Tales of the Heart: Dreams and Memories of a Lifetime
In this warmhearted and luminous collection of his nonfiction writings, Harry Mark Petrakis carries his readers on an odyssey that spans a lifetime. He begins in the intimate province of the family, with memories of childhood, young love, and early marriage; the experience of raising children; the aging and death of parents. Darker sketches tell of gambling obsessions and life in the streets and the risk of death. In reports on travels, Mr. Petrakis turns a sharp eye on England, the Middle East, and his Greek homeland. Whether he is recalling the world of his family or the world grown large, he writes with a novelist's eye and a poet's language. Readers of Mr. Petrakis's work over the years know they will not only see the landscape and the people but come away with a greater understanding of how dreams and memories play a revelatory role in our lives. Kurt Vonnegut has said of Mr. Petrakis's fiction: "I have often thought what a wonderful basketball team could be formed from Petrakis's characters. Every one of them is at least 14 feet tall." And John Cheever wrote: "I've always thought Harry Mark Petrakis to be a leading American novelist." Tales of the Heart sustains his position as one of our finest, most affecting authors.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:1566632439
ISBN13:9781566632430
Release Date:February 1999
Publisher:Ivan R. Dee Publisher
Length:224 Pages
Weight:1.05 lbs.
Dimensions:1.3" x 6.0" x 8.7"
Customer Reviews
3 ratings
What Defines a Great Storyteller?
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
Anyone can tell (or write) a story. The real trick is all about engaging the listener or the reader...grabbing hold of them in such a way that they set aside the hustle and bustle of their lives and become engrossed in the story. This is the storytelling skill Petrakis has demonstrated throughout his long and illustrious career. Tales of the Heart exhibits all of Petrakis' power as a storyteller, but it goes much farther. When I was young, my dad, an educator, used to stop every once and a while, in the midst of some thankless task, glance sideways at me, and say: "This counts." He wanted me to understand that we were engaged in something bigger. Tales of the Heart points us all toward something bigger.Petrakis, whether writing fiction or essays, or whether delivering a public address, is one of my favorite storytellers. Tales of the Heart provides an inspiring look into the heart of a superb writer, the likes of which may never pass this way again.
Good Book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
I had the honor of meeting Mr. Petrakis at my school just a short while ago. He is a very unique man and weaves humor in with some of the most nostalgic of memories. His books are great, personally, i had dreaded reading someone's memoirs, but even though there is a considerable gap of decades in between our ages, i can still identify with some things he experienced and grew stronger by.
"Tales of the Heart" is a lyrical journey into the past
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
Harry Mark Petrakis' new book, "Tales of the Heart: Dreams and Memories of a lifetime," is an amazing piece of autobiography that speaks with the force of lyrical poetry. Although prose that is either fiction, nonfiction, or both, the book immediately brings to mind the poetry of Yannis Ritsos, or Pablo Neruda. The book, like almost all of the work by Petrakis, is so tightly constructed that the reader can feel and hear the words alliteratively exploding off the page. What makes this book so unique in the world of contemporary literature is that it is impossible to define by genre. It is not a novel even though it reads like one. Although it looks like a collection of essays it is not that at all; instead, what we haveis a powerfully packed series of highly emotional and poetically told tales by a master storyteller in memory. Finally, "Tales of the Heart: Dreams and Memories of a Lifetime," is the type of book that may change the readers life. The world in which it presents is so moving, emotional, and poetically told that the reader is forever drawing back to personal memories of their own,and as strange as it may seem, simultaneously laughing and crying. Don't miss this one!
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