Reynolds Price

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Reynolds Price bigraphy, stories - Dynasty

Reynolds Price : biography

February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011

Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011), born Edward Reynolds Price, was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in Biblical scholarship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters."Reynolds Price author and long-time Duke English professor, dies." Duke Office of News and Communications. 20 Jan 2011. Web.

List of Publications

  • A Long and Happy Life (1962)
  • The Names and Faces of Heroes (1963)
  • A Generous Man (1966)
  • Love and Work (1968)
  • Permanent Errors (1970)
  • Things Themselves (1972)
  • The Surface of Earth (1975)
  • Early Dark (1977)
  • A Palpable God (1978)
  • The Source of Light (1981)
  • Vital Provisions (1982)
  • Mustian (1983)
  • Private Contentment (a 1984)
  • Kate Vaiden (1986)
  • The Laws of Ice (poems, 1986)
  • A Common Room (1987)
  • Good Hearts (1988)
  • Clear Pictures (his 1989)
  • The Tongues of Angels (1990)
  • The Use of Fire (1990)
  • New Music (1990)
  • The Foreseeable Future (1991)
  • Blue Calhoun (1992)
  • Full Moon (1993)
  • The Collected Stories (1993)
  • A Whole New Life (1994)
  • The Promise of Rest (1995)
  • Three Gospels (1996)
  • The Collected Poems (1997)
  • Roxanna Slade (1998)
  • Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care? (1999)
  • A Singular Family: Rosacoke and Her Kin (1999)
  • Feasting the Heart 2000
  • Learning a Trade: A Craftsman’s Notebooks, 1955-1997 (2000)
  • A Perfect Friend (2000)
  • Noble Norfleet (2002)
  • A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined 2003
  • The Good Priest’s Son (2005)
  • Letter to a Godchild : Concerning Faith (2006)
  • Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back (2009)

Personal life

Price lived alone, by choice, for all of his adult life and was openly homosexual.Garner, Dwight. "An American Writer, Coming of Age in Oxford." The New York Times 12 May 2009. 14 April 2013. Web.

Shortly after dawn on July 3, 1984, in the midst of treatment for his tumor, Price awoke in his bed and claims to have had a life-changing mytstic experience and vision in which he came in contact with Jesus Christ at the Sea of Galilee. Price gives an account of this occurrence in A Whole New Life:

It was the big lake of Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee, in the north of Israel… the scene of Jesus’ first teaching and healing. I’d paid the lake a second visit the previous October…. Still sleeping around me on the misty ground were a number of men in the tunics and cloaks of first-century Palestine. I soon understood with no sense of surprise that the men were Jesus’ twelve disciples and that he was nearby asleep among them…. Then one of the sleeping men woke and stood. I saw it was Jesus, bound toward me…. Again I felt no shock or fear. All this was normal human event; it was utterly clear to my normal eyes and was happening as surely as any event of my previous life…. Jesus bent and silently beckoned me to follow…. Jesus silently took up handfuls of water and poured them over my head and back til water ran down my puckered scar. Then he spoke once—"Your sins are forgiven"—and turned to shore again, done with me. I came on behind him, thinking in standard greedy fashion, It’s not my sins I’m worried about. So to Jesus’ receding back, I had the gall to say "Am I also cured?" He turned to face me, no sign of a smile, and finally said two words—"That too."Price, Reynolds. A Whole New Life. New York: Scribner, 1995. Print.