Parnassus on WheelsI imagined him in his beloved Brooklyn, strolling in Prospect Park and preaching to chance comers about his gospel of good books. "When you sell a man a book," says Roger Mifflin, the sprite-like book peddler at the center of this classic novella, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life." In this beguiling but little-known prequel to Christopher Morley's beloved Haunted Bookshop, the "whole new life" that the traveling bookman delivers to Helen McGill, the narrator of Parnassus on Wheels, provides the romantic comedy that drives this charming love letter to a life in books. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. |
Contents
Section 1 | 17 |
Section 2 | 23 |
Section 3 | 24 |
Section 4 | 32 |
Section 5 | 39 |
Section 6 | 51 |
Section 7 | 62 |
Section 8 | 71 |
Section 10 | 91 |
Section 11 | 98 |
Section 12 | 109 |
Section 13 | 117 |
Section 14 | 125 |
Section 15 | 132 |
Section 16 | 139 |
Section 9 | 79 |
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Common terms and phrases
adventure afraid Andrew McGill anyway apple sauce asked began better blue October Bock bought bread Brooklyn bunk CHRISTOPHER MORLEY cook Decameron dinner eggs eyes farmer farmhouse fell asleep gave George Eliot give glass of blessings Greenbriar guess hand Happiness and Hayseed hay fever hear heard Helen McGill hoboes jail kind kitchen knew literary literature looked Mason McNally Miss McGill morning never night Norfolk jacket o'clock Paradise Regained parcheesi PARNASSUS ON WHEELS Pegasus Perfessor pipe Port Vigor portmanteau Pratt pretty Profes Professor pulled quarry queer Redbeard road Roger Mifflin Sabine Farm Sage of Redfield seemed sell books Shelby shelves side sitting stood stop stove sure talk telephone tell There's thing thought tramp TRAVELLING PARNASSUS turned vagabond wagon Willdon window woman wonder Woodbridge Woodbridge Road