De Vries, Peter 1910-1993

The blood of the lamb by Peter De Vries ( Book )
35 editions published between 1961 and 2008 in 3 languages and held by 1,480 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The story of a man who loses his faith in life as a child, when his brother dies, and tries to recover it in manhood when his young daughter's life hangs in the balance

The tunnel of love by Peter De Vries ( Book )
42 editions published between 1949 and 2015 in English and held by 1,318 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The life and somewhat disreputable loves of a cartoonist, comically narrated by his friend, an art editor

Peckham's marbles by Peter De Vries ( Book )
5 editions published between 1986 and 1990 in English and held by 1,257 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Earl Peckham, frustrated because his novel has sold only three copies, sets out for America's heartland to find the three readers who bought his book

Slouching towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries ( Book )
18 editions published between 1983 and 2005 in English and held by 1,239 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Anthony Thrasher is a fifteen-year-old underachiever who simply cannot grasp the mundane realities of the eighth grade. While under the tutelage of his free-spirited teacher Miss Maggie Doubloon (she has the audacity to assign The Scarlet Letter to her class), Tony suddenly finds himself a father. Miss Doubloon leaves town wearing a large "A+" emblazoned on her T-shirt and returns to her hometown of Kalamazoo. Following Maggie and their illegitimate son, Ahab, Tony meet Bubbles Breedlove -- Ahab's buxom, virginal nursemaid -- and falls madly in love with her

The vale of laughter by Peter De Vries ( Book )
13 editions published between 1967 and 2014 in English and Bengali and held by 1,016 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
A brilliant, fiercely funny novel that ponders the eternal question: is it better to laugh or cry? Joe Sandwich is a clown. Not literally, but what else do you call an eleven-year-old who goes to church to confess his good deeds: & ldquo;I did my homework without being told & rdquo;? A stockbroker who gets seasick watching the market tape and claims the gross national product is & ldquo;deodorants & rdquo;? A father who mows curse words into his lawn and names his son Hamilton because, well, who can resist a Ham Sandwich? Prankster, punster, cut-up, card & mdash;Joe needs to crack wise about everything. Has he figured out the secret to embracing the inherent absurdity of life, or is there some terrible anxiety at the root of his compulsion? Lots of people want to know, including his wife, Naughty, who is anything but; his mistress, Gloria Bunshaft; and her husband, Wally Hines, a humorless professor who specializes is the philosophy of humor. & ldquo;If you look back, & rdquo; says Joe, & ldquo;you turn into a pillar of salt. If you look ahead, you turn into a pillar of society. & rdquo; He prefers to live in the moment, from one gag to the next, but the joke he doesn & rsquo;t see coming may get the biggest laugh of all

Consenting adults : or, The duchess will be furious : a novel by Peter De Vries ( Book )
3 editions published between 1980 and 1981 in English and held by 936 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Reuben, Reuben by Peter De Vries ( Book )
8 editions published between 1964 and 2015 in English and held by 859 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Madder music by Peter De Vries ( Book )
11 editions published between 1977 and 1982 in English and Undetermined and held by 826 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Middle-aged, middle-class writer Bob Swirling copes with his puritanical upbringing, his repressed emotions and hostilities, his lack of self-confidence, and his imagined terminal illness by retreating into the identity of Groucho Marx

Sauce for the goose by Peter De Vries ( Book )
4 editions published between 1981 and 1982 in English and held by 810 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Daisy Dobbin sets out to study sexual harassment in business offices, and she and her sister conspirator Effie both fall in love with the same man

The cat's pajamas & Witch's milk; two novels by Peter De Vries ( Book )
5 editions published between 1968 and 2014 in English and held by 809 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Twin tales of middle-class hilarity and despair from the writer who was dubbed Americas preeminent comic novelist by the New York Times When college professor Hank Tattersall sees his former flame, Lucy Stiles, at a campus concert, it sets off a chain reaction that results in one of the funniest and most unforgettable exit scenes in American literature involving a locked door, an alcoholic dog, and a punning doppelgnger. The Cat's Pajamas is the story of how Tattersall, a scrupulous self-reflector, falls from point A to point Z, rushing through a host of identities and indignities along the way. The unexamined life may not be worth living, he discovers, but the examined one is hardly a bed of roses. In Witch's Milk , Tillie Seltzer has her own trials to attend to. Chief among them is her marriage to Pete, the kind of guy who tucks a cigarette behind his ear and calls everybody Frisbee. When they first met, Tillie had more sophisticated tastes ; dark strangers, homburg hats ; but she was also a thirtysomething virgin whose prospects weren't getting any better. When she cracked a joke about the honeymoon being over, Pete believed her. Now stuck in suburbia with a sick child and a philandering husband, Tillie takes a hard look in the rearview mirror. Her search for an escape route will lead her to the most unexpected place of all. These short novels are linked by Tillie's cameo appearance in Hank's narrative and by the thrilling blend of satire, tragedy, and philosophy that defines the one-of-a-kind fiction of Peter De Vries