William Guy – författare

1975. Christopher Reed, a young minister in his first job, receives much-needed seasoning, is necessarily disillusioned. How? On one level by having an affair with Becky Grierson, one of his teen-aged parishioners. But the affair is begun on a theological dare so to speak, in order to test an intriguing vision of the freedom of the Gospel which Dr. Buttrick, the senior pastor under whom Reed works, a truly Christ-like man (though it depends, of course, on what your image of Jesus is) has presented. "Scrupulous," or guilt-stricken, Reed tells his wife Vinnie, an artist and a free-thinker, what he has done with Becky. Vinnie erupts, then curiously, over time, adjusts, gradually accommodates herself, allows the affair to continue. Reed also tells Dr. Buttrick what he has done. Great-spirited, a wise old man, a genius, Dr. Buttrick listens and counsels. He counsels both Reed and Vinnie. The three of them discuss the limits of marriage, the relevance of Christianity to same. Vinnie and Dr. Buttrick have their own intense relationship. Meanwhile the meteoric Becky moves through her senior year in high school, fights free of her youth and prepares to leave for college. Obsessed almost, Reed suffers at the prospect of "losing" her. And grows in some way as a person or at least as a pastor, learning to expect less of the flock which he supposedly leads, since if often acts less than nobly. Some members even turn on Dr. Buttrick, the genuinely good man, in the year of the novels action.

1975. Christopher Reed, a young minister in his first job, receives much-needed seasoning, is necessarily dis-illusioned. How? On one level by having an affair with Becky, one of his teen-aged parishioners. But the affair begun on a theological dare so to speak, in order to test an intriguing vision of the freedom of the Gospel which Dr. Buttrick, the senior pastor under whom Reed works, a truly Christ-like man (though it depends, of course, on what your image of Jesus is) has presented. "Scrupulous," or guilt-stricken, Reed tells his wife Vinnie, an artist and a free thinker, what he has done with Becky. Vinnie erupts, then curiously adjusts, gradually accommodates herself, allows the affair to continue. Reed also tells Dr. Buttrick what he has done. Great- spirited, a wise old man, a genius, Dr. Buttrick listens and counsels. He counsels both Reed and Vinnie. The three of them discuss the limits of marriage, the relevance of Christianity to same. Vinnie and Dr. Buttrick have their own intense relationship. Meanwhile the meteoric Becky moves through her senior year in high school, fights free of her youth and prepares to leave for college. Obsessed almost, Reed suffers at the prospect of "losing" her. And grows in some ways as a person or at least as a pastor, learning to expect less of the flock which he supposedly leads, since it often acts less than nobly. Some members even turn on Dr. Buttrick, the genuinely good man, in the year of the novel''s action.

William Guy (when he is not traveling) lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Gravitys Revolt, a novel; Defunctive Music, a book of poems;A Travelers Education; Magic Casements; and Something Sensational, three books of travel essays. With William Orr he is the author of Living Hope: a Study of the New Testament Theme of Birth from Above. He has completed a translation of The Iliad. He is presently at work on The Lyndoniad, a book of interrelated poems about the year 1968, a long poem containing history (he hopes).

William Guy (when he is not traveling) lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Gravitys Revolt, a novel; Defunctive Music, a book of poems;A Travelers Education; Magic Casements; and Something Sensational, three books of travel essays. With William Orr he is the author of Living Hope: a Study of the New Testament Theme of Birth from Above. He has completed a translation of The Iliad. He is presently at work on The Lyndoniad, a book of interrelated poems about the year 1968, a long poem containing history (he hopes).

This is a book of travel essays, but it is not about what is commonly meant today by travel, e.g. package tours for middle-aged, middle-class tourists who pile in and out of airconditioned buses around the world for their hour at the obligatory sights-- passive entertainment. These essays are about travel, warts and all, the agony and the ecstasy of a do-it-yourself process: from traffic jams in southern Italy to swiftly gliding dream trains in northern Germany and quite a bit in between. They depict a passionate quest for art, music, beauty; journeys to that realm of supreme aesthetic experience which is to be found in front of paintings by the masters and at great performances of operas in Tyrolian villages; epiphanies in dusty Italian squares or in Imperial palaces. They describe an immersion in the history, the landscape and the daily life of other countries. They also describe the complex fate of being an American in strange lands. They sometimes toy with the Jamesian question: where can Americans possibly, truly belong?

The brutal wrath of Akhilleus and what follows from it. The Ur-text and the Ur-tragedy of Western literature. Homers ILIAD is both the simplest and also the most complex and beautiful poem ever written about war and about those who engage in it. Wars pity, wars desolation, wars stupidity and (some would say) wars glory. A mirror of human conduct. A necessary primer for statesmen. The cautionary image of what it means to send young people off to war and have them blow each other to pieces. Homers epic newly translated from the Greek.

THE LYNDONIAD is a poem or a succession of poems or a congeries of poems containing history. It treats of Lyndon Johnson in pieces, throws up facet-flashes of his life and of his epoch. The historians have had and will continue having their voluminous say about the throes and the tumult of the 1960s but here is a counter-approach to the same material: the 1960s as a kaleidoscopic epic poem with Lyndon Johnson at the center of it speaking for himself, and others speaking for him and about him and against him. Shards and tatters. The abstract and not so brief chronicles of a time when the nation was breaking.

Among the more frequently quoted epidemiological facts in current public health discussions are: (a) the elderly today represent about 10% of the population of the industrialized world; (b) the third world nations are moving in the same direction; (c) the trend toward a growing proportion of the aged in the world population will continue over the next few decades; (d) people over 80 now represent the fa. stest growing sector in North America; (e) in the elderly, general morbidity - and particularly morbidity of the central nervous syste- is many times that in the younger popUlation; (f) 5% of those over 65 years of age and 20% of those over 80 suffer from some degree of dementia. A global tidal wave of patients suf­ fering from Alzheimer's disease (or senile dementia) is threat­ ening to engulf us by the year 2000. This disease, which is, at our present state of knowledge, ir­ reversible, and other age-related dementias are perhaps the most sinister forms of any disability. They deprive their vic­ tims not only of their physical capacities but also of their autonomy and their ability to think and to make decisions for themselves. The future cost of psychogeriatric diseases in terms of suffering for individuals, stress for families, demand for manpower, and budgetary requirements for governments could become astronomical.