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Midstream : An Unfinished Memoir

ISBN: 9781439183496 | 143918349X

Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner
Pub. Date: 5/15/2012

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Summary

The fourth and final memoir from Reynolds Price, “one of the most important voices in modern southern fiction” ( The New York Times), who died in January 2011.Reynolds Price was a true renaissance man. Author of thirty-seven books and professor of English at Duke, he was the last great southern regionalist of his generation. Picking up where his third memoir Ardent Spirits left off, Midstream provides an account of the years of his life from 1961-1965. During this brief period, perhaps the most leisurely of his life, Reynolds was on the cus... MOREp of adulthood, contemplating turning thirty, which, as he says, “is likely to be any man’s realization that, This is it. I’m now the person I’m likely to be from here to the end.” In this evocative memoir, Reynolds discusses publishing his first book, the pursuit of adult love, burying his mother, embarking on a teaching career, and buying his first home. Upon his return to Oxford, Reynolds connects with a former lover with the hopes of rekindling their relationship. Disappointed to learn that this man is soon to be married, Reynolds pursues other pleasures: he travels to Denmark for a friend’s wedding; journeys through the English countryside for tea at charmed sites like Thame and Woodstock; dashes to Stratford to take in some Shakespeare; travels to Rome with famous British poet Stephen Spender, where he dines with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Tayl∨ and returns for more adventures in New York before finally heading home to North Carolina to resume teaching at Duke University. In his signature spirited and witty prose, Midstream offers a poignant portrait of early adulthood. It is a fitting bookend for Price’s remarkable career and reinforces his place in literary history.

The final book from Reynolds Price, �one of the most important voices in modern Southern fiction� (The New York Times)�with a foreword by Anne Tyler and an afterwordby William Price

WHEN REYNOLDS PRICE DIED IN JANUARY 2011, he left behind one final piece of writing�two hundred candid, heartrending, and marvelously written manuscript pages about a critical period in his young adulthood. Picking up where his previous memoir, Ardent Spirits, left off, the work documents a brief time from 1961 to 1965, perhaps the most leisurely of Price�s life, but also one of enormous challenge and growth. Price gave it the title Midstream. Approaching thirty, Price writes, is to face the notion that �This is it. I�m now the person I�m likely to be . . . from here to the end.� Midstream, which begins when Price is twenty-eight, details the final youthful adventures of a man on the cusp of artistic acclaim. Here, Price chases a love to England, only to meet heartbreak. Determined to pursue other pleasures, he travels to Sweden for a friend�s wedding, then journeys to Rome with British poet Stephen Spender and spends an afternoon with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Price returns to the United States, where he finds company with a group of artists as he awaits the 1962 publication of his first novel, A Long and Happy Life.

�Few writers have made as dramatic an entrance on the American literary stage,� declared The New York Times on the book�s success. Price would settle into a tranquil life in North Carolina, buy a house, and resume teaching. Concluding with his mother�s death and Price�s new endeavors�a second novel and foray into Hollywood screenwriting�Midstream offers a poignant portrait of a man at the threshold of true adulthood, navigating new responsibilities and pleasures alike. It is a fitting bookend for Price�s remarkable career, and it reinforces his place in the pantheon of American literature.

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FROM ANNE TYLER�S FOREWORD TO MIDSTREAM

�Just look at him flying across the campus, curls bouncing, dark eyes flashing, and a black cape (I swear it) flaring out behind him. Actually he never owned a black cape; he told me that, years later. He said it was a navy jacket, just tossed over his shoulders. But still, he was wearing a virtual cape, if you know what I mean. He was an exclamation point in a landscape of mostly declarative sentences. He lived in a house-trailer out in the woods; he invited us to come there and drink smoky-tasting tea in handmade mugs. Speaking with a trace of an English accent from his recent studies at Oxford (for he had a genius for unintentional mimicry, which he said could become a curse in certain situations), he told us funny, affectionate tales about his childhood in backwater Macon. Most of us came from Macons of our own; we were astonished to hear that they were fit subjects for storytelling. All over again, inspiration hit. Let us out of there! We had to get back to our rooms and start writing.�

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