The Error of Our Ways [Hardcover]

David Carkeet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1997

Enjoying his professional successes and his contented family, Ben Hudnut experiences a series of Job-like challenges and befriends fellow sufferer and determined linguist Jeremy Cook. 10,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How do you put language at the center of a novel? Make the protagonist a linguist, and give everyone telling names and portentous things to say. That is what David Carkeet--himself a linguist by training--does in his novels. Jeremy Cook, the successful academic linguist and hero of Carkeet's earlier Double Negative and The Full Catastrophe, returns in The Error of Our Ways. Now married and unemployed, the previously cocksure Cook follows his ambitious wife, a linguist as well--though one with a teaching position--to a tiny college in St. Louis. There Cook meets Ben Hudnut, the nut magnate of St. Louis, whose own manhood is jeopardized by failure in the nut business. The novel is a clever tale of middle-aged male insecurity and the damning consequences of fate. The joy of it all resides in Carkeet's prose and the witty wordings he designs.

From Publishers Weekly

Domestic comedy is Carkeet's forte, and his fifth novel is a shrewd, wickedly funny delight, full of hilarious takes on rocky marriages, sexual boredom, raising kids, communication gaps?and nutty doings, as in almonds and cashews. Ben Hudnut, 44-year old owner of Crunch, a gourmet nut emporium in St. Louis, finds his life unraveling. A clandestine extramarital affair a decade ago now threatens to derail his marriage. His distrustful, suicidal 18-year-old daughter, Andrea (who knows about his affair), may be sleeping with her English teacher. Ben is so preoccupied with nuts, he can't connect emotionally with his four daughters, and he's totally caught off-guard when Roberta, his quiet, loyal secretary, embezzles a quarter of a million dollars, wiping him out. Into this morass steps befuddled wordsmith Jeremy Cook (who cleared a forest of fuzzy language in Double Negative and The Full Catastrophe). Jeremy, a born loner, an unemployed, embattled linguist in a world indifferent to words and their meanings, is enlisted to study the speech patterns of the Hudnuts' foul-mouthed toddler Molly, but he has his own domestic troubles; his earnest wife, Paula Nouvelles, a linguist at mediocre Buford University, is plotting to annul their marriage, a secret Jeremy accidentally discovers from a voicemail message. As Jeremy, an anthropologist of words and gestures, decodes the self-projecting (and self-protective) linguistic quirks of politicians, conservatives, restaurant patrons, tennis players and the Hudnuts, Carkeet navigates the slippery terrain between our public personas and inner selves. And as Jeremy makes blundering attempts to help Ben straighten out his life, Carkeet, a delectable observer of human foibles and pretense, delivers a wise meditation on how we unwittingly affect the course of other people's existences.. This sparkling novel transcends the genre of academic satire and should win Carkeet a broad following. Author readings. Rights: Karpfinger Agency.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company; 1st edition (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805045023
• ISBN-13: 978-0805045024
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,887,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Carkeet was born and raised in the Gold Rush town of Sonora, California. He went to college at U.C. Davis and Berkeley, then to graduate school at U. of Wisconsin and Indiana U.--thus the southern Indiana setting for "Double Negative," his first novel. He lived in St. Louis for 30 years, where he set "The Full Catastrophe" and "The Error of Our Ways." He now lives near Montpelier, Vermont, and you can probably guess where he set his newest novel, "From Away." He is married with three grown daughters. More info at davidcarkeet.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Really Enjoy This Book, May 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Error of Our Ways (Hardcover)

Carkeet was my History of the English Language professor two semesters ago, so I picked up this book out of curiosity when I saw it advertised on the UM-St. Louis English Department "Recent Faculty Publications" board. Am I glad I did. This book is very funny and very true to life. And the best part is that I can actually hear Carkeet's voice in there. Having taken one of his classes, I think, has given me a lot of insight into the book I might not have had otherwise, but I think that a lot of people can relate to this book, especially when it comes to the relationships between the characters.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read., June 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Error of Our Ways (Hardcover)

This is a complex yet thorougly readable and hilarious book. A master of the spoken word, Carkeet makes every word count. His characters touched me deeply at many levels.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A small masterpiece, June 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Error of Our Ways (Hardcover)

A wonderful addition to the tradition of the comic novel -- though fans of Evelyn Waugh, Amis pere et fils, Charles Portis and Michael Chabon will surely love it, it's also quietly innovative. I started reading around eight in the evening; I put it down just before two a.m. hoarse from laughter. I withhold a rating of `10' only because I have a hunch this author might just be able to top himself