William Guy (when he is not traveling) lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Gravitys Revolt, a novel; Defunctive Music, a book of poems;A Travelers Education; Magic Casements; and Something Sensational, three books of travel essays. With William Orr he is the author of Living Hope: a Study of the New Testament Theme of Birth from Above. He has completed a translation of The Iliad. He is presently at work on The Lyndoniad, a book of interrelated poems about the year 1968, a long poem containing history (he hopes).
1975. Christopher Reed, a young minister in his first job, receives much-needed seasoning, is necessarily disillusioned. How? On one level by having an affair with Becky Grierson, one of his teen-aged parishioners. But the affair is begun on a theological dare so to speak, in order to test an intriguing vision of the freedom of the Gospel which Dr. Buttrick, the senior pastor under whom Reed works, a truly Christ-like man (though it depends, of course, on what your image of Jesus is) has presented. "Scrupulous," or guilt-stricken, Reed tells his wife Vinnie, an artist and a free-thinker, what he has done with Becky. Vinnie erupts, then curiously, over time, adjusts, gradually accommodates herself, allows the affair to continue. Reed also tells Dr. Buttrick what he has done. Great-spirited, a wise old man, a genius, Dr. Buttrick listens and counsels. He counsels both Reed and Vinnie. The three of them discuss the limits of marriage, the relevance of Christianity to same. Vinnie and Dr. Buttrick have their own intense relationship. Meanwhile the meteoric Becky moves through her senior year in high school, fights free of her youth and prepares to leave for college. Obsessed almost, Reed suffers at the prospect of "losing" her. And grows in some way as a person or at least as a pastor, learning to expect less of the flock which he supposedly leads, since if often acts less than nobly. Some members even turn on Dr. Buttrick, the genuinely good man, in the year of the novels action.
1975. Christopher Reed, a young minister in his first job, receives much-needed seasoning, is necessarily dis-illusioned. How? On one level by having an affair with Becky, one of his teen-aged parishioners. But the affair begun on a theological dare so to speak, in order to test an intriguing vision of the freedom of the Gospel which Dr. Buttrick, the senior pastor under whom Reed works, a truly Christ-like man (though it depends, of course, on what your image of Jesus is) has presented. "Scrupulous," or guilt-stricken, Reed tells his wife Vinnie, an artist and a free thinker, what he has done with Becky. Vinnie erupts, then curiously adjusts, gradually accommodates herself, allows the affair to continue. Reed also tells Dr. Buttrick what he has done. Great- spirited, a wise old man, a genius, Dr. Buttrick listens and counsels. He counsels both Reed and Vinnie. The three of them discuss the limits of marriage, the relevance of Christianity to same. Vinnie and Dr. Buttrick have their own intense relationship. Meanwhile the meteoric Becky moves through her senior year in high school, fights free of her youth and prepares to leave for college. Obsessed almost, Reed suffers at the prospect of "losing" her. And grows in some ways as a person or at least as a pastor, learning to expect less of the flock which he supposedly leads, since it often acts less than nobly. Some members even turn on Dr. Buttrick, the genuinely good man, in the year of the novel's action.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years “The comedy crackles, the puns pop, the satire explodes.”—The New York Times “The work of a virtuoso with prose . . . His intricate symbolic order [is] akin to that of Joyce’s Ulysses.”—Chicago Tribune “A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force.”—San Francsisco Examiner The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy. When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.
Winner of the 1974 National Book Award "The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II." - The New Republic “A screaming comes across the sky. . .” A few months after the Germans’ secret V-2 rocket bombs begin falling on London, British Intelligence discovers that a map of the city pinpointing the sexual conquests of one Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, U.S. Army, corresponds identically to a map showing the V-2 impact sites. The implications of this discovery will launch Slothrop on an amazing journey across war-torn Europe, fleeing an international cabal of military-industrial superpowers, in search of the mysterious Rocket 00000.
Based on the IV Hotine-Marussi Symposium held in Trento, the volume covers three important topics: boundary value problems, satellite geodesy and stochastic methods in geodesy. The first part deals with boundary value problems which are tackled from both the theoretical and the numerical point of view. The part on satellite geodesy deals with the simulation of the GOCE mission, the integration of satellite gradiometry and airborne gravity for gravity-filed recovery, satellite-to-satellite tracking and orbit sensitivity analysis. Various applied and theoretical contributions are devoted to the stochastic methods applied to geodesy. The book presents the state-of-the-art of the main topics in the theoretical and methodological aspects of geodesy.
