A Long Day’s Dying (1950)
Book Description
Tristram Bone’s attempts to confess his love for Elizabeth Poor always seem to end in failure. A wealthy, middle-aged, and enormously corpulent son of “Old New York”, Bone repeatedly finds himself unable to raise the subject of his affections, and is thwarted by the mercurial Elizabeth and their devious mutual friend, George Motley.
Following a trip to a nearby university—Motley to deliver a lecture on one of his novels and Elizabeth to visit her son, Leander—scandal breaks in upon their social group. On returning to New York, Motley visits Bone with news that Elizabeth had spent the night with one of her son’s lecturers. When Bone confronts her with the story, she denies it, claiming that her supposed lover, Paul Steitler, is actually engaged in an illicit affair with Leander.
As Bone strives to unravel the story, Elizabeth falls ill, and her ageing mother, Maroo, journeys north to the big city intent upon caring for her. Meanwhile, Bone’s elderly German housekeeper, Emma, competes with his pet monkey, Simon, for dominance in the large and empty house. As tensions and confusion continue to rise, accidents and miscommunications abound, blood is spilt, and the former friends are joined by both Leander and Steitler, as the characters converge around a deathbed.
Reviews
“one of the best and most unusual of recent novels”
— Newsweek
“There is a quality of civilized perception here, a sensitive and plastic handling of English prose and an ability to penetrate to the evanescent core of a human situation, all proclaiming major talent.”
— David Daiches, New York Times Book Review
“Written with remarkable virtuosity.”
— Saturday Review of Literature
“Mr. Buechner has the type of mind from which various things are liable to appear fully blown and more or less perfect in their own right. […] All is executed with almost flawless taste, and technically, a high degree of excellence”.
— Malcolm Lowry
“I have rarely been so moved by a perception. Mr. Buechner shows a remarkable insight into one of the least easily expressible tragedies of modern man; the basic incapacity of persons really to communicate with one another. That he has made this frustration manifest, in such a personal and magnetic way, and at the age of twenty-three, constitutes a literary triumph.”
— Leonard Bernstein
“Mr. Buechner is a young novelist of talent and great promise, with a subtle gift for creating unusual but solid characters and an atmosphere of excitement which is not dependent on physical violence. This is a really outstanding first novel.”
— Christopher Isherwood
“Frederick Buechner's A Long Day's Dying is a novel of sheer magic. The richness of the prose, the delicacy in handling situations belong to a more refined era of American fiction. I think the book will be read by anyone curious as to what a wonderful novel can and does do.”
— John Horne Burns
“A study in nuance of character and atmosphere, this is delicately oriented and finely drawn.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“A Long Day’s Dying is full of questions as to how a life might be lived.”
— W. Dale Brown
“It is the book of a first novelist already arrived, most original, and filled with wit, nostalgia, and emotion.”
— Carl Van Vechten
“This is an authentic work of art. Mr. Buechner has written a remarkable book. For the first novel of so young a man his achievement seems to me amazing. I feel sure its publications will be an important literary event.”
— Isabel Bolton
“[Buechner] has a maturity of dramatic and moral feeling which is indispensable to the writing of serious fiction.”
— Pearl Kazin
“Frederick Buechner is a real find. His prose is a literary treat, and his vision is refreshingly original.”
— Charles Rolo
