O the Clear Moment - Hardcover

McClanahan, Ed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582434301 ISBN 13: 9781582434308

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2008

Synopsis

In this enormously appealing implied autobiography,” Merry Prankster Ed McClanahan has assembled a gathering of what he calls coming-of-age to coming-of-old-age” stories that are both quirky and cutting, hilarious and lyrical, all told in the inimitable voice of one of his generation’s best southern chroniclers of American life. The tale begins in 1950, the year he turned 17 and, from there, McClanahan is off and running, describing characters from his eventful life with affectionate and precise detail. There’s the summer he spends on a road crew in Yosemite National Park, striving (with ever-decreasing degrees of success) to be faithful to his college sweetheart back home. There’s the McClanavan the ’68 VW Microbus that took McClanahan and his new bride on a 14,000-mile trek in search of honky-tonks. There’s the 1969 peace” demonstration at Stanford University that was less a revolution than a traffic jam. McClanahan and his stories come alive as American souvenirs, enchanting readers with his signature prose in this stunning piece of memoirabilia.”

About this title

About the Author:

Ed McClanahan has taught English and creative writing at Oregon State University, Stanford University, the University of Montana, and the University of Kentucky.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Playful, self-deprecating and wickedly sharp, McClanahan's nine autobiographical short stories delve into youthful shenanigans and poignant first love in the late 1940s in Bracken County, Kentucky. McClanahan has an enormously personable style, ambling back in time to his junior year at Maysville High School in Great Moments in Sports, when, mooning about the four Stonebreaker sisters like every other horny goat in town, he experienced his greatest moment of coolness and his greatest humiliation. In Dog Loves Ellie, a high-school reunion of his Class of '51 prompts the author to revisit magnificent, painful memories of his first major crush, Ellie Chadwick, who invited the gangly youth to the Sadie Hawkins dance and then dumped him for a less worthy suitor named Dog. Fondelle, or: The Whore with a Heart of God, the most sparkling of the collection, chronicles the author's early hitchhiking adventure the summer before his senior year in college. A former Merry Prankster, McClanahan muses on the writing life and classic Americana with giddy nostalgia and gently barbed humor.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1582434301
• ISBN 13: 9781582434308
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208