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Peter R. Pouncey Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Peter R. Pouncey
Photo: Frank Ward

Peter R. Pouncey

Peter R. Pouncey Biography

Peter Pouncey was born in Tsingtao, China, of English parents. At the end of World War II, after several dislocations and separations, the family reassembled in England, and Pouncey was educated there in boarding schools and at Oxford. A classicist, former dean of Columbia College, and president emeritus of Amherst College, Peter Pouncey lives in New York City and northern Connecticut with his wife.



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Interview

Peter Pouncey discusses his first novel, Rules for Old Men Waiting, which took 23 years to write, and was published as he turned 67 years old.

Is it true that this novel was twenty-five years in the making?
Twenty-three actually. The first part I can remember writing can be dated to early fall 1981: the story of a boy taking his mother rowing on a lake in the highlands of Scotland. The boy, as far as I remember, had no name. The sequel to the rowing in the present book is the same boy taking (and putting back the next day) a Golden Eagle’s egg from its nest on a cliff above the lake, which was not written till 1991 at the earliest; by then he was called MacIver. So it was all a slow evolution and a complex series of layers and accretions. There was no particular agitation, or even urgency, about the slow rate of progress. I was heavily engaged elsewhere at the time, studying the writings of the ancient historians or being a college dean or president, and I looked at these escapes into my imagination as a relief and relaxation from sometimes more stressful preoccupations. In the end, there was a chest filled with pages to draw on. And when you are two-thirds of a century old, it is borne in on you that this may be the last chance to complete what you most wanted to do.

You mentioned your work on the ancient historians. What influence have the ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Peter R. Pouncey at BookBrowse
Rules for Old Men Waiting jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Peter R. Pouncey but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • John Banville

    John Banville

    John Banville, the author of seventeen novels, has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Rules for Old Men Waiting

    Try:
    The Sea
    by John Banville

  • Sonny Brewer

    Sonny Brewer

    Sonny Brewer is the author of the novels, The Poet of Tolstoy Park, A Sound Like Thunder, Cormac - The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing, and The Widow and the Tree. Brewer also edited the anthology series Stories from the Blue Moon... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Rules for Old Men Waiting

    Try:
    The Poet of Tolstoy Park
    by Sonny Brewer

We recommend 6 similar authors

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