Seventy-year-old Pete Collins, a former high-school English teacher from Pennsylvania, now living in Myrtle Beach, attempts to pass the PGA's Playing Ability Test, which will lead him to a position as a teaching professional at a golf club. The test is two rounds of golf in one day in which he must average 77 for a 154 total. He knows only 20 percent of those who take it will pass. Interspersed throughout the account of the day's golf are small vignettes of his personal history with the sport: how he fell in love with it as a kid, his early years and middle years of truly dismal scores, frustration with the game, twenty years away from it, and then his ultimate return and serious commitment to it to try to achieve that illusive level necessary to pass the Playing Ability Test. As the day progresses we see the true highs and lows of golf, both in Pete's play and in that of the others in his foursome, two young post-college players and his middle-age partner Horatio, who's taken and failed the test many times. Quite simply, this is a will-he-or-won't-he story in which a man is pitted against himself to try to achieve his life's dream.
Two men, one a salesman, the other a professor, share a hospital room. They share, too, the knowledge that both of them are dying of cancer. This is a story about death, and at the same time it is an affirmation of life. It is a study of men forced to face the fact of their own mortality. As the days pass each man sees, mirrored in the wasting body of the other, his own death. And yet they cling to humanity in the face of death and are the greater for it. They learn to care for each other and to forgive those who will go on living after they have died. This remarkable first novel is compassionate but totally unsentimental; not only untouched by morbidity, but also, almost unbelievably, sometimes highlighted by humor as astringent as it is genuine.
Based on a novel by Robert Downs and 1980 television film, this play adaptation is about an elderly white widow named Estelle Malone becomes a foster mother to an African American foster teen, B.T. Williamson for the support money. When Estelle gets evicted from her apartment, B.T. joins a boxing ring to raise money to support each other.
Seventy-year-old Pete Collins, a former high-school English teacher from Pennsylvania, now living in Myrtle Beach, attempts to pass the PGA's Playing Ability Test, which will lead him to a position as a teaching professional at a golf club. The test is two rounds of golf in one day in which he must average 77 for a 154 total. He knows only 20 percent of those who take it will pass. Interspersed throughout the account of the day's golf are small vignettes of his personal history with the sport: how he fell in love with it as a kid, his early years and middle years of truly dismal scores, frustration with the game, twenty years away from it, and then his ultimate return and serious commitment to it to try to achieve that illusive level necessary to pass the Playing Ability Test. As the day progresses we see the true highs and lows of golf, both in Pete's play and in that of the others in his foursome, two young post-college players and his middle-age partner Horatio, who's taken and failed the test many times. Quite simply, this is a will-he-or-won't-he story in which a man is pitted against himself to try to achieve his life's dream.
Based on a novel by Robert Downs and 1980 television film, this play adaptation is about an elderly white widow named Estelle Malone becomes a foster mother to an African American foster teen, B.T. Williamson for the support money. When Estelle gets evicted from her apartment, B.T. joins a boxing ring to raise money to support each other.
Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends have a busy time on the Island of Sodor. In this book you can find out where the engines go throughout the day as well as learning to "Tell the Time with Thomas." Have fun!
A rigorous examination of the workings of fiction by the novelist Robert Boswell, "one of America's finest writers" (Tom Perrotta) Robert Boswell has been writing, reading, and teaching literature for more than twenty years. In this sparkling collection of essays, he brings this vast experience and a keen critical eye to bear on craft issues facing literary writers. Examples from masters such as Leo Tolstoy, Flannery O'Connor, and Alice Munro illustrate this engaging discussion of what makes great writing. At the same time, Boswell moves readers beyond the classroom, candidly sharing the experiences that have shaped his own writing life. A chance encounter in a hotel bar leads to a fascinating glimpse into his imaginative process. And through the story of a boyhood adventure, Boswell details how important it is for writers to give themselves over to what he calls the "half-known world" of fiction, where surprise and meaning converge.
Two men, one a salesman, the other a professor, share a hospital room. They share, too, the knowledge that both of them are dying of cancer. This is a story about death, and at the same time it is an affirmation of life. It is a study of men forced to face the fact of their own mortality. As the days pass each man sees, mirrored in the wasting body of the other, his own death. And yet they cling to humanity in the face of death and are the greater for it. They learn to care for each other and to forgive those who will go on living after they have died. This remarkable first novel is compassionate but totally unsentimental; not only untouched by morbidity, but also, almost unbelievably, sometimes highlighted by humor as astringent as it is genuine.
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