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Slouching Towards Kalamazoo: A Novel
Unavailable
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo: A Novel
Unavailable
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo: A Novel
Ebook249 pages4 hours

Slouching Towards Kalamazoo: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

It is 1963 in an unnamed town in North Dakota, and Anthony Thrasher is languishing for a second year in eighth grade. Prematurely sophisticated, young Anthony spends too much time reading Joyce, Eliot, and Dylan Thomas but not enough time studying the War of 1812 or obtuse triangles. A tutor is hired, and this "modern Hester Prynne" offers Anthony lessons that ultimately free him from eighth grade and situate her on the cusp of the American sexual revolution. Anthony's restless adolescent voice is perfectly suited to De Vries's blend of erudite wit and silliness—not to mention his fascination with both language and female anatomy—and it propels Slouching Towards Kalamazoo through theological debates and quandaries both dermatological and ethical, while soaring on the De Vriesian hallmark of scrambling conventional wisdom for comic effect.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 30, 2012
ISBN9780226149202
Unavailable
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo: A Novel
Author

Peter De Vries

Peter De Vries (1910–1993) was born in Chicago to Dutch immigrant parents. His father wanted him to join the clergy, but after attending Calvin College and Northwestern University, De Vries found work as a vending-machine operator, a toffee-apple salesman, a radio actor, and an editor at Poetry magazine. His friend and mentor James Thurber brought him to the attention of the New Yorker, and in 1944 De Vries moved to New York to become a regular staff contributor to the magazine, where he worked for the next forty years. A prolific author of novels, short stories, parodies, poetry, and essays, he published twenty-seven books during his lifetime and was heralded by Kingsley Amis as the “funniest serious writer to be found either side of the Atlantic.” De Vries was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983, taking his place alongside Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, and S. J. Perelman as one of the nation’s greatest wits. 

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Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sophisticated and funny, this book flatters the reader with its vocabulary and tone of snarky hipness. Very satisfying.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the very best of DeVries's comic novels. He returns to his best theme, religion and sex, and . . . what a romp he has!