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Saul Bernstein has become a high school teacher because he feels a need "to contribute to what he called 'the great project of undoing the dumbness that's been done.'" He and his wife Patsy live in small-town Michigan, where their "love for each other had created a magic circle around themselves that outsiders could not penetrate. No one who had ever met them knew what made the two of them tick; the whole arrangement looked mildly fraudulent." There's a glitch in this idyll, though. One of Saul's students, a mildly retarded boy named Gordy, takes to haunting their house, maybe with malicious intent, maybe not. Gordy hangs around, Saul and Patsy have a baby, and then finally a crisis provokes Saul to decide what kind of man he'd like to be. The novel is, in the end, a portrait not of a marriage, but of an ambivalent, evasive, very funny man. Along the way, we get to know Saul's fed-up wife, his fraudulent brother, and his libidinous mother, who makes this observation of Saul: "As a father, he exhibited great tenderness, which had a touch of vanity in it." It's a classic Baxter aside, at first mildly funny, then barbed with the truth. --Claire Dederer
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Book Description Soft cover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. RARE Advance Reading Copy-Uncorrected Proof-Not For Sale. 1st Edition-Stated. 1st Printing-Full # Line. New copy. Never read. Trade paperback format. BEAUTIFUL copy of Book & Cover. COLLECTOR'S COPY. Seller Inventory # 001755
Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 1.1. Seller Inventory # 0375410295-2-1
Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published 1.1. Seller Inventory # 353-0375410295-new
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. SIGNED -- First Edition stated, with correct number line sequence, no writing, marks, underlining, or bookplates. Signed by Baxter on the full title page. No remainder marks. Spine is tight and crisp. Boards are flat and true and the corners are square. Dust jacket is not price-clipped. This collectible, " NEW" condition first edition/first printing copy is protected with a polyester archival dust jacket cover. Beautiful collectible signed copy. Scarce. GIFT QUALITY. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 003953
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Included. 1st Edition. NY: Pantheon, 2003. First edition, first printing. Hardbound. New in dust jacket. A pristine unread copy, tight and clean. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. [c4] 0.0. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # PC18
Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.1. Seller Inventory # Q-0375410295