Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (Vintage Departures Edition)
by Jonathan Raban
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan RabanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-11-03
ISBN: 037570101X
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Vintage Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375701016
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (Vintage Departures Edition)
Book Review: Squire "Rayburn"
Summary: 5 Stars
Jonathan Raban is, unless I'm missing some unknown genius out there (always a possibility), the best contemporary travel writer out there - hands, anchors, flaps down. I think the main reason for this is that his writing is not MERE travel writing, as such, but is as much introspective as explorative. He allows the places he visits to seep into him and produces narratives that seamlessly mingle inner and outer travel as no other modern writer does. He is also keenly aware - or makes himself keenly aware - of the history of the places he sojourns, such as Guntersville, Alabama, giving his narratives a further layer of texture and depth. Added to all these qualities, he is extremely literate and literary - And yet for all these depths, he is so much fun!
There are not many books which cause me to laugh aloud when reading them; Fielding's Eighteenth Century Classic Tom Jones was the last, if memory serves. But this book did it for me, particularly the one hundred page centrepiece of the book, the chapter "In Our Valley", set in Guntersville, Alabama: His (successful) attempt to "rent" or borrow a dog - the Labrador "Gypsy", his renting a cabin in a neighbourhood called Polecat Alley, imagining himself as a Southern squire if he buys the lakefront property a local real estate dealer is attempting to foist on him etc--Perhaps it's because I myself am a transplanted Englishman living in the South, but these hundred pages were golden to me, and worth as much as the entire book- particularly when Raban notices he's picking up a Southern accent and starting to call himself "Mr. Rayburn" (to be intoned with long-stressed Southern syllables), as the rest of the town has denominated him.
Well, I've gone on enough. Time for me, as Raban puts it, to "flat-mash the gas pedal" and let you readers do the further exploring.
Summary of Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (Vintage Departures Edition)
A New York Times Notable Book"In an era of jet tourism, [Jonathan Raban] remains a
traveler-adventurer in the tradition of . . . Robert Louis Stevenson."
--The New York Times Book Review
In 1782 an immigrant with the high-toned name J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur--"Heartbreak" in English--wrote a pioneering account of one European's transformation into an American. Some two hundred years later Jonathan Raban, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arrived in Crèvecoeur's wake to see how America has paid off for succeeding generations of newcomers. The result is an exhilarating, often deliciously funny book that is at once a travelogue, a social history, and a love letter to the United States.
In the course of Hunting Mr. Heartbreak, Raban passes for homeless in New York and tries to pass for a good ol' boy in Alabama (which entails "renting" an elderly black lab). He sees the Protestant work ethic perfected by Korean immigrants in Seattle--one of whom celebrates her new home as "So big! So green! So wide-wide-wide!"--and repudiated by the lowlife of Key West. And on every page of this peerlessly observant work, Raban makes us experience America with wonder, humor, and an unblinking eye for its contradictions.
"Raban delivers himself of some of the most memorable prose ever written
about urban America." --Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times
"When Raban describes America and Americans, he is unfailingly witty
and entertaining." --Salman Rushdie
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