Preston Falls

by David Gates

Book Overview

"Beautifully written.... Gates [has a] pitch-perfect ear for contemporary speech...and...[a] keen, journalistic eye."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In this comic, fiercely compassionate novel,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679756434
• ISBN13: 9780679756439
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Pure Bitterness

Willis is one of the most compelling characters I have ever encountered. As his marriage crumbles and his children avoid him, he isolates himself so as to be able to concentrate on his bitterness. He dervies so much pleasure from being able to justify his anger, addictions and selfishness that I was actually rooting him on in his quest for self destruction. He has no idea what it is that he really wants from his life, but you can be sure that it's everyone elses fault that he isn't getting it. His indignation at the world and the people in his life is so encompassing, so without personal blame, that rock bottom just doesn't exist for him. He never looks back, not once, and the result is horrifying, but delicious to watch.

The skill of close reading is dead in America

Though Gates is very careful to give his readers three of the central epic journeys of Western culture--PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and PARSIFAL--against which to judge his ambition for Willis's quest, no one in these reviews seems to have noticed, or tried to understand the import, of these other quests in the text. Are they only ironic commentaries on Willis's fumbling? Or are they intended to signify that Willis, like Christian and Frodo and Parsifal, is a holy fool--albeit of a very late 20th. c. American sort? What are we to make of a world in which, as Champ puts it, "Like what if the Higher Power blew off the weekend?" What ought to be the object of a spiritual quest at this point in human history? Sure, Willis is self-indulgent, and weak, and terminally ironic. But as he says to Jean, "You're not actually telling me anything about myself I don't know." And the fact that Willis fails in his quest does not make the quest less significant, nor him less honorable (or hilarious). At least he seems to be aware that life ought to be more than a house in Westchester, a job in the City as a p.r. flack, a family complete with dog and Cherokee, and a weekend retreat. Even Carol, Jean's sister, is aware of all this. But Jean? The character everyone seems to feel sorry for? While she is Willis's utter counterpart, whose caustic judgmental attitude is barely held in check by her kneejerk "in fairness" shtick, she lacks his belief that there is something out there worth finding, something other than--in E.B. White's phrase from "The Second Tree From The Corner"--"a new wing." When RABBIT, RUN was first published, many readers and critics seemed to miss Harry Angstrom's quest for grace, even though Updike used as part of his epigram "the motions of Grace." Here, Gates uses an epigram from PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, which reads, in part, "...his wife and children...began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying, "Life! life! eternal life!" I might have questioned Gates's bluntness. But obviously, he wasn't blunt enough. While it may be true that Willis isn't someone you'd want to have as a friend--maybe--he, and the other characters, happen to be some of the most acutely self-aware, intelligent, and comic characters who have come our way in a long time. Read this book. PRESTON FALLS is a masterpiece, dark and ruthless, and utterly lacking in innocence.

Make no mistake: this is the work of a wonderful talent.

Preston Falls is full of plain brilliant writing, is funny, suspenseful, suprising, shrewd, and marvellously observed. Gates deserves all the praise he's gathered -- do bother with it. Yes it's sardonic as all hell, but amusingly so. His devilish minor characters are larger than life, his scenes of things coming undone for the central character Willis are hilarious, and real. True, the last third is a little flatter and imperfectly resolved, and Jernigan is maybe a better book. But the solution is to read them both, back to back as I did. Then read Kingsley Amis, ye who have ears to hear the glee behind such fine, sardonic points of view.

Read it.

This is a great book. It is sadly and hilariously true about men and women in all their prides and fallacies. Just trying to get through. Someone has to speak for the recently neglected white urban middle class couple. Thank you David Gates.

Well thought out

Although the writing quality took a dive from his first book, the overall readability of this writing is superb.