Don Carpenter
The Murder of the Frogs: And Other Stories
(Dover Publications, May 2020)
From the author of Hard Rain Falling and Blade of Light come these two novellas and eight shorter pieces that explore racial conflict and the agonies of loneliness and heartbreak: “The Crossroader,” in which a Black drifter outfoxes an all-white crew of small-town hustlers; “Blue Eyes,” the story of an aging half-Indian prostitute and her increasingly respectable white lover; “One of Those Big-City Girls,” concerning a woman in her forties drawn to younger men; and more, including the title tale, a moving narrative of a boy’s first love.
Praise for The Murder of the Frogs: And Other Stories
“No pretty little thoughts, no fake faith-restoratives—just hard solid craftsmanship and style.”
—The New York Times (An Outstanding Book of the Year)
“Carpenter shows his versatility and ability to handle strong themes with cool precision…a consistently interesting craftsman.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Don Carpenter
“Nobody around today writes as skillfully and authoritatively about the crazy world of movies and show biz as Don Carpenter. He is doing for present-day Hollywood what Daniel Defoe did for 18th century London—charting its licit and illicit commerce, exploring its underside, revealing the precise detail how the place works.”
—Washington Post Book World on The Hollywood Trilogy
“I never knew what they meant when they said so-and-so writes like an angel, but now I do. Don Carpenter gives us a superb prose, light, fast as the speed of reading, quick in its turns, luminous, tender, humorous, sad, fall of wise woe and comic optimism. I suppose A Couple of Comedians is the best novel I’ve read about contemporary show biz.”
—Norman Mailer on The Hollywood Trilogy
“If Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest prefigured the Age of Aquarius, then Don Carpenter’s semi-autobiographical Fridays at Enrico’s can be read as the swan song of the entire Love Generation…[the novel follows] a fictional group portrait of the North Beach literati whose salon was Enrico’s restaurant in San Francisco.
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—Douglas Brinkley, New York Times on Friday at Enrico’s
“Hard Rain Falling tells a ripping good story…it falls squarely in the tradition of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Norman Mailer’s An American Dream, books that prefigured the counterculture movement in their challenge to conformity and the system. As in all good literature, it attempts to answer the question of why we’re here.”
―George Pelecanos, introduction to Hard Rain Falling
Admired by writers as diverse as Jonathan Lethem, Anne Lamott, and George Pelecanos, Don Carpenter’s novels have now been rediscovered. Carpenter was the quintessential West Coast American writer, whether describing the smell of a seedy pool hall in Portland, Oregon or a bohemian café filled with aspiring writers and drinkers in 60s San Francisco. Carpenter was part of the Beats in the 1950s, and the counterculture heroes of the 1960s, including his close friendship with Richard Brautigan (a troubled genius himself). Carpenter’s classic novel of prison and redemption Hard Rain Falling was republished in 2009 by NYRB, Friday at Enrico’s, finished by Jonathan Lethem, was published by Counterpoint Press in 2014, and The Hollywood Trilogy, a reissue of A Couple of Comedians, The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan, and Turnaround, was published in 2014 by Counterpoint. The Murder of the Frogs, a collection of nine stories, is being republished by Dover Books in May 2020. Carpenter committed suicide in 1995, but his work, celebrated by notable writers and readers, lives on.