Nothing is ever simple with Gomer. Between his deplorable sense of timing, his absent-mindedness and his never-ending quest for new ways to avoid work, he causes a lot of fuses to blow – those of his colleagues, De Mesmaeker and poor Prunelle, of course, but also the actual ones at the office. And that is not at all to Alistair Bacus’s taste – the accountant at Spirou Publishing ...
Music soothes the wild beast ... and brings down walls! Among all the things that make Gomer such a lovable rascal, there are two that are instantly recognisable: his car, and his goofophone. His old lemon, favourite target of the constabulary and every pedestrian’s nightmare, is responsible for half the pollution in town – as well as many of the more ... exotic accidents. The rest of the latter are mostly the result of the terrible ‘musical’ instrument put together by Gomer – stiff competition for the Trumpets of Jericho!
Peter S. Prescott was one of the most informed and incisive American literary critics to write for the general public. Never content merely to summarize or to pronounce quick judgments, Prescott's reviews are witty and delightful essays to be enjoyed for their own sake as examples of civilized discourse. Whether he is exploring a well-known novelist's outlook and methods, or the peculiar deficiencies of a work of nonfiction, Prescott's grace, elegance, and insights make each piece proof that real criticism need not be pedantic, obscure, or interminably long. The focus in this second volume of Prescott's writings published by Transaction is on both fiction by American authors and on nonfiction reflecting our American unease. He casts an ironic eye on how we in this country think we live now; on what we are saying about ourselves in our fiction, our history, and our biography. Prescott considers some of our century's classic writers: Hemingway and Henry Miller; John Cheever and Thornton Wilder. He offers new insights regarding those who are still at work: Mailer, John Irving, Oates, Updike, Ozick, and Alice Walker. Some authors do not fare well. With his customary flair; Prescott explains why the reputations of Kurt Vonnegut and Barbara Tuchman, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and John Gardner, urgently need deflation. He includes essays on writers and books not generally noticed in collections of criticism: Stephen King, The Joy of Sex, fairy tales, science fiction, thrillers, books on survival and etiquette. Here is a critic with a personal voice and a sense of style. For essays published in this collection, Prescott received the most highly regarded prize in journalism: the rarely presented George Polk Award for Criticism. This is a chronicle of our contemporary American culture as revealed by its books, written with verve, intelligence, wisdom, and wit by a critic who's cruel only when appropriate. Encounters with American Culture is, quite simply, literary journalism at its urbane best.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “The richest and most powerful single document of the American experience in World War II” (The Boston Globe). “The Good War” is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Studs Terkel as an interviewer and oral historian. From a pipe fitter’s apprentice at Pearl Harbor to a crew member of the flight that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history” of WWII. With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history. “Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time, as if one has stumbled on private accounts in letters locked in attic trunks . . . In terms of plain human interest, Mr. Terkel may well have put together the most vivid collection of World War II sketches ever gathered between covers.” —The New York Times Book Review “I promise you will remember your war years, if you were alive then, with extraordinary vividness as you go through Studs Terkel’s book. Or, if you are too young to remember, this is the best place to get a sense of what people were feeling.” —Chicago Tribune “A powerful book, repeatedly moving and profoundly disturbing.” —People
Surely you remember Wi, a name especially chosen to fit our attention spans? The world-record kidnappee, nabbee, swipee, snatchee, hoisted so many times even he’s lost count? (How about those three times in five minutes effort? That takes rare raw talent, that does.) I mean, if it wasn’t for our Wi how many of these yabbers, yarns, shaggy dogs and yank-your-chain whoppers could I trot out for you? Even getting across one’s not easy when it’s always against the wind from people laughing in your face. No, really, without our Wi, where would all the odd-balls be, drowning their sorrows by ingesting the food in Dominic’s Eatery, swallowing whole mouthfuls without a thought for their own safety? Would any plate get the Wi wipe and come out miraculously unscathed from what had been just laid upon it? Without Wi, how many screwballs could have hired him to do all they’ve always wanted to do? God knows, and the Talls say ‘God knows’ because, if you take it that God made him in His own image, then maybe you’ve stumbled across the one time God spoke too soon. Okay, setting that aside, coming to you is a cast of Lankan characters – and you’d cast too -- and barf, and burp – if you had some of Dominic’s food inside you, let’s not kid ourselves. Not all of us have cast-iron guts and can absorb what could canonize you if you kept it down. And our Wi can’t help being White, either. Did he ever ask for the hoists he’s had to suffer, or complained about the lack of duty-of-care his kidnappers have shown him -- their kidnappee, after all? No. All he asked was a hideaway high above the stars so bright. At least he got that. And, though having to watchfully wait, at least he received the epiphs, too. With the epiphs, he could epiphicatedly dream, so I guess he had something going for him. And let’s not forget he’s Talls recorded as having said, ‘Just let me know if I’m breathing too much and I’ll stop’. Hey, what kidnappee or country like Australia gets a kidnappee so considerate? Is he a peach of a pooch, or what? ---------------------- Bill Reed is an Australian novelist, playwright and short-story writer with national awards for all three. He now lives in both Australia and Sri Lanka.
Since 1972, the Foxfire books have preserved and celebrated the culture of Southern Appalachia for hundreds of thousands of readers. In Travels with Foxfire, native son Phil Hudgins and Foxfire student Jessica Phillips travel from Georgia to the Carolinas, Tennessee to Kentucky, collecting the stories of the men and women who call the region home. Across more than thirty essays, we discover the secret origins of stock car racing, the story behind the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the vanishing art of gathering wild ginseng, and the recipes of an award-winning cookbook writer. We meet bootleggers and bear hunters, game wardens and medicine women, water dowsers, sculptors, folk singers, novelists, record collectors, and home cooks—even the world’s foremost “priviologist”—all with tales to tell. A rich compendium of the collected wisdom of artists, craftsmen, musicians, and moonshiners, Travels with Foxfire is a joyful tribute to the history, the geography, and the traditions that define Appalachian living.
