Items related to Shamp of the City-Solo
This is the third edition of one of the finest comic novels to appear in the last half century, a book that has been compared with the very best of Flann O Brien, Angela Carter, and Witold Gombrowicz. Appearing first in 1974, Shamp of the City-Solo quickly became an underground sensation. This “fantasy” novel takes place in a dystopian parallel universe, a world set at an odd remove where the hero s hunger for fame displays its mythic origin. Hughbury Shamp is the reluctant teenager who becomes apprenticed to three “masters” at the West Poolesville Depot on the Sumpsky Prospect, across the River Sump from Big Yolk, the city-solo. His education proceeds through various misadventures with the likes of impresario Sergei Shipoff, Dr. Harry Analarge, and the World-Friar Tapsvine, all the while he is being propelled toward stardom as the breakfast speaker at the murderously competitive Arslevering Ox Roast. The writing is simply extraordinary a style that seems born of Lawrence Sterne and Djuna Barnes, with sidelong glances at Samuel Beckett s Watt, Marcus Aurelius, and the works of Sir Thomas Browne. With her very first novel, Jaimy Gordon managed that almost impossible feat: a novel of lasting consequence.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Jaimy Gordon was born in Baltimore, earned degrees from Antioch College and Brown University, and now teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and an Academy Institute Award from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. With Peter Blickle, she has translated several works of Maria Beig from the German.
Review:
Shamp of the City-Solo has rightly been called one of the more beautiful novels in the language...’ -- Allen H. Peacock, Boston Globe
It think it also wise, both under and on the surface...I begin to suspect it may be inexhaustible. -- Keith Waldrop, Margins
Something new in the great free-wheeling tradition of Petronius, Rabelais and Swift...and what could be better? --Hayden Carruth
To say Ms. Gordon is fertile with metaphor is to only hint at her abilities; examples burst with prolific abandon from every page... Gordon's novel remains foremost a comic triumph. --Aspect
When I first read this novel I thought it far ahead of most new writing. I feel the same upon a later reading. I'm struck by its originality, its loving cynicism, its irony, its poetic force. --William Goyen
It think it also wise, both under and on the surface...I begin to suspect it may be inexhaustible. -- Keith Waldrop, Margins
Something new in the great free-wheeling tradition of Petronius, Rabelais and Swift...and what could be better? --Hayden Carruth
To say Ms. Gordon is fertile with metaphor is to only hint at her abilities; examples burst with prolific abandon from every page... Gordon's novel remains foremost a comic triumph. --Aspect
When I first read this novel I thought it far ahead of most new writing. I feel the same upon a later reading. I'm struck by its originality, its loving cynicism, its irony, its poetic force. --William Goyen
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherTreacle Pr
- Publication date1980
- ISBN 10 091423238X
- ISBN 13 9780914232384
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages133
- Rating
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