Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (Vintage Departures Edition) ebook

by Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban Writing Research and Publishing Guides English

Laurie Anderson - Sharkey's Day - Mister Heartbreak - Продолжительность: 7:46 Anglerfish Deepcuts Recommended for you. 7:46.

Laurie Anderson - Sharkey's Day - Mister Heartbreak - Продолжительность: 7:46 Anglerfish Deepcuts Recommended for you. The Champion - Charlie Chaplin - color Version (Laurel & Hardy) - Продолжительность: 30:51 Laurel & Hardy Recommended for you.

1st Vintage Departures ed. External-identifier. urn:acs6:ba:pdf:68b-9a61bbd2a512 urn:acs6:ba:epub:767-8476721d4582 urn:oclc:record:1035595712. Brown University Library.

Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America is a travelogue of Jonathan Raban's personal rediscovery of America following in the footsteps of European immigrants. It won the 1991 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Having arrived in Liverpool,. Having arrived in Liverpool, I took a ship for the New World. For hundreds of years this sentence has tantalized and inspired Europeans

Hunting Mister Heartbreak book.

Hunting Mister Heartbreak book. Published November 3rd 1998 by Vintage (first published 1990). Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America. 037570101X (ISBN13: 9780375701016). Shelves: lenge, 2019.

In the course of Hunting Mr. Heartbreak, Raban passes for homeless in New York and tries to pass for a good ol' boy in Alabama (which entails "renting" an elderly black lab). He sees the Protestant work ethic perfected by Korean immigrants in Seattle-one of whom celebrates her new home as "So big! So green! So wide-wide-wide!"-and repudiated by the lowlife of Key West.

Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (Vintage Departures). So begins Old Glory, in which Jonathan Raban recounts his eye-opening descent of the Mississippi River in a 16-foot aluminum motorboat. As the English author explains, his obsession with the subject began with Huckleberry Finn, which he first read as a 7-year-old. And in fact, his opening sentences refer as much to the imaginary river as to the real one, which turns out to be less bucolic than Raban expected.

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Some two hundred years later Jonathan Raban, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arrived in Crè vecoeur's wake to see how America has paid off for succeeding generations of newcomers.

Hunting Mister Heartbreak : A Discovery of America. A New York Times Notable Book "In an era of jet tourism, remains a traveler-adventurer in the tradition o.Robert Louis Stevenson

Hunting Mister Heartbreak : A Discovery of America.Robert Louis Stevenson.

A New York Times Notable Book. In an era of jet tourism, remains a traveler-adventurer in the tradition o.

A New York Times Notable Book"In an era of jet tourism, [Jonathan Raban] remains a traveler-adventurer in the tradition of . . . Robert Louis Stevenson." --The New York Times Book Review In 1782 an immigrant with the high-toned name J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur--"Heartbreak" in English--wrote a pioneering account of one European's transformation into an American. Some two hundred years later Jonathan Raban, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arrived in Crèvecoeur's wake to see how America has paid off for succeeding generations of newcomers. The result is an exhilarating, often deliciously funny book that is at once a travelogue, a social history, and a love letter to the United States. In the course of Hunting Mr. Heartbreak, Raban passes for homeless in New York and tries to pass for a good ol' boy in Alabama (which entails "renting" an elderly black lab). He sees the Protestant work ethic perfected by Korean immigrants in Seattle--one of whom celebrates her new home as "So big! So green! So wide-wide-wide!"--and repudiated by the lowlife of Key West. And on every page of this peerlessly observant work, Raban makes us experience America with wonder, humor, and an unblinking eye for its contradictions. "Raban delivers himself of some of the most memorable prose ever written about urban America." --Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times"When Raban describes America and Americans, he is unfailingly witty and entertaining." --Salman Rushdie

The Sphinx of Driz

Jonathan Raban is, unless I'm missing some unknown genius out there (always a possibility), the best contemporary travel writer out there - hands, anchors, flaps down. I think the main reason for this is that his writing is not MERE travel writing, as such, but is as much introspective as explorative. He allows the places he visits to seep into him and produces narratives that seamlessly mingle inner and outer travel as no other modern writer does. He is also keenly aware - or makes himself keenly aware - of the history of the places he sojourns, such as Guntersville, Alabama, giving his narratives a further layer of texture and depth. Added to all these qualities, he is extremely literate and literary - And yet for all these depths, he is so much fun!

There are not many books which cause me to laugh aloud when reading them; Fielding's Eighteenth Century Classic Tom Jones was the last, if memory serves. But this book did it for me, particularly the one hundred page centrepiece of the book, the chapter "In Our Valley", set in Guntersville, Alabama: His (successful) attempt to "rent" or borrow a dog - the Labrador "Gypsy", his renting a cabin in a neighbourhood called Polecat Alley, imagining himself as a Southern squire if he buys the lakefront property a local real estate dealer is attempting to foist on him etc--Perhaps it's because I myself am a transplanted Englishman living in the South, but these hundred pages were golden to me, and worth as much as the entire book- particularly when Raban notices he's picking up a Southern accent and starting to call himself "Mr. Rayburn" (to be intoned with long-stressed Southern syllables), as the rest of the town has denominated him.

Well, I've gone on enough. Time for me, as Raban puts it, to "flat-mash the gas pedal" and let you readers do the further exploring.

Daigrel

Love this author. Interesting take on journeys and life.

Flas

Jonathan Raban is fast becoming a favorite author. This memoir-as-novel portrays the burgeoning Seattle scene of the late 80s-early 90s to a T!

Umdwyn

WHY DOES HE LIVE IN AMERICA?

Androwyn

Jonathan Raban is a wonderful writer whether he is writing tavel books or novels. I heartily recommend this book as well aas all other books Raban has written.

Phallozs Dwarfs

Jonathan Raban enlightens and entertains with every sentence. Truly a master with words, sentences, and images. He tells real stories in a compelling way.

Ventelone

So far I have only read Jonathan Raban "travel" books, "Coasting", "Passage to Juneau" and this book. I truly love his writing, and agree with an earlier reviewer that he is simply the best writer of English descriptive prose EVER. I also admire his ability to observe and report what he sees and feels. It is important to realise that these books are NOT really travel books, as while they do describe places, they are more focused on the people, the history and the current state of the places he visits in his wanderings. Jonathan Raban is English living in USA, and his attitudes and writing strongly reflect that English way of self-critical analysis, something that is different from the way some Americans seem to think. English people are very fond of having a laugh at themselves and their countrymen, as reflected in the popularity of authors such as P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett. This gently teasing and observational viewpoint carries over to the writings of Jonathan Raban in a somewhat more critical manner than is comfortable for Americans who object to his style, but I do not believe that JR intends to insult and injure the USA or its people. Obviously there are ways Raban thinks that will conflict strongly with the sensibilities of some, but surely that is normal, he is an author with opinions. Mostly he does not issue judgements, but purely reports on the actions and words of the people he meets. The judgements are left to the reader. If you read Coasting (a book about English people) you will see exactly the same observational reporting of the types of people he encounters on his travels around the UK. I guess that it is either something you like and "click" with, as I do, or it is not your bag. It is certainly very dense reading, as it is so beautifully written that you want to enjoy the wash of the words through your brain - it sometimes makes me just stop reading so I can re-consider a particularly brilliant passage. I have "Waxwings" and "Foreign Lands" to read now, and am looking forward to those.

I agree with previous reviewers that this book combines keen observation and stunning command of language, much like the travel writing of Paul Theroux, whom the author apparently admires. And yet, also like Theroux, this book is infused with a coldness, a disturbing lack of humanity.

I, like many, believe that the soul of good travel writing lies in the people encountered along the way. There are plenty of people in this book, but they seem to be regarded as little more than specimens - meticulously described, but inferior in some way. Each person encountered is "revealed" to be either ignorant, venal, or both. Any indications of true goodness are dismissed as duplicity.

I finished this book with memorable descriptions still echoing in my brain. And yet ... a sour taste in my mouth. Aside from a few half-hearted stabs at self-deprecation, it seems as if the author feels he is superior to everyone, that he is interested in (and capable of) analyzing everyone, but learning from no one. I can't help but wonder if the shallowness he seems to see in others is in reality just a reflection.

I'd like to visit some of these places again, but not with the author.