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Description edit
"It's a rare literary novel that can stand up to the rigors of six hours sandwiched in coach between a shrieking newborn and a gentleman hacking up at least one of his lungs. The Thieves of Manhattan , Adam Langer's latest wise and wonderful romp, did the trick splendidly. So splendidly, in... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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“Life can be cheap in a novel; but in a memoir, it's harder to kill.”
Ian Minot
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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Even the truth began to seem fake—telling the truth is one of the best ways to disguise a lie, Roth told me; what makes it a lie is why you’re telling it.
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“Don’t worry about anyone thinking your story’s false,” he said. “Try writing a story they’ll want to believe is true.”
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What he really wanted to do was to show me the right way to tell a lie—the secret to a good one was the perfect combination of self-confidence and understatement, that delicate balance between offering too much and too little information. The point was not to be able to anticipate or predict everything, but to behave as if you could. The same was true of writing,
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right—truth can be the best kind of lie; what makes it false is why you’re telling it—say, for instance, telling the story of your father’s illness or your mother’s tragic death to gain a reader’s sympathy and trust.
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There was a person I wanted to be, and a person I had been, but in between those two, I felt as if I were nobody at all.
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And as I wrote, I vowed to myself that this would be why I always would write—to tell another human being a story, one that felt meaningful to me, whether it actually happened or I had just made it up—and I sensed that, now that I had lived a true adventure, I knew how to make one up pretty well.
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He had never considered reading to understand more about the human condition; reading was all about escaping it.
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or perhaps in some other foreign country whose language he didn’t speak, one where it would take him a lifetime to understand what old traditions were passing, so he wouldn’t regret their disappearance.
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That was the problem with trying to write about reality, Roth thought—the modern human condition, whatever that may have been, didn’t follow the arc of a good plot: characters appeared then drifted away; conflicts remained unresolved; imaginary love affairs stayed imaginary;
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Spending time with her seemed almost too easy, as if we’d skipped all those first steps that couples are supposed to have, as if we had loved each other as kids, gone our separate ways, then returned to each other as adults who were through with games and already knew each other’s secrets.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
First Sentence edit
To tell you the truth, I'd have noticed the guy even if Faye hadn't pointed him out to me.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Adam Langer (Author)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813.6
Subjects edit
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