The winter of our discontent first edition

Reading copy. No dust jacket. Hard cover. First edition. Book Condition: Very good. Clean cover. Very slight soil marks inside cover boards.

Clean interior pages. Published by The Threepenny Review, New Condition: New. No Binding. Condition: New. Contained in the Winter issue of The Threepenny Review. This issue of the highly regarded literary and arts quarterly contains writing by, among others, Tariq al Haydar, John Barth, Rafael Campo, W.

Published by London, Heinemann Used - Hardcover. From Australia to U. Original burgundy cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Used - Hardcover Condition: Very Good.

Condition: Very Good. Clean and neat dark red cloth binding, with titles to spine. No Dust Jacket. Text neat and clean and firm. HC published by the Viking Press in Corners are bumped and worn some, ends of spine have some wear, and binding is slightly cocked.

Previous owner's name is on half-title page and bottom edge of pages. Side edge of pages has some insect damage. HC, Viking Press, Dust jacket is faded and worn some along top edge and spine, and worn some at the corners. DJ is in good condition.

Corners of covers are slightly bumped, and covers have some edge wear. Previous owner's name is inside front cover. No other writing in book. Binding is slightly cocked. Published by Viking, First edition first published in by Viking Press, with no additional printings. No marking or writing in book. Top edge of front cover has a slight indentation near corner, corners are worn some, and bottom corners are slightly bumped. Front cover has a stain, ends of spine are worn some, and edge of spine has a small scrape near top.

Edward A. Weeks, editor; Stephen Leacock, A. Milne, Alexander Woollcott, Wendell L. Published by Atlantic Monthly, Community Reviews 0 Feedback? To read from beeb Loading Related Books. Electronic resource in English Hall in English January 1, , Unionsverlag Paperback April 19, Edited by kherston. January 30, Edited by Lisa.

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See terms See terms for PayPal Credit - opens in a new window or tab. Back to home page Return to top. More to explore :. Image not available Photos not available for this variation. International Priority Shipping. All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not. How much immorality is too much? Do the ends justify the means? Is your sin less egregious if you are sinning against a sinner? And, to quote Mark , "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

It has something to do with his ability to tell a fascinating tale and still pack so many unobtrusive, salient issues into its telling. Just one more quote, because who wouldn't appreciate this kind of imagery: "The young boys, bleeding with sap, sit on the stools of Tanger's Drugstore ingesting future pimples through straws.

They watch the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another while their insides whimper with longing. View all 27 comments. Apr 30, Vit Babenco rated it really liked it. The Winter of Our Discontent is about the nature of fortune and misfortune.

Now I was on the edge of the minefield. My heart hardened against my selfless benefactor. I felt it harden and grow wary and dangerous. And with its direction came the feeling of combat, and the laws of controlled savagery, and the first law is: Let even your defense have the appearance of attack.

Dishonesty is a foundation of prosperity… And honesty leads to discontent. View all 5 comments. I was forwarded a blog post recently written by someone much sharper than me that asked where our contemporary John Steinbecks have gone. The masterful fiction dedicated to the minimum wage worker, the family displaced by the Great Recession living out of a motel room, or anyone living from paycheck to paycheck seems largely extinct from the bestseller lists.

Hard luck stories about average American families fill newspapers, while in fiction, it seems like world building, not world reporting, I was forwarded a blog post recently written by someone much sharper than me that asked where our contemporary John Steinbecks have gone.

Hard luck stories about average American families fill newspapers, while in fiction, it seems like world building, not world reporting, are what get traffic. Steinbeck didn't have to worry about launching his author platform or getting retweeted in when his nineteenth novel was published. His storytelling, his vibrant and passionate depictions of the American worker, and his wisdom, are needed now more than ever. The Winter of Our Discontent takes place between Good Friday and the Fourth of July, Steinbeck apparently wrote the first draft during that same stretch of time.

Rather than the Salinas Valley, the story takes place in the fictional hamlet of New Baytown, in northern Maine. The novel is narrated by Ethan Allen Hawley, a grocery clerk whose ancestors made their fortune as privateers a discreet way of saying "pirates" on the seas. The empire built by the Hawleys was squandered by Ethan's father through bad investments, while Ethan returned from war to briefly own and operate a grocery store that couldn't stay open.

Now a mere employee in a store run by a Sicilian immigrant named Marullo. Ethan's boss regards him with equal parts pride and pity, grateful at the straight line that Ethan walks never cheating or stealing while also trying to advise the "kid" on how to make a dollar and a cent in this country.

The key to the latter seems to come back to cheating or stealing. Well-liked in spite of the acidic wit he dispenses around his wife Mary and adolescent children Ellen and Allen, Ethan's fortunes begin to change when his wife's friend, a gold digging floozy with a flair for fortune telling named Margie Young-Hunt, forecasts that Ethan is destined to become one of the most important men in town.

The news is met with elation by Ethan's family, tired of being poor. Ethan opts to play the game for a while, to prove how easy it is to become a financial success and how little it changes things once you become one.

Ethan ends up being right on one count, wrong on the other. A series of seemingly unrelated events fall into place around Ethan, each expertly crafted by Steinbeck. There's Ethan's childhood friend Danny Taylor, a Naval Academy washout whose disappointment to his family transformed him into the town drunk, albeit, a drunk who owns the most valuable real estate around.

There's bank teller Joey Brophy, a cad who explains to Ethan how he'd rob a bank if he wanted to get away with it. There's Mr. Baker, a banker dogging Ethan to invest money left to Mary by her brother. Ethan learns of big changes coming to New Baytown and by virtue of his family name, seems poised to benefit.

Ethan doesn't feel sorry for himself or blame anyone for his mistakes as much as he's resigned to watch life from the sidelines now, sick of the hypocrisy his wife and his quiz show obsessed son seem eager to engage in.

Ethan isn't the most likable narrator, but I could identify with him. I liked the way that Steinbeck balanced the Way It Used To Be Ethan holds conversations with both his late grandfather Cap'n, the last mariner in the Hawley line, and his late Aunt Deborah, who taught her nephew how to use his mind and his conscience with the way things seem to be headed.

In addition to the central character, I had some misgivings about the ending, but I take this as a virtue of the author for investing me in characters I care about. Margie Young-Hunt is a terrific character, a sexually liberated sorceress of a sort who doesn't feel sorry for herself either, and like Ethan, can't seem to resist making waves in the pond.

Steinbeck's dialogue is so good and in this novel, we again glimpse what seem like real adults working over what seem like insurmountable economic or social problems at the kitchen table.

Steinbeck's gift is making something so mundane so riveting on the page. View all 34 comments. Deriving the title from William Shakespeare's Richard III opening lines "Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this sun of York" , the story is somewhat a psychological analysis into a man's moral dilemma of doing what is right and doing whatever it takes him to become successful.

Coming from once a wealthy and influential family, the reduced circumstances to which he has fallen, plodding through his life as a mere grocery clerk is quite displeasing to him. The Hawleys once carried their head high, and now, though he is still respected for his ancestry and lineage, he doesn't know how long the water will hold.

He is sure it won't pass to the next generation, unless he, Ethan Hawley, does something about it. He no longer can avoid the growing restlessness in his family, living in reduced conditions.

But what can he possibly do? If he treads on a high moral path, nothing. But avenues may open to him if he wouldn't mind deviating lawfully from such high grounds. What ground should he tread on? Success or righteous? Here is then the dilemma for Ethan. And Steinbeck takes us through his quandary with his powerful prose. This final novel by Steinbeck is quite different from his early works, both in style and theme. The Steinbeck who wrote this wasn't the same Steinbeck who was influenced by his native Salinas Valley.

Here he has moved from his comfort zone and adjusted himself to a geographical and cultural change. He had also to adjust to the changing times, the need to address the prevailing issues in American society. There is a mature growth in his writing here.

It is rich, deep and, demanding. Steinbeck plays well with his pen. He paints a vivid picture of his story which strongly connects the readers to the characters and settings. His deep but subtle penetration into the mind of the protagonist shows the inner struggle of a man who chooses success above morality.

I've never felt Steinbeck to be a demanding writer. But he has presented the story in such a subtle manner that you need the focus of all your faculties to fully appreciate it. I read that the reception of this novel was mixed and that there were some severe criticisms made against it which silenced Steinbeck's creative fiction. But from the perspective of a devoted fan, this is one of Steinbeck's best. View all 8 comments. Apr 24, Anne On semi-hiatus rated it it was amazing Shelves: , audio , classics , nobel-prize-winner.

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I fell in love with Ethan Allen Hawley upon first meeting him. What a character! He is the town's nice guy, comedian and moral center. But he works as a grocer for a store that used to belong to him.

He feels that his family was cheated out of it's riches by someone burning their ship. As events proceed and he is tempted over and over again to make more money the idea begins to sound better and better to him and slowly his moral compass turns. I still rooted for him though I was increasingly s I fell in love with Ethan Allen Hawley upon first meeting him.

I still rooted for him though I was increasingly shocked by his behavior and worried for him. He begins to act like everyone else, going along with the others "who all do it," i.

This is Steinbeck's main criticism of our culture, the idea that one has to cheat in order to get anywhere, whether it's plagiarism, Ethan's son for an essay contest , or giving money to the town drunk a friend knowing you Ethan will inherit his priceless land as soon as he drinks himself to death. The ending was brilliantly ironic.

Ethan cannot live with himself and what he has done so he attempts to commit suicide by drowning. He curtails this suicide in progress when he finds the talisman in his pocket. He doesn't want to drown himself and take the talisman with him.

He wants someone else to have good luck from it; as if the actions which lead to his attempted "suicide" were examples of good luck! View all 35 comments. I'm really at a loss as what to say about this incredible novel except that it is American storytelling at its best. View all 4 comments. Jan 01, William S. There is a certain emotion in Steinbeck I have not found in other authors. Faulkner comes close, Hemingway a bit further off, perhaps Woolf is on a parallel path. Steinbeck shows us something into ourselves, he states in the book that we all have our own light, we are not a bonfire.

We only understand others to the point that we assume they are akin to ourselves. Steinbeck, like Woolf in the Waves, shows us that we are all connected, and that we can find a path in this world through this novel. This novel has been criticized by others for being lacking in the character development and depth of his other novels like East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath. I agree. It's not a long novel. It only develops one character narrator to the full extent and shows us the world around him.

But that's the point. He states that we can only know ourselves, and we might not even know that. People look to this book to find a copy of what he has already done, but he changes in this book. He puts us finally inside the head of one of the characters instead of Steinbeck telling us the story. He is giving us, in a sense, a parting gift. The reason people do not like this book is because they want another East of Eden, but this is just as good, if not better.

I do not often read novels that allow me to think about my own self this much. I don't think this would be my first recommendation for a Steinbeck novel, I think one needs to understand his changes from Grapes, Eden, etc. East of Eden was some-odd pages and I didn't want it to end. This didn't reach and it could not end soon enough. Moreover, not the work of a budding author still perfecting his craft, but an author who was in the winter of his profession, having already penned Of Mice and Men , Grapes of Wrath , East of Eden and countless other works.

The story is about Ethan Hawley, a man of noble ancestry reduced to a groce East of Eden was some-odd pages and I didn't want it to end. Are they simply words? None of it is interesting. None of it is deep. None of it provokes the reader to any of the same moralizing. Like the theme, the characters never come across as anything more than words on a page. Ethan is neither likeable nor unlikeable. That should make him all the more human, no?

For some reason, no. And the supporting cast are all stock characters: the corrupt banker, the town floozy, the lazy cop, the ungrateful teenage kids, the town drunk, the simple wife. The characters are so static that even the narrative descriptions of them appear verbatim fifty pages apart. Their characterization through dialogue is no better. Girls kill me. Not sure about your hands, but my hands are living things. Can we throw any more random shit at the end of that sentence?

Since I find it more unbearable to not finish an unbearable book than I do to unbearably keep reading the unbearable book, I had to find some way to enjoy the experience. Find lines to take completely out of context and imagine the way the story would be different if they were the first lines of the book.

She pressed it against her unformed breast, placed it on her cheek below her ear, nuzzled it like a suckling puppy, and she hummed a low song like a moan of pleasure and longing" The best he can do is to suppose they are like himself" View all 16 comments. The prose was as fine as I expected it to be, but it seemed such a small story, compared to powerful epics like The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

However, the story grew on me as I read and the ending packed a punch. Mostly in the form of a first person narrative, the novel is about Ethan Hawley, a likeable man in his late thirties, married to a woman he loves and the father of two teenagers.

Ethan comes from an old and formerly wealthy family in the fictional seaside town in which he lives. However, his father lost the family fortune and Ethan now works as clerk in a grocery store; a grocery store his family used to own.