Roger's Version
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Roger's Version
''Roger's Version'' is a 1986 novel by American writer John Updike. Plot summary The novel is about Roger Lambert, a theology professor in his fifties, whose rather complacent faith is challenged by Dale, an evangelical graduate student who believes he can prove that God exists with computer science. Roger becomes obsessed with the thought that Dale is having an affair with his wife, Esther. Roger himself becomes involved with his niece Verna, a coarse but lively nineteen-year-old and single parent whose own mother (Roger's half-sister) had a sexual hold over him when they were in their teens. Verna, frustrated by her poverty and limited opportunities, becomes increasingly abusive towards her one-and-a-half-year-old, mixed-race daughter, Paula. Roger, out of sympathy for her situation and his increasing sexual attraction for her, begins to tutor Verna so she can earn her high school equivalency. One evening, when Paula refuses to go to sleep, Verna shoves and hits her; Paula ...
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Novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ...
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Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper’s coverage emphasizes California and especially Southern California stories. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and final ...
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John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and Colson Whitehead), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in ''The New Yorker'' starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for ''The New York Review of Books''. His most famous work is his "Rabbit" series (the novels '' Rabbit, Run''; '' Rabbit Redux''; ''Rabbit Is Rich''; ''Rabbit at Rest''; and the novella ''Rabbit Remembered''), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both ''Rabbit Is Rich'' (1981) and ''Rabbit at Res ...
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General Educational Development
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high school diploma, as is HiSET. The GED Testing Service website currently does not refer to the test as anything but "GED". The American Council on Education (ACE), in Washington, D.C. (U.S.), which owns the GED trademark, coined the initialism to identify "tests of general equivalency development" that measure proficiency in science, mathematics, social studies, reading, and writing. Passing the GED test gives those who do not complete high school, or who do not meet requirements for high school diploma, the opportunity to earn their high school equivalency credential, also called a high school equivalency development or general equivalency diploma. It is called the GED in the majority of the United States, Canada, or internationally. In 2 ...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel '' Fanshawe''; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as ''Twice-Told Tales''. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. ''The Scarlet Letter'' was published in 1850, followed by a suc ...
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The Scarlet Letter
''The Scarlet Letter: A Romance'' is a work of historical fiction Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ... by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of Legalism (theology), legalism, sin and Guilt (emotion), guilt. ''The Scarlet Letter'' was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States. It was popular when first published and is considered a classic work of American literature. The novel has inspired numerous film, te ...
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Roger Chillingworth
Roger Chillingworth is a fictional character and primary antagonist in the 1850 novel ''The Scarlet Letter'' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He is an English scholar who moves to the New World after his wife, Hester Prynne. Chillingworth, a doctor and student of alchemy, attempts to emigrate from England to Puritan Boston. He sends his wife ahead to set up in Boston, but he is delayed by problems at sea and then held captive by Indians. When he finally arrives in Boston, he finds his wife on a scaffold, being shamed for committing adultery. Meeting Hester in jail, Chillingworth presses her to divulge the name of her partner in adultery, but she refuses. Searching without her help, he eventually discovers that her lover is the town minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. Using his position as a doctor, and under the guise of treating Dimmesdale's unexplained sickness, Chillingworth manipulates Dimmesdale into insanity and suffering. Toward the end of the book, he tries to prevent Dimmesdale from conf ...
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Hester Prynne
Hester Prynne is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel ''The Scarlet Letter''. She is portrayed as a woman condemned by her Puritan neighbors. The character has been called "among the first and most important female protagonists in American literature". Fictional character overview A resident of Colonial America, Hester is sent ahead to the "New World" by her husband, who later assumes the name of Roger Chillingworth, as he has some business to finish before he can join her. After he is shipwrecked and captured by Native Americans and presumed dead, Hester continues to live her life as a seamstress in the town. She looks to the local pastor Arthur Dimmesdale for comfort; somewhere along the way passion emerges, culminating in the conception and subsequent birth of their child, Pearl. Because Hester has no husband with her, she is imprisoned, convicted of the crime of adultery, and sentenced to be forced to wear a prominent scarlet letter 'A' for the rest of her life. ...
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Arthur Dimmesdale
Arthur Dimmesdale is a fictional character in the 1850 romance ''The Scarlet Letter'' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A Puritan minister, he has fathered an illegitimate child, Pearl, with Hester Prynne and considers himself unable to reveal his sin. Next to Hester Prynne herself, Dimmesdale is often considered Hawthorne's finest character. His dilemma takes up a significant portion of the novel, bringing out Hawthorne's most famous statements on many of the concepts that recur throughout his works: guilt and redemption, truth and falsehood, and others. Dimmesdale faces a problem that is both simple and paradoxical: the knowledge of his sin, his inability to disclose it to Puritan society, and his desire for confession. He attempts to ameliorate the pressure of this position by punishing himself (both physically and mentally) and by insisting to his parishioners that he is a base, worthless creature. Without the awareness of his specific crime, however, his flock takes his protestations of ...
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New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital media, digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as ''The Daily (podcast), The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones (publisher), George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times, 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked List of newspapers by circulation, 18th in the world by circulation and List of newspapers in the United States, 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is Public company, publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 189 ...
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David Lodge (author)
David John Lodge CBE (born 28 January 1935) is an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – ''Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses'' (1975), '' Small World: An Academic Romance'' (1984) and ''Nice Work'' (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel ''The Picturegoers'' (1960). Lodge has also written television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of ''Twentieth Century Literary Criticism'' (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T. S. Eliot. Biography David Lodge was born in Brockley, south-east London. His family home until 1959 was 81 Millmark Grove, a residential street of 1930s terraced houses between Brockley Cross and Barriedale. His father, a violinist, played in t ...
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