Books

MIDNIGHT COWOY

Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck's fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel's emotional nucleus. This unlikely pairing of Ratso and Joe Buck is perhaps one of the most complex portraits of friendship in contemporary literature.

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The focus on male friendship follows a strong path cut by Twain's Huck and Jim, Melville's Ishmael and Queequeg, Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, and Kerouac's Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity. Midnight Cowboy takes a well-deserved place among a group of distinguished American novels that write--often with unnerving candor--about those who live on the fringe of society.

ALL FALL DOWN

The Williams are a strange family. Ralph is a Socialist who goes into real estate because his wife Annabel assures him a good liberal could also be a shrewd businessman.

Their sons: Clinton who spends his time filling notebooks with people's conversation, and Berry-berry, a psychopath who travels around the country, in and out of scrapes and jail.

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Clinton searches for his brother from a bordello on the west coast of Florida eventually to Berry-berry's return home to Cleveland.

Much drama ensues, and somehow out of a dismal mess, Clinton manages to salvage something of himself and the book ends upbeat note.

Herlihy's characters are very close to Flannery O'Connor creations. There's something terribly wrong with them, but their essential problems are the same as everyone else's. The horror of their dilemmas permits the reader not to take them too seriously.

SEASON OF THE WITCH

You call her Gloria. She calls herself 'Witch' 
Looking for life in New York's East Village. 
She finds it... 

In this major bestseller,Herlihy brings vividly to life the revolution of the permissive society - the world of youth, free love, drugs, and danger.