What do you think?
Rate this book
The Names and Faces of Heroes
Atheneum 1973. FIRST ATHENEUM EDITION IN PAPERBACK. Owner stamped name front free end paper. Clean, tight, like new book, spine uncreased, bright and shiny! Great buy! Private Collection.
- GenresShort Stories
179 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 1989
20 people want to read
About the author
Reynolds Price
193 books121 followersReynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University. He taught at Duke since 1958 and was James B. Duke Professor of English.
His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Photo courtesy of Reynolds Price's author page on Amazon.com
His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Photo courtesy of Reynolds Price's author page on Amazon.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 11, 2022
4.5 stars. This is a book of stories by the author of "A Long & Happy Life". I highly admire Reynolds Price and don't think you can go wrong with any of his books.
This particular collection has some gems. "A Chain of Love" and "The Warrior Princess Ozimba" - so much warmth and human kindness for those ailing or in need. "The Anniversary" - Reynolds Price enlarges our understanding, warms and disturbs our hearts writing with poignancy of stages of life and death and human experiences thru all ages and times. "Troubled Sleep" - two boys wanting to die together! Lastly the story the title is based on "The Names and Faces of Heroes" -the father-son relationship.
Another good book for lounging on the beach.
This particular collection has some gems. "A Chain of Love" and "The Warrior Princess Ozimba" - so much warmth and human kindness for those ailing or in need. "The Anniversary" - Reynolds Price enlarges our understanding, warms and disturbs our hearts writing with poignancy of stages of life and death and human experiences thru all ages and times. "Troubled Sleep" - two boys wanting to die together! Lastly the story the title is based on "The Names and Faces of Heroes" -the father-son relationship.
Another good book for lounging on the beach.
Want to read
August 24, 2022Read so far:
*A chain of love
*The warrior princess Ozimba
*Michael Egerton
The anniversary
Troubled sleep
Uncle Grant
*The names and faces of heros
***
*Waiting for Dachau
*The fare to the moon
*Night and day at Panacea
*Broad day
*A chain of love
*The warrior princess Ozimba
*Michael Egerton
The anniversary
Troubled sleep
Uncle Grant
*The names and faces of heros
***
*Waiting for Dachau
*The fare to the moon
*Night and day at Panacea
*Broad day
January 25, 2021
2021
I have read four books so far this year, two of which have been rereads. I came to this last one knowing that it would provide comfort to me. In my old age, the wisdom of Reynolds Price's words gives me the warmth I so need and seek in the time I have left on earth. I would shout the amazement of this writer if I thought people would pay attention. Unfortunately, I have found, however, that many public readers today that inhabit Goodreads and BookTube are only interested in their own public persona. The worth of the books they read is measured in how they contribute to their self-righteous indignation at the wrongs of the world, the reward being found in those members of said reading organizations that grovel at the disdain pitched out into the world in reviews that are carefully contrived to enlarge the reviewers' sense of self-worth.
Reynolds Price is an American Southern writer that writes prose so poetic that its smoothness is as close to perfection as one can imagine. His insights into the human heart and those simple ties that bind us together are transcendent. Yet, because he is a Southern writer, he will never achieve the readership he so deserves. He will be judged (as all Southerners are) as an unsophisticated racist. That readership will, instead, be given to the books that address the cause of the week and to the empty, supercilious reviews that overpopulate the realm of Goodreads and BookTube.
*****
2017
In the nineties I went through a spell of reading several books by Reynolds Price. I really enjoyed them. Last night I picked up his book of short stories, The Names and Faces of Heroes, to reread. I recalled a couple of the stories and remembered I really liked them. Rereading them these many years later, my understanding of the stories has deepened. My appreciation of the music of his prose has deepened. Rereading these stories, I have entered into a book of such beauty that is painful to behold. The sense of humanity revealed in these tales grabs the heart and wrestles with it to demand attention, to realize what gifts abide when we take the time to look. Mr. Price writes of love, of death and of connections. He writes an honest portrait of life that wrenches the soul with a pain that is exquisite. This book should be read by anyone that is open to the beauty of language and the wonder that is the human heart.
I have read four books so far this year, two of which have been rereads. I came to this last one knowing that it would provide comfort to me. In my old age, the wisdom of Reynolds Price's words gives me the warmth I so need and seek in the time I have left on earth. I would shout the amazement of this writer if I thought people would pay attention. Unfortunately, I have found, however, that many public readers today that inhabit Goodreads and BookTube are only interested in their own public persona. The worth of the books they read is measured in how they contribute to their self-righteous indignation at the wrongs of the world, the reward being found in those members of said reading organizations that grovel at the disdain pitched out into the world in reviews that are carefully contrived to enlarge the reviewers' sense of self-worth.
Reynolds Price is an American Southern writer that writes prose so poetic that its smoothness is as close to perfection as one can imagine. His insights into the human heart and those simple ties that bind us together are transcendent. Yet, because he is a Southern writer, he will never achieve the readership he so deserves. He will be judged (as all Southerners are) as an unsophisticated racist. That readership will, instead, be given to the books that address the cause of the week and to the empty, supercilious reviews that overpopulate the realm of Goodreads and BookTube.
*****
2017
In the nineties I went through a spell of reading several books by Reynolds Price. I really enjoyed them. Last night I picked up his book of short stories, The Names and Faces of Heroes, to reread. I recalled a couple of the stories and remembered I really liked them. Rereading them these many years later, my understanding of the stories has deepened. My appreciation of the music of his prose has deepened. Rereading these stories, I have entered into a book of such beauty that is painful to behold. The sense of humanity revealed in these tales grabs the heart and wrestles with it to demand attention, to realize what gifts abide when we take the time to look. Mr. Price writes of love, of death and of connections. He writes an honest portrait of life that wrenches the soul with a pain that is exquisite. This book should be read by anyone that is open to the beauty of language and the wonder that is the human heart.
March 29, 2014
Loved Rosacoke Mustian in A Chain of Love.
A beautiful book of ordinary people.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/12...
A beautiful book of ordinary people.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/12...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews