The End of the Book: A Novel

by Porter Shreve

Overview

The End of the Book is the story of an aspiring contemporary novelist who may or may not be writing a sequel to Sherwood Anderson's classic Winesburg, Ohio. Adam Clary works in Chicago for a famous internet company on a massive project to digitize the world's books, but secretly he hates his job and wishes to be a writer at a time when the book as physical object and book culture itself have never been more threatened.
Counterpointing Adam's story is that of George Willard, the young protagonist of Anderson's book, who arrives in Chicago around 1900 when it was the fastest-growing city in American history. Through alternating chapters, we follow George's travails, including his marriage to the wealthy daughter of his boss, his affair with his hometown sweetheart, his artistic crisis, breakdown and flight, and along the way we see the echoes and intersections between his life and Adam's as they struggle in two similar Americas through two similar times in the life of the book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807156223
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	02/17/2014
Series:	Yellow Shoe Fiction
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Porter Shreve is the author of three previous novels: The Obituary Writer was a New York Times Notable Book, and Drives Like a Dream and When the White House Was Ours were both Chicago Tribune Books of the Year. Shreve is coeditor of six anthologies, and his fiction, nonfiction, op-eds and book reviews have appeared in Salon, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has taught at several universities, including Michigan, Purdue, and the University of San Francisco. A native of Washington, D.C., he spent a number of years in Chicago and the Midwest, and now lives with his wife and children in the Bay Area.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Porter Shreve's novel, The End of the Book, had me from the very start of the story and never let go. The way that form, which begins as counterpoint, gradually becomes the conflation of time is touching and beautiful in the way that it is effortlessly accomplished." — Stuart Dybek, author of I Sailed With Magellan and The Coast of Chicago