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Summary
Summary
Alternating a tale of the past that has become a part of Key West legend with a contemporary story that reflects the pulse of life there today, Hersey weaves in these stories a brilliant human tapestry of the place that means a great deal to him. From the author of A Bell For Adano and Hiroshima comes this final collections of stories. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Author Notes
John Richard Hersey was born in Tientsin, China on June 17, 1914 where he lived until 1925 when his family went back to the United States.
Hersey worked as a journalist and war correspondent during World War II for Time Magazine and became well known from those writings on the war. He was Master at Pierson College at Yale from 1965 to 1970 and spent the following year as Writer-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome. He was a past President of the Authors League of America and was elected by the membership of the American Academy of Arms and Letters to be their chancellor.
Hersey's first novel was "A Bell for Adano," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. The following year he wrote "Hiroshima," which was an account of nuclear devastation and human suffering. Hersey was outspoken against the bombing, leading the fight to reclaim humanity, and spoke out against the nuclear arms race. Hersey was also interested and involved in American public education and he published "The Child Buyer" in 1960. "Key West Tales" was published in 1993.
Hersey retired from Yale University and lived between Key West, Florida and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. On March 24, 1993, John Hersey died at his home in Key West leaving behind his wife Barbara, five children and six grandchildren.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This posthumous collection of stories, set in a place Hersey loved, may be the last work we shall see from this greatly gifted writer. It is a curious collection, blending fully realized fictional stories with real-life happenings in the Key's long history that are little more than anecdotes, richly embellished by the author. These are mildly enjoyable but quite forgettable. By far the most substantial story, ``Get Up, Sweet Slug-a-bed'' (the quotation is from Thomas Herrick), is a startling departure for Hersey, being about an aging and once rather ruthless gay professor dying of AIDS, and the bickering over his care and with his awful family. It is full of tender observation, often funny, and ultimately poignant--and nothing else in the collection is on the same level. A much more conventional story (and a more predictable one from the author), ``Piped Over the Side,'' is about a naval officer's ambivalent feelings toward his retirement ceremony. ``The Two Lives of Consuela Castanon'' is a wry tale about a deliciously fat young woman and a lover who, unhappily for her, likes her just the way she is. ``Fantasy Fest'' has a woman anxiously seeking her natural son, adopted as a baby, in the whirl of a Halloween parade. Everything here is smooth and professional, if occasionally rather trite (``Page Two'' and ``A Game of Anagrams''). Only the AIDS story shows Hersey really moving on into new and tougher-minded terrain. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Written in the years just before his death, 15 stories by Hersey (Antoinetta, 1991, etc.) characterized by the same subtle wisdom about human nature and the same haunting resolutions that mark his best work. ``Get Up Sweet Slug-a-Bed,'' the longest and strongest piece here, concerns the struggle of an independent, charming man to preserve something of his style while dying of AIDS and captures the sad drama of terminal illness. Other stories are little more than sketches, but even these short takes earn their keep: In ``Page Two,'' Hersey writes fake crime reports, notably of a robbery that included among its booty Chinese satin shoes that ``had slender upsweeping forms at the front like swan's necks.'' The perpetrator is spotted walking up a Key West street wearing the shoes: ``Mr. Francis cheerfully confessed the thefts and asked the duty officer whether he had ever seen such beautiful shoes.'' Meanwhile, ``Did You Ever Have Such Sport,'' about John James Audubon shooting staggering numbers of birds just for the ``sport'' of it, hits a darker note--as does ``Just Like Me and You,'' about a funeral organized for a slave child by a tenderhearted Methodist lady. The tale ends with a powerful image of Western cultural ignorance, yet Hersey softens the blow by acknowledging the good intentions of the misguided woman. Other standouts include the ruefully comic ``The Two Lives of Consuela Castanon,'' about the brief fling of an obese young woman, and ``Fantas Fest,'' which captures the ambivalent mix of excitement and fear, love and bemusement, that fills a woman who's about to meet the grown child she gave up for adoption. At his finest, Hersey creates characters and situations that linger in the mind like real memories. A bittersweet, resonant ending, then, to an extraordinary career.
Booklist Review
Hersey's final stories are all set in the southernmost U.S. community, his home during the last years of his life, which ended there last March. There are 15--7 contemporary tales and 8 historical anecdotes well worthy of receiving the polish of Hersey's good craftsmanship. The stories share the equanimity of Hersey's wonderful last novel, Antonietta (1991), and constitute a suite of codas to it, each in a different mood suited to its main character. Among the most amusing are the first of the historical pieces, "God's Hint," in which a preacher who doubles as a scavenger has to figure out how to get the drop on his flock full of fellow plunderers when he spies a fresh wreck through the open church door while he's preaching; and one of the contemporary stories, "A Game of Anagrams," an exquisitely described weekly ritual whose players are "three poets and a novelist" who, altogether, have won four Pulitzers, three National Book Awards, and two Bollingens. In all, a fine conclusion to the distinguished career that began with Hiroshima and Hersey's own Pulitzer winner, A Bell for Adano. ~--Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
When John Hersey died earlier this year, he left a legacy of 25 books, 15 fiction and ten nonfiction. In this final collection of stories, Hersey focuses on his theme of ordinary people facing momentous events in their lives: death by AIDS, the death of a friend from AIDS, loss of innocence and virginity, meeting the son one had given up for adoption two decades before, or retirement from military service. Hersey presents as interludes brief, italicized vignettes of the famous or powerful people who have lived in or visited Key West. Hersey makes the ordinary folk heroic and the famous venal, sometimes to odd effect: The venality of the famous can be more engaging than the substantiveness of the obscure, perhaps because the latter lack the fullness of character that would make them more appealing. Still, this final collection is recommended.-- Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
