The Hair of Harold Roux: A Novel

Thomas Williams

ISBN 10: 160819583X / ISBN 13: 9781608195831

Published by Bloomsbury USA, 2011

Seller Inventory # 160819583X-VB

Synopsis:

In 1975 the National Book Award Fiction Prize was awarded to two writers: Robert Stone and Thomas Williams. Yet only Stone's Dog Soldiers is still remembered today. That oversight is startling when considering the literary impact of The Hair of Harold Roux. A dazzlingly crafted novel-within-a-novel hailed as a masterpiece, it deserves a new generation of readers. In The Hair of Harold Roux, we are introduced to Aaron Benham: college professor, writer, husband, and father. Aaron-when he can focus-is at work on a novel, The Hair of Harold Roux, a thinly disguised autobiographical account of his college days. In Aaron's novel, his alter ego, Allard Benson, courts a young woman, despite the efforts of his rival, the earnest and balding Harold Roux-a GI recently returned from World War II with an unfortunate hairpiece. What unfolds through Aaron's mind, his past and present, and his nested narratives is a fascinating exploration of sex and friendship, responsibility and regret, youth and middle age, and the essential fictions that see us through.
"Williams's novel is terrific: it is sweet, funny and sexy … Williams is an accomplished magician."-Newsweek

"Everywhere the language flows from the purest vernacular to the elevations demanded by distilled perception. Our largest sympathies are roused, tormented and consoled."-Washington Post Book World

"A wonderfully old-fashioned writer … that dinosaur among contemporary writers of fiction, an actual storyteller."-John Irving

About the Author: Andre Dubus III grew up in mill towns on the Merrimack River along the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. He began writing fiction at age 22 just a few months after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelors Degree in Sociology. Because he prefers to write in the morning, going from "the dream world to the dream world", as the Irish writer Edna O'Brien puts it, he took mainly night jobs: bartender, office cleaner, halfway house counselor, and for six months worked as an assistant to a private investigator/bounty hunter. Over the years he's also worked as a self-employed carpenter and college writing teacher.Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days, a New York Times bestseller. His memoir, Townie, was published in February 2011.  His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters.An Academy Award-nominated motion picture and published in twenty languages, his novel House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. A member of PEN American Center, Andre Dubus III has served as a panelist for The National Book Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he is a full-time faculty member. He is married to performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.Andre comes from a large literary family. He is the proud son of the late short story master, Andre Dubus, author of ten books: the novel The Lieutenant (1967), the story collections, Separate Flights (1975), Adultery and Other Choices (1977), Finding A Girl in America (1980), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983), and The Last Worthless Evening (1986). He was also the author of the novella Voices From The Moon (1984) and the essay collections Broken Vessels (1991) and Meditations From A Moveable Chair (1998). He died at age 62 in February 1999.Andre Dubus III's aunt is the novelist Elizabeth Nell Dubus, mother of Delaune' Michel, also a novelist. His first cousin, once removed, is the acclaimed writer James Lee Burke, author of over thirty novels and short story collections and two-time winner of the Edgar Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. James Lee Burke’s youngest daughter is the novelist Alafair Burke.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Hair of Harold Roux: A Novel
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication Date: 2011
Binding: paperback
Condition: As New