Anticipation: A Novel - Hardcover

Frederick Ted Castle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0914232606 ISBN 13: 9780914232605

Publisher: Mcpherson & Co, 1984

Synopsis

Written when the author was about 25 years old (the writing spanned three years), Anticipation is a book full of wisdom and the laughter of youth. It could be characterized as the emergence into the world of an intriguing mentality: like James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it contains, as the author says, "all my youthful revery." For his discursive exploitation of all kinds of narrative devices, the author has been compared to other markedly innovative writers, such as Melville and Sterne. But Frederick Ted Castle's book is really unlike any other, and almost necessarily Anticipation waited eighteen years after its completion in 1966 to be first published. It was been re-released in the Recovered Classics series in 1996. While full of poetry, it is written in a lively and readable prose style. Although abandoning many conventions, it affords compensating pleasures. Sometimes referred to as an "epic novel," Anticipation redefines both the epic and the novel: the character called "myself" becomes a modern hero not because his exploits are heroic but because of the scrutiny devoted to the interior of his psyche, especially as refracted through portraits of friends. Upon its first appearance, the reviewer for The New York Times Book Review predicted: "Anticipation will last. It is a presence one wants to have around..."

About this title

About the Author:

Frederick Ted Castle, a native to Lockport, New York, 20 miles from Niagara Falls, wrote Anticipation in 1963-1966 in New York City, where he has lived since graduation from Williams College in 1960. A lifelong affinity for art and artists has led to his career as a writer about painting, sculpture and performance in most of the world's arcane art journals.

Review:

Charms with truly authoritative confidence in the power of poetic perception to generate form, the architecture which amounts to meaning... --Patricia Eakins, Exquisite Corpse

Certainly one of the most provocative and arresting fictional performances to be published in several years. --Washington Post Book World

[A] truly strange, depth-filled miscellany -- with the inner coherence that's usually lacking in avant-garde, non-narrative fiction. --Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Mcpherson & Co
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0914232606
• ISBN 13: 9780914232605
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352