Hypocritic Days & Other Tales

Douglas Woolf; Edited by Sandra Braman; Preface by Edward Dorn

ISBN 10: 0876859112 / ISBN 13: 9780876859117

Published by Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 1993

About this Item

First Printing with color title page. Clean, tight trade paperback with light handling wear to the cover extremities. Previous owner's bookplate on the verso of the front cover, otherwise the book's interior and text are clean and unmarked. NOT ex-lib. A clean, solid copy of the first printing. 399pp.

Seller Inventory # 008168

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Hypocritic Days & Other Tales
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, CA
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0876859112
• ISBN 13: 9780876859117
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Douglas Woolf was a writer's writer: his tales of serene down-and-outers, belated frontiersmen, and cross-country spiritual seekers were much admired by fellow-artists Ed Dorn, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, and Paul Mazursky. "He was so gentle," wrote Creeley shortly after Woolf's death in 1992, "so particular to the ways people live together. It is in his intimate focus, in the unobtrusive detailing of gesture, conversation, place, that his genius is clear."

From Publishers Weekly

Woolf (1922-1992) has always been a writer's writer, his work available mainly in limited editions. Few moviegoers took note that Harry and Tonto was based on his novel Fade Out. Ignoring current fads, Woolf can make a story out of nothing, then take it nowhere. Opening pages intentionally lead readers astray; often we never learn reasons behind a character's actions. He tackles language in painstakingly measured strides, recording meticulous details, such as his description of a woman's "large green eyes which fear had made larger and deeper." He zeros in on marginal lives, such as a couple expecting their first child who exist on cat food and income from selling their blood. Ruminations, not action, are Woolf's forte; he delights in depicting stagnant relationships. A suburban man still enraptured by his wife's body after 15 years of marriage is described as "uncommon"; and by the end of this brief story the complacency and the marriage are dissolved. "In a world of busy talkers, it seemed to him that he was the only audience left," the narrator of an early novella says. Finally with this ample posthumous volume, Woolf's audience has a chance of catching up with him.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.