Home Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker; Afterword by Deborah Eisenberg (ISBN: 9781590171127)

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Cassandra at the Wedding Paperback - 2004

Name: Cassandra at the Wedding
Price: 31.92 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Baker, Dorothy
ISBN: 9781590171127

by Dorothy Baker; Afterword by Deborah Eisenberg

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From the publisher

Dorothy Baker (1907–1968) was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1907 and raised in California. After graduating from UCLA , she traveled in France, where she began a novel and, in 1930, married the poet Howard Baker. The couple moved back to California, and Baker completed an MA in French, later teaching at a private school. After having a few short stories published, she turned to writing full time, despite, she would later claim, being “seriously hampered by an abject admiration for Ernest Hemingway.” In 1938, she published Young Man with a Horn, which was awarded the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942 and, the next year, published Trio, a novel whose frank portrayal of a lesbian relationship proved too scandalous for the times; Baker and her husband adapted the novel as a play in 1944, but it was quickly shut down because of protests. Her final novel, Cassandra at the Wedding, examined the relationship between two exceptionally close sisters, whom Howard Baker asserted were based on both Baker herself and the couple’s two daughters. Baker died in 1968 of cancer.

Deborah Eisenberg is the author of four collections of short stories and a play, Pastorale.  She is the winner of the 2000 Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and five O. Henry Awards. The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg won the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives in New York City.

First line

I TOLD them I could be free by the twenty-first, and that I'd come home the twenty-second.

Details

Title Cassandra at the Wedding
Author Dorothy Baker; Afterword by Deborah Eisenberg
Binding Paperback
Edition First Printing
Pages 241
Volumes 1
Language ENG
Publisher New York Review of Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date September 30, 2004
ISBN 9781590171127 / 1590171128
Weight 0.57 lbs (0.26 kg)
Dimensions 8.1 x 5.18 x 0.54 in (20.57 x 13.16 x 1.37 cm)
Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, Psychological fiction
Library of Congress Catalog Number 2004016738
Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"An important achievement…intoxicating fun." — Lillian Smith

"[Baker’s] ear for dialogue is acute, her prose immaculate…this is a novel of exceptional quality." — Times Literary Supplement

"I—whose usual bed time is ten o’clock—stayed up all night reading that exquisite Cassandra at the Wedding—dazzled by the pyrotechnics of such an artist. I can only think back toYoung Man with a Horn, and be overwhelmed by Dorothy Baker’s continuing brilliance." — Carson McCullers

"Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding (New York Review Books, 2004) is another novel in which it’s hard not to be caught up from the very first page by the first—person voice of the speaker. Originally published in 1962, this is the compulsively readable story of Cassandra’s unwilling trip home to attend (or prevent) her twin sister Judith’s wedding. She’s one of those neurotic, intellegent women, trying to understand the direction her life has taken. Long out of print, this is just one of the wonderful titles (both fiction and non—fiction) brought back to life by a publishing company whose mission, according to editor Edwin Frank, is to rescue some of the many truly remarkable works of literature that have had the misfortune of falling out of print." — Nancy Pearl, The Beat, KUOW 94.9 FM Seattle NPR

About the author

Dorothy Baker (1907-1968) was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1907 and raised in California. After graduating from UCLA, she traveled in France, where she began a novel and, in 1930, married the poet Howard Baker. The couple moved back to California, and Baker completed an MA in French, later teaching at a private school. After having a few short stories published, she turned to writing full time, despite, she would later claim, being "seriously hampered by an abject admiration for Ernest Hemingway." In 1938, she published "Young Man with a Horn," which was awarded the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942 and, the next year, published Trio, a novel whose frank portrayal of a lesbian relationship proved too scandalous for the times; Baker and her husband adapted the novel as a play in 1944, but it was quickly shut down because of protests. Her final novel, "Cassandra at the Wedding," examined the relationship between two exceptionally close sisters, whom Howard Baker asserted were based on both Baker herself and the couple's two daughters. Baker died in 1968 of cancer.
Deborah Eisenberg is the author of four collections of short stories and a play, "Pastorale."  She is the winner of the 2000 Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and five O. Henry Awards. The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg won the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives in New York City.