Perfect Agreement by Michael Downing
Mark Sternum, a professor who teaches spelling and grammar at Boston's McClintock College, is full of droll observations about the rules that govern our language, but he leads a diligent if somewhat detached life. Friends and family try to coax him into deeper involvement, yet he keeps even his lover at arm's length. He screens all incoming calls, including his eccentric sister's word pictures about the waning days of their comatose mother. One day, an African-American single mother who has failed the college's basic skills test for the last time accuses Mark of prejudgism, and Mark is fired. Blown off course, he monitors the ensuing academic skirmish from a distance as his case makes national headlines, and turns his attention instead to the graceful rhythms of a small Shaker community. As the scrambled pieces of Mark's life and the simple ways of the Shakers begin to merge, Mark finds new beauty in his own maddening, blissful dependency on the people in his life. Funny and generous, Downing's seemingly effortless prose juxtaposes cunning portraits of academic functionaries weathering the age of political correctness with the people and values of the last Shaker families in America.
Michael Downing's novels include the national bestseller Perfect Agreement, named one of the 10 Best Books of the year by Amazon and Newsday, and Breakfast with Scot, a comedy about two gay men who inadvertently become parents. An American Library Association honor book, Breakfast with Scot was adapted as a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. His nonfiction includes Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, hailed by the New York Review of Books as a dramatic and insightful narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, and by the Los Angeles Times as a highly readable book. His essays and reviews appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals. Michael teaches creative writing at Tufts University. He and his partner have lived together in Cambridge for more than 25 years.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780425166284 |
| ISBN 10 | 0425166287 |
| Title | Perfect Agreement |
| Author | Michael Downing |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Putnam Inc |
| Year published | 1998-10-01 |
| Number of pages | 200 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |