Wobegon Boy

Faber and Faber, 1998. Trade Paperback. Very Good Condition. John Tollefson leaves the American midwest for upstate New York to manage a radio station at a college for academically challenged children of financially gifted parents. Free from the dark Lutherans of his home town, he makes a pleasant, bachelor life for himself in New York. He has a bright idea for a restaurant specializing in fresh produce. He falls in love with a historian named Alida Freeman. He buys a new house and paints it a deep gold. He is presented with broadcoasting's coveted Wally Award.In the mindst of plenty, it occurs to John that his life lacks nobility and grace. A consumer of fine food and wine and a giver of good parties, he yet has no coherent life story. Compared with his great-grandfather John Tollefson, who wangled his way from Norway, he is joined in no struggle, has nothing at stake. The only true magnificence in his life is Alida, who cludes his courtship and gives him an impassioned speech about the pleasures of living alone.Folded into romance of John and Alida is the chequered saga of his ancestors - a dout butcher, a playboy publisher, a medicine-show politician, Siamese-twin ball players, a Texas Pentecostalist and a bank embezzler - and Lake Wobegon itself, with its bachelor farmers, its stout-hearted burghers and housewives, its simple code: Cheer up, Make yourself useful, Mind your manners and Avoid self-pity. A useful code, as John discovers in his pursuit of magnificence, especially as the going gets tough. 305 pages. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: 1-2 kilos. Category: Fiction; Fiction; ISBN: 057119351X. ISBN/EAN: 9780571193516. Inventory No: 249015. . 9780571193516