- ISBN13: 9781604444117
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Thirty-nine-year-old New Yorker Mitch Robbins (Crystal) is tired of his job and bored with his life. So he and his two best friends (Bruno Kirby and Daniel Stern) trade their briefcases for saddlebags and set out to find freedom and adventure herding cattle under the wide New Mexico sky. But what they discover instead is scorching sun, sore backsides... and more about themselves and each other than they ever thought possible.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Director Ron Underwood and Stars Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern
- Featurettes: Back in the Saddle; City Slickers Revisited; Bringing in the Script; Writing City Slickers; A Star Is Born: An Ode to Norman and The Real City Slickers
- Deleted ScenesThree middle-age buddies (Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby) facing personal crises decide to sign up for a two-week cattle run for a change of pace. The trail proves a tougher place than anyone thought, and the boss (Jack Palance) is a grizzled taskmaster who doesn't cotton to tenderfoot urbanites. Popular in theaters, the film is both funny and moving, with Crystal giving one of his most complete performances and Palance (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar) a lot of colorful fun. Director Ron Underwood (Heart and Souls) subtly shifts the tone of the film from broad comedy to poignancy over its running time, and he makes the story's end a bittersweet victory that feels like life as most people know it. --Tom Keogh Three middle-age buddies (Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby) facing personal crises decide to sign up for a two-week cattle run for a change of pace. The trail proves a tougher place than anyone thought, and the bo! ss (Jack Palance) is a grizzled taskmaster who doesn't cotton to tenderfoot urbanites. Popular in theaters, the film is both funny and moving, with Crystal giving one of his most complete performances and Palance (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar) a lot of colorful fun. Director Ron Underwood (Heart and Souls) subtly shifts the tone of the film from broad comedy to poignancy over its running time, and he makes the story's end a bittersweet victory that feels like life as most people know it. --Tom Keogh
DVD Features:
Alternate endings
Deleted Scenes
Featurette
Music Video
Other
Photo gallery
Theatrical Trailer
An incisive portrait of New York high society and the somber economics of marriage during the late nineteenth century, Edith Whartonâs The House of Mirth tells the story of beguiling socialite Lily Bartâs ill-fated attempt to find happiness.
THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:
⢠A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information
⢠A chronology of the authorâs life and work
⢠A timeline of significant events that provides the bookâs historical context
⢠An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the readerâs own interpretations
⢠Detailed explanatory notes
â¢! Critical analysis and modern perspectives on the work
⢠Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
⢠A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the readerâs experience
Simon & Schuster Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the worldâs finest books to their full potential."The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was s! omething else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gild! ed Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
! Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard ca! sh, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of hers! elf: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie RehakThis book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery."The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opule! nce and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position! serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on ! the ve rge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, S! imon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie RehakThis book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Since its publicati! on in 1905 The House of Mirth has commanded attention! for the sharpness of Wharton's observations and the power of her style. A lucid, disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of her generation, Wharton's tale of Lily Bart's search for a husband of position in New York Society, and betrayal of her own heart, transformed the traditional novel of manners into an arrestingly modern document of cultural anthropology. With incisive contemporary analysis, the introduction by a leading scholar of American literature updates this increasingly important work.
CliffsNotes on The House of Mirth takes you into the waning years of the Gilded Age and the moral bankruptcy of New York City's elite class. Edith Wharton's story of a woman â" whose beauty causes men to desire to possess her and women to be jealous of her â" reflects the complicated struggle of the individual against the social strictures of a powerful, and triumphant, moneyed class.
This concise supplement to the satirically critical The! House of Mirth, helps you understand the overall structure of the novel, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author. Features that help you study include
Classic literature or modern modern-day treasure â" you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.