A Glance Away (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Edgar Wideman
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: Easter Sunday, sometime in the early 1950’s
- Setting: A town in the Allegheny region of the eastern United States
- Principal Characters: Eddie Lawson, Robert Thurley, Brother (William) Small, Martha Lawson, Bette Lawson, Alice Small, Al Levine
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, African Americans, Family or family life, United States or Americans, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Race, Substance abuse, Death or dying, Drug addiction or addicts
- Locales: United States
The Novel
“It is after all a way of beginning.” So opens John Edgar Wideman’s novel A Glance Away. Centering on Eddie Lawson, a young black man wracked by his inadequacies as a son, a brother, and a lover, the novel tells the story of one day in his life. On an Easter Sunday, Eddie returns home—having spent a year in a voluntary drug rehabilitation clinic—only to learn, as have innumerable other protagonists of modern fiction, that you cannot go home again. In the course of this fateful day, a day symbolic of renewal, Eddie encounters the death of his old love...
[The entire page is 2978 words long]
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