#ward just

[universitybookstore]

“You could never know what transpired beneath another's skin.” ― Ward Just (September 5, 1935 – December 19, 2019)   from his novel, Forgetfulness. Rest in Peace, poet.

[cdchyld]

This listing is for the vintage book "A Soldier of the Revolution" by Ward Just. Copyright 1970 Stated First Edition 224 pages Hardback Publ

Just added to Etsy!

~ "A Soldier of the Revolution" by Ward Just (1970) First Edition

[lyssahumana]

First Lines: Ward Just - Forgetfulness

The way down was hard, the trail winding and slick underfoot, insecure.

[universitybookstore]

"His article was entirely straightforward, a professional job, spare sentences, the facts allowed to carry the story.  It was not an eloquent piece.  In fact it was laconic, almost mundane, free of sentimentality and yet sympathetic." -- this brilliant description of an almost perfect newspaper piece from Ward Just’s new novel, The Eastern Shore, gives only the barest hint of the novelist’s command of American prose.  Ward Kust is a national treasure.

[emmgee1969]

The Translator

by Ward Just, first published 1991.

This whole book is building up to the action, just one paragraph in the final chapter, so this is not an action thriller, it is a study of the life of ex-pats (German and American) living in Paris and how despite the seeming placidity of their demeanour, and their whole life, a long suppressed guilt erupts in a single catastrophic instant.

The collapse of the Berlin wall, the end of communism in East Germany and the freedom to travel seems a moment for optimism, instead there is a melancholy tone. In a sense the wall sealed off part of Sydney’s past and kept at bay his guilt, about his parents and about how he treated them.

I don’t know whether the contemporary parrallels are comforting or disturbing, this book written in 1991 and set in 1989/90 reflects anti-Muslim prejudice, cynicism and a lack of belief in comventional leaders, there are also references back to 1930s and how prejudice infects a whole nation.

Finally there is a warning through the book that inattention has consequences, Sydney’s father-in-law pays little attention to the investments he lives off and finds them squandered. Sydney’s wife is simiarly inattentive and the inheritance from her mother, a small painting, is lost. Sydney failed to consider the nature of Junko Poole’s escapade in East Germany, and suffers the consequence.

[astrangerhere]

"There isn't a record of anything anymore, it's just telephone calls and bad memory."

Ward Just | "About Boston"

[universitybookstore]

Out April 1st, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, American Romantic, by Ward Just. Author of 17 previous novels, masterful short stories, and some serious early journalism, Ward Just is our greatest living political novelist. There's nothing like a new Ward Just. Can't wait!

[tumblngphilopoet]

It's the birthday of Ward Just (books by this author), born in Michigan City, Indiana (1935). He's the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, including Echo House (1997), a finalist for the National Book Award, and his 2004 novel, An Unfinished Season, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

He began his career as a journalist. By the time he was 24, he was writing features for Newsweek magazine and eventually The Washington Post. He went to Saigon to cover the Vietnam War, where he was seriously wounded by shrapnel from a grenade. He came back to the States to recover, and he wrote a book called To What End: Report from Vietnam (1968), and then he quit journalism and launched into fiction.

His latest book is Rodin's Debutante (2011), a coming-of-age story set in midcentury Chicago. It begins: "This is a true story, or true as far as it goes. Ogden Hall School for Boys never would have existed were it not for the journey that two Chicago girls made to Paris with their mother."

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/09/05