly breezy; he was in bed in New York. I'm alive. Good, how's the story coming? I almost wasn't alive . Thirteen people were murdered here today. Hold on. CBS News is talking about Londonderry right now- It's called Bloody Sunday. Can you speak up? It's not over. A mother of fourteen children was just run down by an armored car. Now look, you don't have t o get in the front lines. You're doing a story on Irish women, re member that. Just stick with the women and stay out of trouble. O kay, honey? From the moment I hung up on that nonconversation, m y head went numb. My scalp shrank. Some dark switch was thrown, a nd a series of weights began to roll across my brain like steel b alls. I had squandered my one wish to be saved. The world was neg ligent. Thirteen could perish, or thirteen thousand, I could peri sh, and tomorrow it would all be beside the point. As I joined t he people lying on their stomachs, a powerful idea took hold: No one is with me. No one can keep me safe. There is no one who won' t ever leave me alone. I had a headache for a year. When I flew home from Ireland, I couldn't write the story, could not confron t the fact of my own mortality. In the end, I dragged out some wo rds and made the deadline but at an ugly price. My short temper l engthened into diatribes against the people closest to me, drivin g away the only sources of support who might have helped me fight my demons. I broke off with the man who had been sharing my life for four years, fired my secretary, lost my housekeeper, and fou nd myself alone with my daughter Maura, marking time. As spring came, I hardly knew myself. The rootlessness that had been such a joy in my early thirties, allowing me to burst the ropes of old roles, to be reckless and selfish and focused on stretching my ne wfound dream, to roam the world on assignments and then to stay u p all night typing on caffeine and nicotine-all at once that didn 't work anymore. Some intruder shook me by the psyche and shoute d: Take stock! Half your life has been spent. What about the part of you that wants a home and talks about a second child? Before I could answer, the intruder pointed to something else I had post poned: What about the side of you that wants to contribute to the world? Words, books, demonstrations, donations-is this enough? Y ou have been a performer, not a full participant. And now you are 35. To be confronted for the first time with the arithmetic of life was, quite simply, terrifying. It is unusual to find yourse lf in the middle of a shooting war, but many of life's accidents can have a similar effect. You play tennis twice a week with a dy namic 38-year-old businessman. In the locker room a silent clot t hrottles an artery and before he can call for help, a large part of his heart muscle has been strangled. His attack touches his wi fe, his business associates, and all his friends of a similar age , including you. Or a distant phone call notifies you that your father or mother has been hospitalized. You carry with you to the bedside a picture of the dynamo you last saw, clearing land or d ashing off to the League of Women Voters. In the hospital you see that this dynamo has passed, all at once and incontrovertibly, i nto the twilight of ill health and helplessness. As we reach mid life in the middle thirties or early forties, we become susceptib le to the idea of our own perishability. If an accident that inte rrupts our life occurs at this time, our fears of mortality are h eightened. We are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to purs ue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties. Nor are we anticipati ng a major upheaval of the roles and rules that may have comforta bly defined us in the first half of life, but that must be reorde red around a core of strongly felt personal values in the second. In normal circumstances, without the blow of a life accident, t hese issues affiliated with midlife are revealed over a period of years. We have time to adjust. But when they are thrust on us al l at once, we cannot immediately accept them. The downside of lif e comes too hard and fast to incorporate. In my case, the unanti cipated brush with death in Ireland brought the underlying issues of midlife forward in full force. If i tell you about the week, six months later, if I report the observable facts-while dashing out the door to catch a plane to Florida to cover the Democratic National Convention, a healthy, divorced career mother finds one of her pet lovebirds dead and bursts into uncontrollable tears-y ou might say, This woman was cracking up. Which is precisely what I began to think. I took the aisle seat in the tail of the plan e so that when we crashed, I would be the last one to see the gro und. Flying had always been a joy to me. Plucky one that I was a t 30, I had taken to parachuting out of bush planes for sport. It was different now. Whenever I went near a plane I saw a balcony in Northern Ireland. In six months the fear of airplanes had blos somed into a phobia. Every news photo of a crash drew my attentio n. I would study the pictures in morbid detail. The plan... ., Bantam, 1977, 2.5, Garden City NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958. Wraps have light wear. No markings in text. Stamps have been placed on pages.. Soft Cover - Staple Bound. Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958, 2.5, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gray boards. 1st edition, 1987. Former library book. No jacket. Light wear, firmly bound. Clean pages with no markings in the text. Good condition., Westminster Press, 1987, 2.5<

2008, ISBN: 9780664219123

Taschenbuch, Gebundene Ausgabe

Vintage Books. Good. 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2008. 358 pages. text buckled<br>Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bol t from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, hear… Mehr…

Vintage Books. Good. 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2008. 358 pages. text buckled<br>Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bol t from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, heart-wrenching, a nd funny, in the deepest shade of black. Mike Engleby says thing s that others dare not even think. A man devoid of scruple or sel f-pity, he rises without trace in Thatcher's England and scorches through the blandscape of New Labour. In the course of his brie f, incandescent career, he and the reader encounter many famous p eople - actors, writers, politicians, household names - but by fa r the most memorable is Engleby himself. Sebastian Faulks's new novel can be read as a lament for a generation and the country it failed. It is also a meditation on the limits of science, the cu rse of human consciousness and on the lyrics of 1970s' rock music . And beneath this highly disturbing surface lies an unfolding my stery of gripping narrative power. For when one of Mike's contemp oraries unaccountably disappears, the reader has to ask: is even the shameless Engleby capable of telling the whole truth? From t he Hardcover edition. Editorial Reviews Review One of the most impressive novelists of his generation. -Sunday Telegraph The be st novelist of his generation. -Scotsman Faulks is beyond doubt a master. -Financial Times From the Hardcover edition. About th e Author Sebastian Faulks is the author of seven previous novels, including Birdsong (1993), The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), Cha rlotte Gray (1998), On Green Dolphin Street (2001) and Human Trac es (2005). He is also the author of a biographical study, The Fat al Englishman (1996). From the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Re printed by permission. All rights reserved. One My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university. My c ollege was founded in 1662, which means it's viewed here as moder n. Its chapel was designed by Hawksmoor, or possibly Wren; its ga rdens were laid out by someone else whose name is familiar. The c hoir stalls were carved by the only woodcarver you've ever heard of. The captain of the Boat Club won a gold medal at an internati onal games last year. (I think he 's studying physical education. ) The captain of cricket has played for Pakistan, though he talks like the Prince of Wales. The teachers, or 'dons', include three university professors, one of whom was on the radio recently tal king about lizards. He's known as the Iguanodon. Tonight I won't study in my room because there's the weekly meeting of the Folk Club. Almost all the boys in my college go to this, not for the m usic, though it's normally quite good, but because lots of girl s tudents come here for the evening. The only boys who don't go are those with a work compulsion, or the ones who think folk music d ied when Bob Dylan went electric. There's someone I've seen a fe w times, called Jennifer Arkland. I discovered her name because s he stood for election to the committee of a society. On the poste rs, the candidates had small pictures of themselves and, under th eir names and colleges, a few personal details. Hers said: 'Secon d-year History exhibitioner. Previously educated at Lymington Hig h School and Sorbonne. Hobbies: music, dance, film-making, cookin g. Would like to make the society more democratic with more women members and have more outings.' I'd seen her in the tea room of the University Library, where she was usually with two other gir ls from her college, a fat one called Molly and a severe dark one , whose name I hadn't caught. There was often Steve from Christ's or Dave from Jesus sniffing round them. I think I'll join this society of hers. It doesn't matter what it's for because they're all the same. They're all called something Soc, short for Society . Lab Soc, Lit Soc, Geog Soc. There 's probably a knitting group called Sock Soc. I'll find out about Jen Soc, then go along so I can get to know her better. I won a prize to come to my college and it pays my fees; my family's poor. I took a train from schoo l one day after I'd sat the exams and had been called for intervi ew. I must have stayed in London on the way, but I have no memory of it. My memory's odd like that. I'm big on detail, but there a re holes in the fabric. I do remember that I took a bus from the station, though I didn't know then what my college looked like. I went round the whole city and ended up back at the station, havi ng made the round trip. Then I took a taxi and had to borrow some money from the porter to pay for it. I still had a pound note in my wallet for emergencies. They gave me a key to a bedroom; it was in a courtyard that I reached by a tunnel under the road. I i magined what kind of student lived there normally. I pictured som eone called Tony with a beard and a duffel coat. I tried really h ard to like the room and the college that was going to be mine. I imagined bicycling off to lectures in the early morning with my books balanced on a rack over the back wheel. I'd be shouting out to the other guys, 'See you there!' I'd probably smoke a pipe. I 'd also probably have a girlfriend - some quite stern grammar sch ool girl with glasses, who wouldn't be to everyone's taste. In f act, I didn't like the room I was in that night. It was damp, it was small and it felt as though too many people had been through it. It didn't seem old enough; it didn't seem 17th century, or mo dern: it was more like 1955. Also, there was no bathroom. I found one up the stairs. It was very cold and I had to stay dressed un til the bath was run. The water itself was very hot. Everything i n the room and on the stairs smelled slightly of gas, and lino. I slept fine, but I didn't want to have breakfast in the dining h all because of having to talk to the other candidates. I went alo ng the street and found a café and had weak coffee and a sausage roll, which I paid for from my spare pound. I re-entered the coll ege by the main gate. The porter was sullen in his damp lodge wit h a paraffin heater. 'G12, Dr Woodrow's rooms,' he said. I found it all right, and there was another boy waiting outside. He looke d clever. Eventually, the door opened and it was my turn. There were two of them in there: a big schoolmasterly man who showed me to a chair, then sat down at a desk; and a younger, thin man wit h a beard who didn't get up from his armchair. Teachers at my sch ool didn't have beards. 'You wrote well on Shakespeare. Do you v isit the theatre a good deal?' This was the big one talking. It s ounded too much like an ordinary conversation to be an interview. I suspected a trap. I told him there wasn't a theatre where we l ived, in Reading. I was watching him all the time. How grand, to be a Doctor of whatever and to weigh up and decide people 's fut ure. I'd once seen a set of table mats in a shop which had pictur es of men in different academic gowns: Doctor of Divinity, Master of Arts and so on. But this was the first real one I'd seen. He asked me a few more things, none of them interesting. '. . . the poetry of Eliot. Would you care to make a comparison between Eli ot and Lawrence?' This was the younger one, and it was his first contribution. I thought he must be joking. An American banker in terested in the rhythms of the Anglican liturgy and a pitman's so n who wanted to escape from Nottingham, maybe via sex, or by his crude paintings. Compare them? I looked at him carefully, but he showed no sign of humour so I gave an answer about their use of v erse forms, trying to make it sound as though it had been a reaso nable question. He nodded a few times and looked relieved. He did n't follow it up. The big one leafed through my papers again. 'Y our personal report,' he said at last, 'from your teacher . . . D id you have difficulties with him?' I hadn't been aware of any, I said. 'Is there anything that you'd like to ask us about life in college? We try to make everyone feel welcome.' It seemed wro ng not to ask something; it might look as though I didn't care. B ut I couldn't ask any of the things I really wanted to know. In t he silence we heard the college clock chime the halfhour. I felt them both looking at me. Then I felt a trickle of sweat on my spi ne. I hardly ever sweat normally, and it gave me an idea. 'What' s the thing with laundry?' 'What?' said the big one, gruffly. ' Do you have . . . Well, like, washing machines? Is it done centra lly or do I take it somewhere or what?' 'Gerald?' 'I'm not quit e sure,' said the younger one. 'Each undergraduate is assigned a moral tutor,' said the schoolmasterly one. 'A Fellow of the coll ege who can help you with all your personal and health questions. ' 'So he 'd be the one to ask?' 'Yes. Yes, I imagine so.' I th ought that now I'd broken the ice, it might be good to ask anothe r question. 'What about money?' I said. 'What?' 'How much money will I need?' 'I imagine your local authority will provide a gr ant. It's up to you how you spend it. Do you have questions about the work?' 'No. I read the prospectus.' 'Do you find the idea of Chaucer daunting?' 'No, I like Chaucer.' 'Yes, yes, I can se e that from your paper. Well, Mr Engle . . . er . . .' 'Engleby. ' 'Englebury. You can go now, unless . . . Gerald?' 'No, no.' 'Good. So we'll look forward to seeing you next autumn.' I didn' t see how they could let me go without telling me how it had gone . 'Have I won a prize?' I said. 'We shall be writing to your sch ool in due course. When we've completed the interview process. It 's an exceptional year.' I shook his offered hand, waved at the seated one and went out, down the oak stairs. What a pair of frau ds. In the evening I tear a ticket from a book and take it to th e college dining hall, which was designed by Robert Adam. You hav e to buy a book of thirty-five every term; you don't actually hav e to use them, but the cash you pay in advance keeps the kitchen going. I'm wearing a long black gown over my jeans and sweater an d there are candles in sconces on the painted plaster walls. We s tand up when a door behind the top table opens and the Fellows of the college come in to dine. The Master is an oceanographer, who once drew maps of undersea mountain ranges. He knows how Austral ia was once attached to China or how Ghana sweated in the foothil ls of the Andes. I think he imagines that New Zealand once broke free from Germany. The crystal glasses glitter in the candleligh t. They drink wine. We drink water, though you are allowed to ask for beer if you like. Stellings is the only man to do this. 'A pint of ale, please, Robinson,' he says to the stooping butler. ' Beer for you, Mike?' I shake my head. Stellings brews his own be er in a plastic barrel. He calls it SG (short for student's gin: drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence) and once forced me to drink it, even though it made me sick, with its powerful taste o f malt and raw alcohol, which he achieves by doubling the sugar i nput recommended on the side of the kit. There is no bathroom nea r his room, so I had to vomit into a plastic watering can on the landing. I sometimes don't take dinner in the dining hall. I've found some places I like better. One of them is a pub, a walk of ten or fifteen minutes away, over a green (there are a lot of gre ens or 'pieces' as they call them here), down a side street, up a back street. The beer there tastes much better than Stellings's homebrew. It's made by a brewery called Greene King. One of the K ing family, they say, is a famous novelist. The lights here are l ow, the floor is made of wooden boards; the other people are not from the university. They are what are called ordinary people, th ough each person is really too specific to be ordinary. It's quit e dark, and people talk softly. Although the barman knows me, he doesn't intrude. I often have a baked potato, or a cheese and ham pie, which is messy to eat because the melted cheese is stringy and there 's so much of it between the layers of filo pastry. I also drink gin and vermouth, mixed. I like red vermouth better th an white. When I've drunk two or three of these, I feel I underst and the world better. At least, I don't mind so much that I don't understand it; I can be tolerant of my ignorance. After three or four, I feel that my ignorance is not only tolerable, but possib ly in some way noble. Other times, I go into the middle of the t own. There's a bright Greek restaurant there, where it's embarras sing to be seen alone - but I like the food: they bring moussaka with rice and with chips and with Greek salad and pitta bread wit h olives and hummus, so if you're hungry it's a good place to go. Sometimes I don't eat for two or three days, so I need to load u p. With this Greek food I drink white wine that tastes of toilet cleaner, and they go together well. I also take drugs. I've trie d most things. My favourite is opium, though I've had it only onc e. It's really hard to get hold of and involves a palaver with a flame and a pipe. I bought it from a boy who got it from a Modern History Fellow in Corpus Christi who had recently been to the Fa r East. The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable. If while you were under its influence someone were to tell you about Zyklon B and your parents dying and life in a dementia ward or Passchendaele, you might be able to understand w hat they meant - but only in a hypothetical sense. You might be i nterested by this idea of 'pain', but in a donnish way. I mean, I 'm 'interested' in the special theory of relativity; the idea tha t there 's a dimension in which space rolls up and time distorts and you come back from a journey younger than you left is certain ly intriguing, but it doesn't have an impact on me, day by day. T hat's what opium does to suffering: makes it of hypothetical inte rest only. I mostly smoke marijuana, which I buy from a boy call ed Glynn Powers. I don't know where Glynn buys it, but he has sev eral kilos of it in the built-in bedside locker in his tiny room in the new Queen Elizabeth block, a short walk beyond Fellows' Pi eces (i.e. grass area reserved to dons)., Vintage Books, 2008, 2.5, Bantam. Good. 4.2 x 0.92 x 6.89 inches. Mass Market Paperback. 1977. 564 pages. Text tanned<br>At last, this is your story. You'll rec ognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You'll see how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative change -- to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy's brilliant road map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual changes we go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s -- T he safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniforms and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 30 s -- illusions shaken, it's time to make, break, or deepen life c ommitments. The Forlorn 40s -- Dangerous years when the dreams of youth demand reassessment, men and women switch characteristics, sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity for self-di scovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s -- Best of life f or those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purpose. Edi torial Reviews From the Publisher At last, this is your story. Y ou'll recognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You'll se e how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative chan ge -- to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy's brilliant roa d map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual c hanges we go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s -- The safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniforms and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 30s -- illusions shaken, it's time to make, break, or deep en life commitments. The Forlorn 40s -- Dangerous years when the dreams of youth demand reassessment, men and women switch charact eristics, sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity fo r self-discovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s -- Best of life for those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purp ose. From the Inside Flap At last, this is your story. You'll re cognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You'll see how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative change -- to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy's brilliant road map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual changes w e go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s -- The safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniform s and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 3 0s -- illusions shaken, it's time to make, break, or deepen life commitments. The Forlorn 40s -- Dangerous years when the dreams o f youth demand reassessment, men and women switch characteristics , sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity for self-d iscovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s -- Best of life for those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purpose. Ab out the Author To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com From the Trade P aperback edition. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1. MADNESS AND METHOD without warning, in the middle of my thirties, i had a breakdown of nerve. It never occurred to me that while winging along in my happiest and most productive s tage, all of a sudden simply staying afloat would require a massi ve exertion of will. Or of some power greater than will. I was t alking to a young boy in Northern Ireland where I was on assignme nt for a magazine when a bullet blew his face off. That was how f ast it all changed. We were standing side by side in the sun, rel axed and triumphant after a civil rights march by the Catholics o f Derry. We had been met by soldiers at the barricade; we had vom ited tear gas and dragged those dented by rubber bullets back to safety. Now we were surveying the crowd from a balcony. How do t he paratroopers fire those gas canisters so far? I asked. See th em jammin' their rifle butts against the ground? the boy was sayi ng when the steel slug tore into his mouth and ripped up the brid ge of his nose and left of his face nothing but ground bone meal. My God, I said dumbly, they're real bullets. I tried to think h ow to put his face back together again. Up to that moment in my l ife I thought everything could be mended. Below the balcony, Bri tish armored cars began to plow into the crowd. Paratroopers jack knifed out of them with high-velocity rifles. They sprayed us wit h steel. The boy without a face fell on top of me. An older man, walloped on the back of the neck with a rifle butt, stumbled up the stairs and collapsed upon us. More dazed bodies pressed in un til we were like a human caterpillar, inching on our bellies up t he steps of the exposed outdoor staircase. Can't we get into som ebody's house! I shouted. We crawled up eight floors but all the doors to the flats were bolted. Someone would have to crawl out o n the balcony in open fire to bang on the nearest door. Another b oy howled from below: Jesus, I'm hit! His voice propelled me acro ss the balcony, trembling but still insulated by some soft-walled childhood sac that I thought provided for my own indestructibili ty. A moment later, a bullet passed a few feet in front of my nos e. I hurled myself against the nearest door and we were all taken in. The closets of the flat were already filled with mothers an d their clinging children. For nearly an hour the bullets kept co ming. From the window I saw three boys rise from behind a barrica de to make a run for it. They were cut down like dummies in a sho oting gallery. So was the priest who followed them, waving a whit e handkerchief, and the old man who bent to say a prayer over the m. A wounded man we had dragged upstairs asked if anyone had seen his younger brother. Shot dead, was the report. Something like this had happened to my own brother in Vietnam. But the funeral t ook place in the bland Connecticut country- side, and I was a few years younger. So neatly had the honor guard tricornered the vic tim's flag, it looked like a souvenir sofa pillow. People had pat ted my hands and said, We know how you must feel. It made me thin k of the strangers who were always confiding in me that they were scheduled for surgery or taking it easy after a heart attack. Al l I had for their pain were the same words: I know how you must f eel. I had known nothing of the sort. After the surprise massacr e, I was one among trapped thousands cringing in the paper-walled bungalows of the Catholic ghetto. All exits from the city were s ealed. Waiting was the only occupation. Waiting for the British a rmy to perform a house-to-house search. What will you do if the soldiers come in here firing? I asked the old woman who was harbo ring me. Lie on me stomach! she said. Another woman was using t he telephone to confirm the names of the dead. Once upon a time I was a Protestant of strong faith; I tried to pray. But that sill y game of childhood kept running through my mind . . . if you had one wish in the whole world . . . I decided to call my love. He would say the magic words to make the danger go away. Hi! How ar e you? His voice was absurdly breezy; he was in bed in New York. I'm alive. Good, how's the story coming? I almost wasn't alive . Thirteen people were murdered here today. Hold on. CBS News is talking about Londonderry right now- It's called Bloody Sunday. Can you speak up? It's not over. A mother of fourteen children was just run down by an armored car. Now look, you don't have t o get in the front lines. You're doing a story on Irish women, re member that. Just stick with the women and stay out of trouble. O kay, honey? From the moment I hung up on that nonconversation, m y head went numb. My scalp shrank. Some dark switch was thrown, a nd a series of weights began to roll across my brain like steel b alls. I had squandered my one wish to be saved. The world was neg ligent. Thirteen could perish, or thirteen thousand, I could peri sh, and tomorrow it would all be beside the point. As I joined t he people lying on their stomachs, a powerful idea took hold: No one is with me. No one can keep me safe. There is no one who won' t ever leave me alone. I had a headache for a year. When I flew home from Ireland, I couldn't write the story, could not confron t the fact of my own mortality. In the end, I dragged out some wo rds and made the deadline but at an ugly price. My short temper l engthened into diatribes against the people closest to me, drivin g away the only sources of support who might have helped me fight my demons. I broke off with the man who had been sharing my life for four years, fired my secretary, lost my housekeeper, and fou nd myself alone with my daughter Maura, marking time. As spring came, I hardly knew myself. The rootlessness that had been such a joy in my early thirties, allowing me to burst the ropes of old roles, to be reckless and selfish and focused on stretching my ne wfound dream, to roam the world on assignments and then to stay u p all night typing on caffeine and nicotine-all at once that didn 't work anymore. Some intruder shook me by the psyche and shoute d: Take stock! Half your life has been spent. What about the part of you that wants a home and talks about a second child? Before I could answer, the intruder pointed to something else I had post poned: What about the side of you that wants to contribute to the world? Words, books, demonstrations, donations-is this enough? Y ou have been a performer, not a full participant. And now you are 35. To be confronted for the first time with the arithmetic of life was, quite simply, terrifying. It is unusual to find yourse lf in the middle of a shooting war, but many of life's accidents can have a similar effect. You play tennis twice a week with a dy namic 38-year-old businessman. In the locker room a silent clot t hrottles an artery and before he can call for help, a large part of his heart muscle has been strangled. His attack touches his wi fe, his business associates, and all his friends of a similar age , including you. Or a distant phone call notifies you that your father or mother has been hospitalized. You carry with you to the bedside a picture of the dynamo you last saw, clearing land or d ashing off to the League of Women Voters. In the hospital you see that this dynamo has passed, all at once and incontrovertibly, i nto the twilight of ill health and helplessness. As we reach mid life in the middle thirties or early forties, we become susceptib le to the idea of our own perishability. If an accident that inte rrupts our life occurs at this time, our fears of mortality are h eightened. We are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to purs ue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties. Nor are we anticipati ng a major upheaval of the roles and rules that may have comforta bly defined us in the first half of life, but that must be reorde red around a core of strongly felt personal values in the second. In normal circumstances, without the blow of a life accident, t hese issues affiliated with midlife are revealed over a period of years. We have time to adjust. But when they are thrust on us al l at once, we cannot immediately accept them. The downside of lif e comes too hard and fast to incorporate. In my case, the unanti cipated brush with death in Ireland brought the underlying issues of midlife forward in full force. If i tell you about the week, six months later, if I report the observable facts-while dashing out the door to catch a plane to Florida to cover the Democratic National Convention, a healthy, divorced career mother finds one of her pet lovebirds dead and bursts into uncontrollable tears-y ou might say, This woman was cracking up. Which is precisely what I began to think. I took the aisle seat in the tail of the plan e so that when we crashed, I would be the last one to see the gro und. Flying had always been a joy to me. Plucky one that I was a t 30, I had taken to parachuting out of bush planes for sport. It was different now. Whenever I went near a plane I saw a balcony in Northern Ireland. In six months the fear of airplanes had blos somed into a phobia. Every news photo of a crash drew my attentio n. I would study the pictures in morbid detail. The plan... ., Bantam, 1977, 2.5, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gray boards. 1st edition, 1987. Former library book. No jacket. Light wear, firmly bound. Clean pages with no markings in the text. Good condition., Westminster Press, 1987, 2.5<

1987, ISBN: 9780664219123

Taschenbuch, Gebundene Ausgabe

Garden City NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958. Wraps have light wear. No markings in text. Stamps have been placed on pages.. Soft Cover - Staple Bound. Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - … Mehr…

Garden City NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958. Wraps have light wear. No markings in text. Stamps have been placed on pages.. Soft Cover - Staple Bound. Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958, 2.5, Garden City NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1961. Wraps have tiny amount of insect nibbles. No markings in text. Stamps still in sheets.. Soft Cover - Staple Bound. Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1961, 2.5, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gray boards. 1st edition, 1987. Former library book. No jacket. Light wear, firmly bound. Clean pages with no markings in the text. Good condition., Westminster Press, 1987, 2.5<

1987, ISBN: 9780664219123

Taschenbuch, Gebundene Ausgabe

Garden City NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958. Wraps have light wear. No markings in text. Stamps have been placed on pages.. Soft Cover - Staple Bound. Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - … Mehr…

Garden City NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958. Wraps have light wear. No markings in text. Stamps have been placed on pages.. Soft Cover - Staple Bound. Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1958, 2.5, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gray boards. 1st edition, 1987. Former library book. No jacket. Light wear, firmly bound. Clean pages with no markings in the text. Good condition., Westminster Press, 1987, 2.5<

1987, ISBN: 9780664219123

Gebundene Ausgabe

Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gray boards. 1st edition, 1987. Former library book. No jack… Mehr…

Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gray boards. 1st edition, 1987. Former library book. No jacket. Light wear, firmly bound. Clean pages with no markings in the text. Good condition., Westminster Press, 1987, 2.5<