A Study Guide for Reynolds Price's "A Long and Happy Life"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Reynolds Price's "A Long and Happy Life," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535816809

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A Long and Happy Life

Reynolds Price

1962

Introduction

Upon its first publication in 1962, A Long and Happy Life announced the arrival of a major literary talent. Reynolds Price's first novel, published just a few years after his graduation from college, is a tale told in the southern Gothic tradition, regarding the sorrows of a young woman, Rosacoke Mustian, who tries to find love in an obscure rural town. Her long-term boyfriend, Wesley Beavers, is mysterious to her, showing Rosacoke enough interest to make her feel that they might have a true bond but also flirting with other women and ignoring her to such an extent that she often wonders if he knows her at all. Price tells this story with an exacting eye for detail and a firm control of his characters' emotions as they come to grips with the births and deaths that control the courses of their lives. He creates a very specific geographical location, a countryside where whites and blacks, poor and rich, know each other and live together as neighbors, and where the surrounding forest is still wild enough to raise the sense of wonder in people who have known it all their lives. Since the publication of A Long and Happy Life, Reynolds Price has distinguished himself as a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and playwright. While all of his works have been important to the American literary scene, this novel remains one of his most significant contributions.

Author Biography

Reynolds Price was born on February 1, 1933, in Macon, North Carolina. His father, William, was a traveling salesman; his mother, Elizabeth, was a homemaker with a quirky, eccentric personality that came to play a direct influence on the focused sense of storytelling that Price was to develop. The author spent his childhood in small North Carolina towns, a fact that shows clearly in his fiction, which is most often concerned with the lives of characters from the Carolina backwoods. His talent as a writer manifested itself early, and it