Buchanan Dying: A Play by John Updike (English) Paperback Book

Description: Buchanan Dying: A Play by John Updike To the list of John Updike's well-intentioned protagonists—Rabbit Angstrom, George Caldwell, Piet Hanema, Henry Bech—add James Buchanan, seen above as a young Congressman in the 1820's, and on the front cover as the harried fifteenth President of the United States (1857-1861). In a play meant to be read, Buchanan's political and private lives are represented as aspects of his spiritual life, whose crowning, condensing act is the act of dying. A wide-ranging Afterword rounds out the dramatic portrait of one of America's lesser known, and least appreciated, leaders. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvan John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a yia. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and ear in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of "The New Yorker, " and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts"The New Yorker, " and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. H Review "An abundant, even opulent, creative act . . . Very often Mr. Updikes fantastic talent for mimicry produces quite marvelous results."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Atlantic Monthly "Using the excuse of nineteenth-century speech, Updike has indulged his love of beautiful, ornate prose; we can sink deep into sentences balanced like mobiles and turned like pots on the wheel."--Chicago Tribune "In the real-life figure of the too hastily judged James Buchanan . . . Updike has at last found vehicles for his gifts of compassion and capacity to create characters in the round. "--Financial Times Review Quote "An abundant, even opulent, creative act . . . Very often Mr. Updikes fantastic talent for mimicry produces quite marvelous results."-Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Atlantic Monthly Excerpt from Book ACT I Wheatland, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. May 31, 1868. buchanan, a large old man with an upstanding crest of white hair, lies in bed asleep, propped up on bolsters. The bed is not a four-poster but a "sleigh bed," built of apple, cherry, and peach wood. Beyond the bed a tall window with green Venetian blinds gives on darkness. Beside the bed, a straight chair where visitors can sit, and a table containing little--a pitcher, a glass, a mantle lamp, a well-worn calfbound Bible. The correspondent for the New York World wrote that "The room, which has always been his own favorite choice, is a plain chamber...with...no other ornaments than two pieces of old-fashioned embroidery, done by his mother when he was a child, and marked in the corners, J. Buchanan. " This is the so-called Back Bedroom, preferred by the dying man perhaps because, being over the kitchen, it was warm. Visitors enter stage left, having come up a narrow winding stair. Servants may exit stage right, passing through the mahogany-paneled bathroom, with its deep zinc-lined tub that the master had built himself upon his return from the White House. We do not see this bathroom but do see, unauthentically, stage left, on the same wall as the window, the iron-fronted fireplace that in fact is located catercornered across the room, and a bentwood rocker, and a low desk, and, above the fireplace mantel, the portrait of anne coleman that truly hangs in the Master Bedroom. miss hetty, a plain woman past sixty, stands at the foot of the bed, dressed in gray, with an apron. A negro girl in a canary-yellow dress waits motionless in a corner. buchanan struggles for breath, awakes, asks: Miss Hetty? miss hetty: I am here, Mr. Buchanan. Right here where you can see me. buchanan (focusing): Indeed you are. Indeed. What a mercy. I had a strange dream, Miss Hetty. A strangely substantial and distressing dream. miss hetty: And what sort of dream might that have been, Mr. Buchanan? buchanan: I dreamed I was President of these United States. miss hetty (moving to bed, neatening up blankets, pillows): But thats no more than fact. buchanan: None the less strange for that. Years ago, Miss Hetty, setting out to be a lawyer with old Jim Hopkins as my guide, I soon learned that facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows. miss hetty folds down blankets, turns buchanan over on his side, facing her and away from the audience. She places a bedpan below his middle. He emits a squeak of pain; then there is the sound of urination into the pan. She takes the bedpan away and hands it to the servant girl, who carries it from the room. buchanan: They were all there, Miss Hetty, as real to me as you are this minute--little Cobb fair to bursting to speak his piece, like the student certain to please the teacher, and Judge Black as dour and grim and rumpled in his clothes as a Glasgow chimney sweep, and old Cass struggling to stay awake with his wig slipping sideways, and poor John Floyd yellow as a ghost stretched out on the divan in his dressing gown, too sick with himself to stand; they all were wanting something from me, Miss Hetty. They were demanding I perform some task. I couldnt for the life of me make out what it was. They were frightened, Miss Hetty, every man of them. And I stood above them as majestic and serene as one of those pinioned eagles that used to roam the lawn. miss hetty: Oh, werent they fine pests! Killing the chickens, fouling the porch steps, keeping the dogs in a state of agitation...(She accepts the emptied bedpan from the servant girl, replaces it beneath the bed.) buchanan: I was standing among them tall as a tree, Miss Hetty, exalted by the consciousness that I was President; my body felt to be composed of millions of spirits, and I flew, thats right, I was flying across the land, across the Alleghenies, and I thought to myself, Miss Hetty, I remember thinking, "I havent been this far west since I rode to Kentucky at the age of twenty-one." I intended, you know, to go there and live. Had I done so, history would be different, and dear Anne might be alive. How strange facts are! miss hetty: I always thought it strange, speaking of strange, how content those eagles acted on the lawn, considering they were native to California, where the scenery must be very different. buchanan: Ah, Lancaster County, its beauty becalms us all. Elsewhere in the United States men move on, but here they stick like flies to molasses paper. I take it, Miss Hetty, my dream has ceased to exercise a claim upon your interest. miss hetty: Far from it, Mr. Buchanan. You were an eagle headed west. buchanan: I was the President, Miss Hetty, and all the Union lay visible beneath me. The North with its smoking mills, the soft green Southland as yet unscarred by war, the West with its deserts and mountains, the Mormon lake, the shining Pacific beyond. Beneath me lived a vast humming, which became a murmurous cry, a subdued and multitudinous petitioning for mercy; while above me a profound silence obtained, a silence as crystalline and absolute as a ladle of water from my corner spring. (touches throat) Tell me, could the child--might the child be prevailed upon to fetch a fresh pitcher from the spring? My system is so replete with poisons, none but the purest element can penetrate. miss hetty wordlessly hands girl the porcelain pitcher. girl goes out. buchanan: Now tell me, dear all-knowing Hetty, what might my dream signify? miss hetty: Maybe that youre remembering the old days in your sleep. buchanan: Come, Hetty. Humor an invalid. Play Joseph to my Pharaoh. What would the hexerei doctor behind Duke Street decipher of my flying? miss hetty: Maybe that youre gaining back your strength. buchanan: No. Not that. We regain what is rightfully ours. I have exhausted my claim in this instance. Thrice, by my accounting, I was brought to the door of death and allowed to turn away. Once to become an officeseeker, when I would have joined poor deluded Anne in her grave. The second time, to become President, when my guts were all but dissolved with the National Hotel disease. The third time, to write my administrations vindication, though North and South were howling me down for a traitor and death had become as plentiful as apples in autumn. I seek no further reprieve. The carrying costs of my body have grown exorbitant. My effluviums, save for the giddy outpourings of speech, clog like a silted millrace, and the pain in my joints at night would make a Stoic seek his warm bath. My toes, for all the messages they send me, might be in session in Sacramento. Mix with these omens my curious bliss, my birthday sense of some wonder proximate, and the augury is firm. Flying equals dying. The oddity, dear Hetty, the philosophical oddity is that, having delayed dying so long, I find myself so skillful at it. I believe it has always been, unbeknownst, my m Details ISBN0812984900 Author John Updike Publisher Random House Trade Language English ISBN-10 0812984900 ISBN-13 9780812984903 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 812.54 Residence Beverly Farms, MA, US Birth 1932 Death 2009 Year 2013 Publication Date 2013-04-09 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Subtitle A Play Short Title BUCHANAN DYING Imprint Random House Inc Pages 229 Audience General/Trade UK Release Date 2013-04-09 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:137924421;

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