King: A Street Story

Front Cover
Pantheon Books, 1999 - Fiction - 189 pages
In this book you will be led to a place you haven't been, from where few stories come. You will be led by King, a dog--or is he a dog?--to a wasteland beside the highway called Saint Valery. Here, at the end of the twentieth century, among smashed trucks, old boilers, and broken washing machines, live Liberto, Malak, Jack, Corinna, Danny, Anna, Joachim, Saul, Alfonso, and Vico and Vica.
Listen to King's voice as he tells a different kind of story: twenty-four hours pass and lives are lived. It is good to have survived another winter, for now it is spring, when the nights, though cold, are no longer harsh enough to kill. The wet season is over, and with it the hopelessness of damp. Today the sun will shine: of what else will the day be made?
King is at once a furious homage to the homeless and a lyrical meditation on language and experience. The bitter yet celebratory prose speaks to us all.

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Contents

Section 1
5
Section 2
29
Section 3
59
Copyright

6 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

Alfonso Ardeatina arms ball bark Baron Bella Venezia Boeing bullhorn called chariot chestnuts coat colour comes Corinna Crawler Danny Danny's dark deer hunter dog letters door doorway ears earth eelgrass everything eyes face feet fetch fingers fucking gas cylinder Giambattista Gianni girl Gore-Tex ground guard hair hand head hear heard hermit crab Jack jacket Joachim joke King knife lace laughing leave legs Liberto lick live look lorry Madonna Malak Marcello morning mouth Naples never night nose Orangina Pizza Hut polyamide radishes roof Saint Valéry Sallust says Vica shoulders shouts shut sing sitting sleep smell smiling stand stones stop street talking Tampax Tear gas tell there's things told touch traffic can't kill tulips tyre Vica's Vico says Vico's voice waiting walking wall watch whelk whilst window words

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About the author (1999)

John Peter Berger was born in London, England on November 5, 1926. After serving in the British Army from 1944 to 1946, he enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art. He began his career as a painter and exhibited work at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s. He then worked as an art critic for The New Statesman for a decade. He wrote fiction and nonfiction including several volumes of art criticism. His novels include A Painter of Our Time, From A to X, and G., which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize in 1972. His other works include an essay collection entitled Permanent Red, Into Their Labors, and a book and television series entitled Ways of Seeing. In the 1970s, he collaborated with the director Alain Tanner on three films. He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre, The Middle of the World, and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000. He died on January 1, 2017 at the age of 90.

Bibliographic information

TitleKing: A Street Story
AuthorJohn Berger
PublisherPantheon Books, 1999
Original fromthe University of Virginia
DigitizedAug 20, 2008
ISBN0375405569, 9780375405563
Length189 pages
Subjects › 

Fiction / General
Fiction / Literary
  
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