Feasting the Heart: Fifty-two Commentaries for the Air » (TOUCHSTONE)

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he has taught at Duke since 1958 and is now James B. Duke Professor of English.

His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.

Here are the personal essays Reynolds Price broadacst on NPR's "All Things Considered" between 1995 and 2000, recounting his past and examining the details of his current experience as a writer, teacher, traveler, and general witness of the world.

Publishers Weekly

In 1995, NPR's All Things Considered commissioned acclaimed Southern novelist Price (Kate Vaiden; Roxanna Slade; etc.) to contribute occasional editorial commentaries on any subject he chose. The results, along with an earlier Christmas story written for NPR's Morning Edition, are collected here, voicing Price's thoughts on topics ranging from the movies to the writing life to family relations. Recurring themes that he explores with particularly compelling insight include the cultural and emotional blessings of a small-town Southern boyhood, the difficulties--and surprising advantages--of being physically disabled (Price has been confined to a wheelchair for about 15 years after a bout with spinal cancer), and the richness of his experiences as both a student and a teacher. Price displays an impressive talent for using few words to convey a great deal, as he does in "The Last Great Weeper," where, musing on his tendency to cry at unexpected moments, he concludes that he is moved to tears by seeing "our kind at the highest pitch of skill and luck... those moments where somebody gets something right. Exactly right, the rarest event." Although ranging in tone from elegiac to angry, these pieces mostly evince a thoughtful optimism, chronicling and celebrating the small but significant pleasures of everyday life. While undoubtedly appealing to fans of Price's NPR broadcasts, this collection will also be of value to admirers of his fiction, as it offers a panoramic glimpse of the writer's mind at work. Price's readers and NPR listeners--even if they heard these commentaries on the air--will find it a delight. The brevity and broad range of these pieces also makes this an ideal introduction to this important novelist for readers who do not know his work. Author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Contents

PREFACE

A CHRISTMAS IN ROME

BOOK TOUR

THE LAST GREAT WEEPER

BIRTHPLACE

JAMES DEAN, STILL HERE

THE GHOST-WRITER IN THE CELLAR

ORAL HISTORY

A HOLE IN THE EARTH

TEACHERS

WHEELCHAIR TRAVEL

A SHALLOW PAST

EYE LEVEL TO A WHEELCHAIR

PRIVATE WORSHIP

GONE WITH THE WIND AND ITS SCARLETT

NATIVE ORPHANS

MY TOLERANCE PROBLEM

A SINGLE DEATH AMONG MANY

THE MAD INVENTOR

SUMMER VACATION

A FULL DAY

LUCKY CATCHES

CASTING BREAD

MRI TIME

TIME-RIDDEN

FATHER AND HISTORY

THE LUCKY CHILD'S CHRISTMAS

SUMMER ON THE DEEP

A STANDING READER

A GALLOP DOWN THE HOMESTRETCH

PORTABLE MUSIC

A MOTTO

THE GAZELLE OF ISRAEL

THE MEMORY DRENCH: WORLD WAR II*

FORTY AND COUNTING

CROSSING GENDERS

BEING REVIEWED

ENGLAND IN THE FIFTIES

THE STAGE, YEARS AGO*

ON THE STONE

MY GHOST STORIES

THE OLD MAN IN HERE WITH ME

DOLLS IN A MAN'S LIFE

THE GREAT IMAGINATION HEIST

JOKE-TELLING LESSONS

WHAT MY PARENTS DIDN'T TELL ME

THE COMMONEST DEMON

WITH IDA

A PERFECT DINNER

KEEPING AN EYE OUT

THE SINGLE CORPS

ELOQUENT LETTERS

A PREMATURE FAREWELL