Items related to The Great Pretender
Synopsis
Book by Atlas, James
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From Library Journal
This is no Portnoy's Complaint , but Atlas's comic Jewish first novel does have its moments, especially early on when 1960s adolescent Ben Janis yearns for girls and literary fame in suburban Chicago. To please his pretentious father (they exchange Eliot quotations at the dinner table), Ben goes to an Auden reading when he'd rather watch "Leave It to Beaver." He sends his poems to the New Yorker. He goes to Harvard, where he cultivates the famous visiting poet, and to Oxford, where he lives uncomfortably with his aspiring-novelist lover, who leaves him. Still yearning for girls and literary fame, Ben goes home again, to a job as a staff writer for Time. More an extended shtick than a story of substance and drama, The Great Pretender successfully sustains its comic tone but doesn't really engage the reader. Atlas is the author of Delmore Schwartz: the life of an American poet . Janet Wiehe, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherAtheneum
- Publication date1986
- ISBN 10 0689118007
- ISBN 13 9780689118005
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages277
- Rating
Buy Used
Learn more about this copy
US$ 5.00
Shipping:
US$ 4.99
Within U.S.A.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
The Great Pretender
Published by
Atheneum May 1986, 1986
ISBN 10: 0689118007
ISBN 13: 9780689118005
Used
Trade Paperback
Seller: Montclair Book Center, Montclair, NJ, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Trade Paperback. Condition: USED Good. Seller Inventory # 217682
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
The Great Pretender
Seller: Lorrin Wong, Bookseller, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 1 out of 5 stars
Condition: UNSPECIFIED. Light foxing along foredge (not effecting margins or text) otherwise very good+ hard cover book in near fine dust jacket. Seller Inventory # 655301
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
The Great Pretender [ Uncorrected Proofs]
Seller: Willis Monie-Books, ABAA, Cooperstown, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Softcover. Condition: Very Good. Advance Reading Copy/Proof. Seller Inventory # 239427
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
The Great Pretender
Seller: Robinson Street Books, IOBA, Binghamton, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Prompt shipment, with tracking. we ship in CLEAN SECURE BOXES NEW BOXES Very good. Clean text. Seller Inventory # ware44ddd284
Quantity: 1 available
Seller Image
The Great Pretender
Seller: Palimpsest Scholarly Books & Services, Brooktondale, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: USED_FINE. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First edition. Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 8.75", is bound in quarter black cloth and red paper-covered boards, with stamped red lettering to spine. Book, with top edge of text block tinted red, is in excellent condition. Dust jacket has small scuff mark to upper outside corner of front cover. 277 pages. "Ben Janis, innocent and erudite, has two fiercely opposed dreams.One is to become a famous writer. The other is to obey the dictum of Henry James: "Live all you can." A Byron of the suburbs, obsessed with poetry and girls, Ben responds to "The Wasteland" and the Beach Boys with the same intense, ecstatic fervor; his touchstones are "The Oxford Book of English Verse" and the Top Forty list. Growing up in the middle-class college town of Evanston, Illinois, Ben struggles to keep up with the intellectual demands of his father, a doctor with a taste for chamber music and James Joyce. But sex keeps getting in the way. It's the Sixties, when ever seventeen-year-old is licensed to behave like Henry Miller. Do your own thing: only Ben's thing is browsing second-hand bookshops and scribbling villanelles. While he memorized French verbs in his bedroom after dinner, adolescent temptresses in cut-off blue jeans wait outside in their parents' cars, luring him into sin. Admitted to Harvard, Ben never quite manages to locate the college life he'd read about in the cheerful brochure. Instead of enjoying autumn football games and bracing seminars on the great books, he finds himself wandering on the fringes. He beseeches a famous poet to read his own fledgling efforts ('Put on a tie! my father cried at noon/I loitered in the bathroom, pale, jejune'); joins a club for rejects from other clubs; becomes editor of the literary magazine only to discover that he's the whole staff. And he falls in love with Eleanor Josephs, an aspiring writer at Radcliffe, who becomes both his Muse and his Nemesis as she teaches him more about reality than he cares to know. After he wins a fellowship to Oxford, Ben and Eleanor embark on their year abroad.". Seller Inventory # ABE-1596232275992
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
The Great Pretender
Published by
Atheneum, New York, 1986
ISBN 10: 0689118007
ISBN 13: 9780689118005
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Thomas J. Joyce And Company, Chicago, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 3 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: USED_FINE. Dust Jacket Condition: fine. First Edition. Octavo, 277 pages, clothbacked boards Has been called the American LUCKY JIM. Arguably the funniest and most candid book about literary ambition ever written. Takes place in Evanston, Illinois in the Sixties - and also Harvard and Oxford. "Ben's thing is browsing in second-hand bookshops and scribbling villanelles." Author's first novel. Seller Inventory # 004239
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
THE GREAT PRETENDER
Published by
Atheneum, NY, 1986
ISBN 10: 0689118007
ISBN 13: 9780689118005
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: The Story Shop, Elwood, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: USED_NEARFINE. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+ dust. First Edition. 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 277 pages. Seller Inventory # 269
Quantity: 1 available
Seller Image
The Great Pretender: A Novel
Seller: Washington Square Autographed Books, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Soft cover. Condition: USED_VERYGOOD. Special Edition. Advance reading copy, in glossy wraps. Book is NF but for faint creases on the cover. Inscribed by Atlas to p/o on title page and dated 10/27/98. An uncommon edition of Atlas's second book and only novel. 279 pages. Inscribed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 2614
Quantity: 1 available
Seller Image
The Great Pretender
Published by
Atheneum, New York, 1986
ISBN 10: 0689118007
ISBN 13: 9780689118005
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First edition. Fine in lightly worn, near fine dust jacket. The author's first novel. Seller Inventory # 561806
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
The Great Pretender
Seller: Glands of Destiny First Edition Books, Sedro Woolley, WA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: USED_VERYGOOD. First Edition, First Printing. NEAR FINE+ hardcover book in NEAR FINE+ dust-jacket. NOT marked. NOT price-clipped. Remainder marked. NOT faded. NOT a b/c. NOT an XL. Slight amount of shelf rub to dark DJ. All of our dust-jackets are shipped in fresh, archival-safe mylar protective book jacket covers. Seller Inventory # SKU1000569
Quantity: 1 available