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Escape Velocity: Collected Nonfiction, Short Stories & Drama

Escape Velocity: Collected Nonfiction, Short Stories & Drama

Current price: $19.00
Publication Date: August 27th, 2013
Publisher:
The Overlook Press
ISBN:
9781468307399
Pages:
400
Available in 3-7 business days

Description

A varied collection of writing from Charles Portis, a prolific essayist, travel writer, newspaper reporter, and “America’s least known great American novelist,” (New York Times Book Review)
 
Collected here in Escape Velocity, edited by Jay Jennings, is Charles Portis’s “miscellany” –– journalism, short fiction, memoir, and even the play Delray’s New Moon, published for the first time in this volume. Portis covers topics as varied as the civil rights movement, road tripping in Baja, and Elvis’s visits to his aging mother for publications such as the New York HeraldTribune and Saturday Evening Post.
 
Fans of Portis’s droll Southern humor and quirky characters will be thrilled at this addition to his library, and those not yet familiar with his work will find a great introduction to him here. Also included are tributes by accomplished authors including Donna Tartt and Ron Rosenbaum.

About the Author

Charles Portis (1933–2020) lived most of his life in Arkansas, where he was born and raised. He was a graduate of the University of Arkansas, which in 2018 awarded him an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. He served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, was the London bureau chief of the New York Herald-Tribune, and was a writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of four other novels, also available from the Overlook Press: Norwood, The Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis, and Gringos. A selection of his writing has been collected in Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany.