CRUM - Softcover

Lee Maynard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067164842X ISBN 13: 9780671648428

Publisher: Washington Square Press, 1988

Synopsis

The narrator describes his adolescence in a small Appalachian town and his determination to move away

About this title

Reviews

With its preoccupation with adolescent sex, and a plethora of obscene and scatological language, silly pranks and fisticuffs, this inaugural novel in the Washington Square Press original fiction line will only appeal to readers with sophomoric tastes. Maynard, 51, sets his first effort, a 1950s coming-of-age story, in his native Crum, W. Va., "located deep in the bowels of the Appalachians, on the bank of the Tug River, the urinary tract of the mountains." The nameless narrator repetitiously cites his desire to leave this mining town, which was "a zero. A blank. Nothing"rife with poverty and ignorance and bereft of indoor toilets. "We would try anything to relieve the monotony of living in Crum," he says, and the novel details his antics during his final year in the dump, which he flees after completing high school. He and his buddies dynamite outhouses, rob delivery trucks, expose themselves, witness pig butcherings and pick fights with Kentucky teens. There is much potential material here in the plight of the narrator, a lonely orphan who lives in a shed tacked onto the back of a cousin's shack. But Maynard's characters are inscrutable to themselves ("Don't ask me why I did it, I just did," says the hero when he insults a friend) and, ultimately, to the reader.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067164842X
• ISBN 13: 9780671648428
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 189