Peter de Vries - The Blood of the Lamb (pdf) torrent

Peter de Vries - The Blood of the Lamb (Penguin, 1961). 246 pages.

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Peter De Vries (February 27, 1910 - September 28, 1993) was an American editor and novelist known for his satiric wit. He has been described by the philosopher Daniel Dennett as "probably the funniest writer on religion ever." Nearly all his books are now out of print, but they were once acclaimed as some of the best American novels of the past century.

The Blood of the Lamb is the most well-known of them.


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The most poignant of all De Vries's novels, The Blood of the Lamb is also the most autobiographical. It follows the life of Don Wanderhope from his childhood in an immigrant Calvinist family living in Chicago in the 1950s through the loss of a brother, his faith, his wife, and finally his daughter-a tragedy drawn directly from De Vries's own life. Despite its foundation in misfortune, The Blood of the Lamb offers glimpses of the comic sensibility for which De Vries was famous. Engaging directly with the reader in a manner that buttresses the personal intimacy of the story, De Vries writes with a powerful blend of grief, love, wit, and fury.

Review

"With luck, a writer capable of producing both Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb will not remain unappreciated for long."

(Adam Kirsch The New York Sun 20050622)

"My favorite novel of [2005] is the University of Chicago Press reprint of Peter DeVries’ The Blood of the Lamb, a tirade against faith inspired by the death of the author’s daughter. Not since Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair has a book rendered man’s rage against a hostile God so visceral.... DeVries’ Don Wanderhope moves deftly from manic hilarity to manic fury, and back again, as he tells his story. At the end, all humor drains away in a strange, explosive and utterly hopeless confrontation with the divine."

(Maud Newton Newsday )

"If Peter De Vries did not write the latter part of 'The Blood of the Lamb' with his own life's blood, I never have read a book that was so written. It plainly is autobiographical, and for poignant, sensitive treatment of the death of a beloved child it has scarcely a superior in contemporary fiction."

(Fanny Butcher Chicago Tribune )

"A masterpiece of realism and literary craftsmanship. It tells a poignant story without relying on sentiment or sacrificing humor."

(J.E. Bruns Catholic World )

About the Author

Peter De Vries (1910–1993), the man responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms as "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow," was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic." But De Vries's life and work was informed as much by sorrow as by wit, and that dynamic is nowhere better seen than in his classics Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb. First published in 1982 and 1965, respectively, these novels reemerge with their sharp satire and biting pain undiluted by time.