Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel (First Edition)

Fred Chappell (author)

ISBN 10: 0312032978 / ISBN 13: 9780312032975

Published by St. Martin's Press, 1989

About this Item

A very nice First Edition copy! Fine in hardcover (square, tight, unmarked) in a near fine dust jacket. First edition; first printing (full number line present). Jacket has no rips, no tears, and no rubbing, but with rippling to the top half of the back cover. Ships from NC. All hardbacks are sealed in recycled plastic, packed securely with protective wrapping, and shipped promptly. (C-4.).

Seller Inventory # ABE-1769718456010

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel (First Edition)
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312032978
• ISBN 13: 9780312032975
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • North Carolina
  • American Literature
  • Southern Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Recounts the adventures of a North Carolina high school teacher who rescues a drowning child, retrieves a goat from the school's roof, and confronts a mysterious custodian

Reviews

This gentle, wryly comic look at one day in the life of a rural North Carolina schoolteacher, Joe Robert Kirkman, is narrated by his son Jess (seen in Chappell's earlier novel, I Am One of You Forever ). The year is 1946, and Joe Robert is no ordinary schoolteacher. He is a farmer, a hunter, a dreamer and a philosopher whose innovative teaching methods and evenhanded approach to the theory of evolution have irked the local school board--they have summoned him to a late afternoon meeting. His ideals and livelihood imperiled, Robert feels--understandably--apprehensive, and to make matters worse, that day's bizarre series of events (an unfortunate encounter with a treed bobcat, a courageous rescue of a drowning child, and several unsettling metaphysical discussions) have left him battered in mind and body. The meeting is hilarious, if inconclusive. A finely drawn series of minor characters, including stoic farmers and wives, tale-spinning coon hunters and a shrewd local reporter, enriches this modest yet deeply satisfying chronicle.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Narrated with wit and engaging high spirits by his son Jess, this brief, sparkling novel re-creates the comic episodes that constitute Joe Robert Kirkman's last day as high school teacher in Tipton, North Carolina, in 1946: running afoul of a bobcat high in a poplar tree; rescuing a child from drowning; accepting a tribute from the parents of a suicide; coping creatively with the touchy subject of evolution in his general science class; discovering the humanity of the black janitor; coaxing a goat from a roof; and losing a Socratic argument to the shyest student in his world history class. With his open, Marxist (Harpo) view of the postwar world, Kirkman is a riotous, riveting fictional creation. A superb comic work.
- Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.