Buchanan Dying

A Play

By: John Updike

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Paperback | 9 April 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
256 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.0 x 14.1 x 1.4

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Appearing for the first time in trade paperback and using the definitive text, here is America's greatest 20th-century belletrist's only work for the stage.

To the list of John Updike's well-intentioned protagonists-Rabbit Angstrom, Richard Maple, Henry Bech-add James Buchanan, the harried fifteenth president of the United States (1857-1861). In what the author calls "a kind of novel, conceived in the form of a play," Buchanan's political and private lives are represented as aspects of his spiritual life, whose crowning, condensing act is the act of dying. This definitive edition includes a Foreword by Updike, discussing early productions of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and its kinship to his later novel Memories of the Ford Administration. A wide-ranging Afterword fleshes out this dramatic portrait of one of America's lesser known, and least appreciated, leaders.

Industry Reviews

"An abundant, even opulent, creative act . . . Very often Mr. Updike's fantastic talent for mimicry produces quite marvelous results."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Atlantic Monthly

"Using the excuse of nineteenth-century speech, Updike has indulged his love of beautiful, ornate prose; we can sink deep into sentences balanced like mobiles and turned like pots on the wheel."--Chicago Tribune

"In the real-life figure of the too hastily judged James Buchanan . . . Updike has at last found vehicles for his gifts of compassion and capacity to create characters 'in the round.' "--Financial Times

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