Recovery - Hardcover

Berryman, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571102921 ISBN 13: 9780571102921

Publisher: Faber, 1973

Synopsis

FIRST UK EDITION of Berryman's brilliant novel describing his heartrending and ultimately unsuccessful struggles with, in his own words, "the disease called 'alcoholism.'" The novel features a thinly disguised autobiographical character in the form of one Jasper Stone, "an extremely bitter bearded poet." Berryman began writing it in 1970 and had completed all but the final section of the first draft before he died in January of 1972. "Even unfinished, even without benefit of the intensive revisions and improvements he applied to all his work, it is so powerful that it had to be published." With a Foreward by his longtime friend Saul Bellow. 254 pages.

About this title

About the Author

John Berryman (1914-1972) was an American poet and scholar. He spent much of his career at the University of Minnesota. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1964 for 77 Dream Songs and was the recipient of the National Book Award for His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. He is the author of several books of poetry and the biography Stephen Crane. Berryman died in 1972 after jumping to his death from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis.

Saul Bellow (1915-2005) was an award-winning author whose works include The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, and Humboldt’s Gifts. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

Review

"What he needed for his art had been supplied by his own person, by his mind, his wit."
—Saul Bellow, from the Foreword

"Recovery is a brilliantly written, masterful portrayal of man’s battle with himself for survival."—Chicago Sun-Times

"What distinguishes Recovery from many fine and powerful fictions about alcoholism are the steps it takes into allegory and art."—Los Angeles Times

"The powerful statement of a man who was there and never came back."—Kirkus Reviews
"But if Recovery is a fragment, it is a dazzling fragment, every bit as rich and macaberesquely comic as anything in Berryman’s better known poems."—The Independent

"Page after page, it displays humiliations and defeats. His novel, while written in prose, has the effect of a poem about the desolation of total selfpunishment. Sometimes, not even God and AA, acting in concert, can help with that."—National Post

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber
• Publication date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571102921
• ISBN 13: 9780571102921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254