Reynolds Price – författare

In this stunning and fully independent conclusion to A Great Circle, Reynolds Price tells the complex, moving story of a man's return home to die of AIDS and of the unexpected effect that his arrival -- and his death -- has on his family. Wade Mayfield's parents are separated, but for the remaining months of his life they and their friends come together to care for Wade with the love they can muster. They are unprepared, however, for the astonishing mystery Wade has prepared to reveal once he is gone -- a mystery that initiates the possible reunion of his parents and promises to continue the proud traditions of a complex, multiracial family.

Reynolds Price pays tribute to his literary love of translation in this adaptation of the Gospels of Mark and John, in addition to a gospel written by the esteemed novelist himself.Esteemed novelist, dramatist, scholar, essayist, and poet, Reynolds Price turns his attention back to a literary love he had discovered earlier in his career: translation. But for Reynolds that didn’t mean abandoning his passion for writing original work; powerful and imaginative, Three Gospels offers eloquent translations of the Gospels of Mark and John as well as a gospel never before seen—an original one written by Price himself. These stunning triumphs of imagination tell and retell some of the most iconic ancient stories in Price’s unparalleled literary voice.

Born in rural North Carolina in 1900 and telling her tale in the present, Roxanna begins her story on her twentieth birthday - a day that introduces her to the harsh realities of adulthood and changes the course of her life forever. From this day on, Roxanna is quick to share with the reader the intimate details of ninety years of life. While she barely leaves the small town of her youth, Roxanna's vision of the world is shaped by intense passions and loyalties and the certain tragedies of a life long lived. Fiercely loyal to all she loves yet prone to the chill of melancholy, Roxanna proves herself to be a great story teller. Her beguiling tale is one that boldly reflects the high and low moments in the development of the modern South, as well as illustrating one woman's inner strength through life's tall griefs and quick elations.

Does God Exist and Does He Care? In April 1997 Reynolds Price received an eloquent letter from a reader of his cancer memoir, A Whole New Life. The correspondent, a young medical student diagnosed with cancer himself and facing his own mortality, asked these difficultQuestions. The two began a long-distance correspondence, culminating in Price's thoughtful response, originally delivered as the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at Auburn Theological Seminary, and now expanded onto the printed page as Letter to a Man in the Fire. Harvesting a variety of sources -- diverse religious traditions, classical and modern texts, and a lifetime of personal experiences, interactions, and spiritual encounters -- Price meditates on God's participation in our fate. With candor and sympathy, he offers the reader such a rich variety of tools to explore these questions as to place this work in the company of other great tetsaments of faith from St. Augustine to C. S. Lewis. Letter to a Man in the Fire moves as much as it educates. It is a rare combination of deep erudition, vivid prose, and profound humanity.

"This starts with the happiest I ever was, though it brought down suffering on everybody near me. Short as it lasted and long ago, I've never laid it all out yet, not start to finish. But if I try and half succeed, you may wind up understanding things, choosing a better road for yourself and maybe not blaming the dead past but living for the here and now, each day a clean page." April 28, 1956, was the day Blue Calhoun met a sixteen-year-old girl named Luna. And for the next three decades, their love has borne consequences of the most shattering -- and ultimately, perhaps healing -- kind for everyone they know. As Blue recounts the years and their events for us -- fervently, tenderly, knowing full well his own deep responsibility -- we are made witnesses to a story of classic dimensions, a story of love and suffering, family and friendship, death and redemption.

A collection of long stories sets some of the author's most unforgettable characters against a series of American landscapes, including World War II and football.

In the fall of 1993, Alice Winkler of National Public Radio''s "Morning Edition" asked Reynolds Price to write a short story for a Christmas morning broadcast. This assignment would result in NPR''s inviting Price to join its varied group of commentators on "All Things Considered." The laws of radio require a concision that has become a welcome new discipline for Price; and here are all the personal essays which he has broadcast since July 25, 1995. Whether recounting events from his past, examining the details of his current experience as a writer, teacher, traveler, and general witness of the world, Price demonstrates in his direct prose that a writer can instantly connect with his audience. He discusses a few predictable topics -- family, the poisonous mysteries of racial intolerance, and faith -- but he also deals with new matters: capital punishment, Gone With the Wind, his adventures while navigating an immensely inaccessible America in a wheelchair; and he provides a memorable piece on childlessness. Throughout, Price never loses sight of the origin of either the word or the spirit of the essay -- the French word connotes a try, an attempt -- and each piece here is a well-formed, revealing, often amusing and refreshing foray into a moment unlike any we''ve encountered in other forms from him. We''re unlikely to read more thought-provoking work from a commentator for a great time to come.

Having given voice in previous novels to the extraordinary Kate Vaiden, Blue Calhoun, and Roxanna Slade, Reynolds Price -- one of America''s most respected men of letters -- adds Noble Norfleet to his gallery of compelling portraits. A few days before Noble Norfleet''s eighteenth birthday, his family suffers a violent catastrophe. The sole survivor, Noble throws himself into a reckless affair with his Spanish teacher, whose husband is fighting in Vietnam. When Noble graduates, he enlists as well and, while serving as an army medic, experiences a mysterious vision that seems tied to uncanny events in his recent past. Not until thirty years later -- after a life short on friends and troubled by a compulsion to worship women''s bodies -- is Noble challenged to rethink the decades-old mystery of his family tragedy. Faced with an ominous choice, Noble finally comes to accept an enormous duty he''s long tried to ignore. Soon, perhaps for the first time, his future seems hopeful.

For more than four decades, Reynolds Price has been one of America's most distinguished writers, with a career remarkable both for its virtuosity and for the variety of literary forms embraced. Though perhaps best known as a novelist and poet, Price here likewise demonstrates his mastery of the short story. These fifty stories include two early collections -- The Names and Faces of Heroes and Permanent Errors -- as well as more than two dozen stories that are gathered only in The Collected Stories. In his introduction, the author explains how, at one point, he wrote no stories for almost twenty years. "But," he writes, "once I needed -- for unknown reasons in a new and radically altered life -- to return to the story, it opened before me like a new chance." Indeed, chances abound here in stories that will astonish even Price's most devoted readers as they travel through not only the author's native North Carolina but also Jerusalem, the American Southwest, Europe, and Asia.

Reynolds Price, one of America''s most distinguished and honored writers, has produced such masterpieces as Noble Norfleet, Roxanna Slade, and Kate Vaiden, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now in The Good Priest''s Son, his fourteenth novel and thirty-sixth book, Price gives us another penetrating study -- full-length portraits of five arresting characters. On September 11, 2001, Mabry Kincaid -- a fiftyish art conservator -- is flying home after a much-needed rest in Rome and Paris. Halfway across the Atlantic, his plane is diverted from New York to Nova Scotia. Two days later, when the United States has recovered sufficiently from the attack on the World Trade Center, Mabry discovers that his downtown New York loft is uninhabitable. He flies south to North Carolina instead to visit his aged father. A widowed Episcopal priest, Tasker Kincaid has been injured in a recent fall and is cared for by live-in Audrey Thornton, an African-American divinity student at Duke University, and her grown son, Marcus, an ambitious painter. During a week in North Carolina -- with help from his cantankerous father, from Audrey and Marcus and from Gwyn Williams, an old flame -- Mabry is compelled to explore his tormented relationship with his father and with a world that still harbors much that he''s loved but has long since abandoned. On his return to New York -- and in a swift and unexpected return to the south -- Mabry must deal with the near-ruin of his loft, with haunting memories of his infidelities to his recently deceased wife, with the end of his childhood family, the uncertainty of his professional career, the ambivalence of his adult daughter, and with a daunting likelihood that is terrifyingly at work inside his body. Reynolds Price writes at peak form in this lean and masterful, comic yet profoundly moving novel -- one that unfolds the stages of one man''s hope for ransom in old familiar worlds that are now forever changed.

In the year 2000 acclaimed author Reynolds Price became honorary godfather to Harper Peck Voll. As a christening gift, Price composed a letter to the child, one intended as a brief guide for Harper''s spiritual future. The letter sketched the crucial roles which faith had played in Price''s own life and whittled down those lessons the author felt were most valuable. Later, Price realized that in a rapidly complicating world, his thoughts might also be useful for other children and their parents. Here, then, is an expanded version of the original letter -- an eloquent, thoughtful, and inspiring look at faith from one of the most revered American writers and most respected students of religion. In Letter to a Godchild, Price recounts how his life has been shaped by numerous and varied spiritual influences -- from the Bible-story books his parents bought him before he could read, to the childhood days spent exploring dense woods near his home (woods where he searched for arrowheads and spied on numerous wild animals), to Sundays at church with his father and mother, his travels around the world to magisterial structures as various as St. Peter''s and the old Penn Station, and years of study both in and out of the classroom. With no trace of self-pity, he explains how his faith grew and deepened when in 1984 -- after a life of robust health -- he suffered a cancer that eventually led to paralysis of his lower body. Letter to a Godchild includes striking pictures of the buildings, objects, places, and events that have deepened the author''s religious sensibility. He has also compiled a comprehensive section on further reading, looking, and listening that provides suggestions for books, art, and music that will entertain as well as enhance this volume. A profoundly intelligent and moving explication of religion and spirituality, Letter to a Godchild is an exhilarating experience for readers of all faiths.

Does God Exist and Does He Care?In April 1997 Reynolds Price received an eloquent letter from a reader of his cancer memoir, A Whole New Life. The correspondent, a young medical student diagnosed with cancer himself and facing his own mortality, asked these difficultQuestions. The two began a long-distance correspondence, culminating in Price''s thoughtful response, originally delivered as the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at Auburn Theological Seminary, and now expanded onto the printed page as Letter to a Man in the Fire.Harvesting a variety of sources -- diverse religious traditions, classical and modern texts, and a lifetime of personal experiences, interactions, and spiritual encounters -- Price meditates on God''s participation in our fate. With candor and sympathy, he offers the reader such a rich variety of tools to explore these questions as to place this work in the company of other great tetsaments of faith from St. Augustine to C. S. Lewis.Letter to a Man in the Fire moves as much as it educates. It is a rare combination of deep erudition, vivid prose, and profound humanity.

On its initial publication in 1962, Eudora Welty said of A Long and Happy Life, "Reynolds Price is the most impressive new writer I''ve come across in a long time. His is a first-rate talent and we are lucky that he has started so young to write so well. Here is a fine novel."From its dazzling opening page, which announced the appearance of a stylist of the first rank, to its moving close, this brief novel has charmed and captivated millions of readers since its publication twenty-five years ago and its subsequent translation into fifteen languages. On the triumphant publication of Kate Vaiden, his most recent novel, in 1986, there was almost no review that -- praising the new book to the skies -- didn''t also mention in glowing terms the reviewer''s fond recollection of the marvelous first novel, the troubled love story of Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers and its beautifully evoked vision of rural North Carolina. It is a pleasure now to restore to print the clothbound edition of this truly enduring work as a companion volume to his brilliant book of essays, A Common Room, published simultaneously.

For over three decades, Reynolds Price has been one of America''s most distinguished writers, in a career that has been remarkable both for its virtuosity and for the variety of literary forms he has embraced. Now he shows himself as much a master of the story as he is of the novel, in a volume that presents fifty stories, including two early collections -- The Names and Faces of Heroes and Permanent Errors -- as well as more than two dozen new stories that have never been gathered together before.In his introduction, Mr. Price explains how, after the publication of his first two collections, he wrote no new stories for almost twenty years. "But once I needed -- for unknown reasons in a new and radically altered life -- to return to the story, it opened before me like a new chance....A collection like this then," he adds, "...will show a writer''s preoccupations in ways the novel severely rations (novels are partly made for that purpose -- the release from self, long flights through the Other). John Keats''s assertion that ''the excellence of every Art is its intensity'' has served as a license and standard for me. From the start my stories were driven by heat -- passion and mystery, often passion for the mystery I''ve found in particular rooms and spaces and the people they threaten or shelter -- and my general aim is the transfer of a spell of keen witness, perceived by the reader as warranted in character and act."There is, indeed, much for the reader to "witness" here of passion and mystery, of character and act. And the variety of stories -- many of them set in Reynolds Price''s native North Carolina, but a surprising number set in distant parts: Jerusalem in "An Early Christmas," the American Southwest in "Walking Lessons," and a number in Europe -- will astonish even his most devoted readers. In short, The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price is as deeply rewarding a book as any he has yet published.

A Moving Fable For Readers Of All Ages -- From National Book Critics Circle Award-Winning Author Reynolds PriceBen Barks loved elephants long before he''d seen one. He sometimes wondered how that love started....It''s been a whole year since Ben''s mother died, and nothing has soothed his broken heart -- except thinking about elephants, those magnificent creatures his mother loved too. Imagining their awesome grace always calms him in a way that his sad father and closest friends never can. When a one-ring circus comes to Ben''s small town, he discovers Sala, an elephant who survived a wicked trainer''s abuses. And soon, their powerful bond becomes a miraculous healer -- and gives Ben renewed hope for the future.

Reynolds Price has long been one of America''s most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters -- the author of novels, stories, poems, essays, plays, and a memoir. In A Whole New Life, however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate and compelling as any work of the imagination.In 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord ("The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward"). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life.Beyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here -- a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer''s much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means all) doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the "now appalling, now astonishing grace of God."A Whole New Life offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.