Circa: 1962 Condition: used. Publisher: Harper & Brothers Author: Hiram Haydn Pages: 733
From Dust Jacket: "As the summer of 1953 begins, Walton Herrick finds himself confronted with three situations that force him to ask whether or not he really understands himself at all. One of these is the struggle at the Foundation where he works. Another is the discovery that he is being considered as a possible candidate for Governor. The third involves his wife’s statement that she wants to leave him.
To all outward appearances Walton Herrick is at the peak of success and fulfillment. Indeed, only five months before the story opens, he has so conducted himself at the hearings of the Congressional committee investigating tax-exempt foundations as to win national attention. But Walton, brilliant, dynamic, responsible, sensitive, like most of us is not the man he seems. More dangerously, he is not the man he has long believed himself to be... the man he has, so to speak, been impersonating. How could he be, and yet be the man who has driven his beloved Julie to the point of leaving him, the man whose own hands may soon pull his whole world down in ruins; home, job, future?
The seeds of trouble were planted deep in Walton’s heritage and his early years. Brilliantly alternating between past and present, the novel traces his life from childhood to maturity. The clash of influences and desires that bedevil him is dramatized through a galaxy of magnificently realized individuals and events: his heritage; his overprotected youth; his relationships with his towering grandfathers, his anguished and domineering mother, his gentle and courageous father, his black-sheep uncles and invalid sister, his first love at Amherst, his once good friend Dudley Foote, his ex-mistress, Karen Kodaly, politico Abe Fortune, and the seductive Sonia Wilenski, whom he cannot resist in his summer loneliness.
Here, revealed with penetration and understanding, is a fascinating human being, a man of passion and sensitivity, desperately needing approval and praise, craving the reassurance of mental and sexual conquest, a man of magnetic personality, of integrity and ability divided against himself.
In scene after suspenseful scene the reader lives through Walton Herrick’s agonies and triumphs, his loves and fears, his strengths and weaknesses - to a shattering, purifying climax. The result is a superb achievement, a searching analysis of modern man, a brilliantly satisfying major novel by one of America’s outstanding writers."
Pages clean and tight. Dustjacket well preserved with minor edgewear.
Item being sold to raise funds for an insulin pump and other medical expenses and of our senior pastor who is suffering diabetic blindness in his left eye.
Item open for best offers. |