Bowl of Cherries - Hardcover

Kaufman, Millard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1932416838 ISBN 13: 9781932416831

Publisher: McSweeney's, 2007

Synopsis

Kicked out of Yale at age 14, Judd Breslau falls in with Phillips Chatterton, a bathrobe-wearing Egyptologist working out of a dilapidated home laboratory. There, young Valerie Chatterton quickly leads Breslau away from his research and into, in order: the attic, a Colorado equestrian ranch, a porn studio beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and a jail cell in southern Iraq, where we find him awaiting his own execution while the war rages on in the north. Written by a 90-year-old debut novelist, ex-Marine, two-time Oscar nominee, and co-creator of Mr. Magoo, Bowl of Cherries rivals the liveliest comic novels for sheer gleeful inventiveness. This is a book of astounding breadth and sharp consequence, containing all the joy, derangement, terror, and doubt of adolescence and modern times.

About this title

About the Author:

Millard Kaufman was born in 1917 and grew up in Baltimore. After graduating from Johns Hopkins, he moved to New York and became a copyboy at the Daily News for thirteen dollars and seventy cents a week. When the Second World War broke out, he enlisted in the Marinesand fought at Okinawa. After the war, he moved to California, where he took up screenwriting, winning two Oscar nominations in his career. Bowl of Cherries is his first novel, written at the age of eighty-six. He died last year, at the age of eighty-seven.

From AudioFile:

Millard Kaufman began writing this sharp debut novel at age 86, and he packs a lifetime of experience and wisdom into this story. The story is a modern-day globe-trotting adventure, as it takes main character Judd from Yale to a world-saving commune, to war-torn Iraq--all told in hindsight from a filthy prison cell, where Judd awaits execution. Kaufman's delight in thrusting Judd from one antic scenario to another is contagious. The audio production is excellent, and Bronson Pinchot carries the story's many twists and turns with aplomb; his voice is deep, and listening is a pleasure. The story's globe-trotting transitions well to listening, and listeners will appreciate the narration's clear use of just-different-enough voices for different characters. M.T. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: McSweeney's
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1932416838
• ISBN 13: 9781932416831
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288