Books >
Ardent Spirits

Ardent Spirits
Leaving Home, Coming Back  
This edition: Hardcover, 416 pages
Availability: Usually ships within 3-4 weeks
List Price: $35.00
Your Price: $28.00 You Save $7.00 (20%)
Also available in

Description

Award-winning novelist Reynolds Price provides “the best of his winning lot” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) of memoirs—a vivid portrait of his life in the mid-1950s leading up to the publication of his brilliant first novel A Long and Happy Life—now available in paperback.

After two earlier autobiographical works—Clear Pictures and A Whole New Life—acclaimed writer Reynolds Price offers a full account of his life from the mid-1950s to the publication of his first novel in 1962.

Oxford University and Britain—which had scarcely recovered from the severe demands of World War II—was a place of enormous vitality for Price, both academic and personal. From spotting J.R.R Tolkien on the street in Oxford, to intimate dinners with W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, young Price was welcomed into the company of the most respected intellectual and artistic circles. Fully entrenched in the culture of his era, Price unfailingly makes clear the connections between his experience and the great tradition of world literature.

In lucid, and frequently witty prose, Price offers full access to six years in the early adulthood of a rich life—“a gallery of portraits and sexual discovery” (Weekly Standard) and part of the great train of human accomplishment in which Price so ardently believed.
Related multimediaclose x

Video

1 to 6 of 6
  • 1635265513_27812231001_thumb-ca053bca-6899-434e-ac12-4a9a3c68aac0
    1. Author Reynolds Price Offers These Words of Wisdom to Rea...
    03:43
    27812707001
  • 1635265513_27800706001_thumb-cb29d7d4-4cff-46e5-b479-8ecc29fd31ff
    2. Who Does Reynolds Price Most Admire? Find Out Now!
    01:39
    27798175001
  • 1635265513_27800051001_thumb-466ff622-ac85-413a-9677-632b69fd67f0
    3. Where Does Author Reynolds Price Find His Inspiration? Fi...
    00:56
    27796575001
  • 1635265513_27790341001_thumb-e80208a1-88c9-4dc1-8b1f-cef516ca1cdc
    4. Novelist Reynolds Price Reveals Where He'd Like to Be in ...
    01:01
    27791382001
  • 1635265513_4569785001_th-1635265513-vid4565379001-img0000
    5. Reynolds Price: Muse
    00:56
    5545228001
  • 1635265513_4569785001_th-1635265513-vid4565379001-img0000
    6. Reynolds Price: Inspiration
    01:39
    5545233001
See more multimedia
“His beautiful books, his tremendous productivity, his spirituality and cheerfulness, his abiding friendships--all these generous traits and dynamic accomplishments have characterized Reynolds Price…. Ardent Spirits is … effervescent.”
-- Edmund White, The New York Review of Books
Ardent Spirits is Mr. Price’s third memoir [and] it is the best of this winning lot…  Price’s warmth, vigor and good humor consistently shine through.”
-- Dwight Garner, New York Times
“The most compelling book he’s published since Kate Vaiden in 1986. Price has always been one of our finest storytellers, but in Ardent Spirits he rises to new heights, delivering a compelling account of a profoundly exciting period in a young man’s life.”
-- Charlotte Observer
Myrtle Beach Sun News, May 16, 2009
...goes here DURHAM, N.C. -- In a world crowded with memoirs recounting every sort of human trial, Reynolds Price's new book, 'Ardent Spirits,' stands out because of what it's not. It's not a tale of adversity or pain or loss. It is, like its ...
San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 2009
...The place where you knew broad serenity...' Those are the first lines of the poem 'Gold Day,' which Reynolds Price wrote as a forward to a book of male nudes by photographer Bruce Weber titled 'Bear Pond.' The lines could just have easily ...
Washington Post, May 14, 2009
...ARDENT SPIRITS Leaving Home, Coming Back By Reynolds Price Scribner. 408 pp. $35 After graduating from Duke University, Reynolds Price sailed off to Oxford in 1955, where he spent three years ...