Hi folks,
Here's my editor, Loretta Santini of Italian publisher Elliot launching the Italian version of HARD TIMES. Today, it's on the shelves of all the bookstores in Italy! ALL OF 'EM! This is the secret of sales. Every one of my books that have been released to bookstores have sold out their print runs! I'M PUMPED!!!!
Here's the introduction Joe Lansdale so very graciously provided for this version:
JOE LANSDALE SAYS
(INTRO TO TEMPI DIFFICILI
(HARD TIMES))
Les Edgerton is
one of our best and most underrated writers, and that’s a sad moniker to throw
at anyone. Underrated.
To know you’re doing fine work, and
not obscure or abstract work, to wake up and go at it every day, hammer and
tongs, with the understanding that you may not be reaching the wider audience
you would like or deserve, that’s got to put a kink in your mindset from time to
time.
But Les seems to
be made of stronger stuff, or has the ability to de-kink the kink and keep
moving forward, writing one amazing book after another.
When he writes he takes his soul
and winds it up and lets it loose and it sails across the literary skies with
grace and truth, and damn if just about everyone seems to be looking in the
wrong direction.
I once told him,
and meant it, that when he writes crime, he my favorite crime writer, though
after one of his novels, I have to come up for air for a while before I leap
into his next. His books can be that intense.
Thing about Les,
though, he’s not just a crime writer. He writes other things. And when he
writes crime, he’s not just a crime writer. I like his kind of bonkers approach
to fiction, as he both tells the daily truth, and tells the metaphorical truth
as well.
A storm isn’t merely a storm, an
arithmetic award torn in two is more than a piece of paper or a momentary
disappointment in the life of his main character in Hard Times.
It is the symbol for all she is, and you might
say all she will be. The award is ripped in half by an envious boy. This leads
to the main character taping it back together and tucking it away. Wounded
dreams, deferred, taped up and stored in wishful reserve. That one scene tells
you who Amelia is. How she sees life. How she handles it. Any happiness she
might have comes with Scotch tape and disappointment.
I have read a
lot of Les’s work, and I have liked it all, but this, hands down, pinky-swear,
is his finest novel to date. It takes place where I live—East Texas—and though
I might have a quarrel here and there with how the location is presented, and a
wish for a quotation mark, its minor. How it feels is presented with accuracy.
How Amelia feels is unquestioned. He is inside of that character, and I don’t
care if he’s an older man writing about a younger girl, a young woman, he
remembers youth, and his radar is hot and high and he has picked up the human
condition vibrating in the air. He knows people, and seems to best know people
who exist on the edge, supported by hot smoke and a doubtful prayer.
This is a dark
and grimy story about a young girl growing up, making mistakes, and having to
survive under tough conditions and enough disappointment Job might ask for room
at the Devil’s table. Even the things that go well for Amelia come with that
aforementioned Scotch tape and disappointment.
I never had to
deal with the things Amelia has to deal with, but I did deal with being poor,
if not being dunked down at the bottom of abject poverty. My family was close
to the bone all of the time, and as my father once said, if it cost a quarter
to shit, we’d have to throw up. We thought of ourselves as broke, instead of
poor, but what we have here is a different mindset. Amelia’s life is down deep
in the greasy bucket of existence. A large bucket with slick sides and no easy
way to climb out, jump out, and there’s no one to boost her up or to lower down
a rope and say, “Take this. I’m pulling your ass out of there, sister.”
And if there was
a rope for Amelia, there’s a good chance it would fray and break.
Amelia is in for
it. Life is chasing her with an axe, so to speak. Still, she’s after that
American Dream.
I believe in it,
by the way. I’m a product of it. But it’s a dream that some are better able to
grasp. It’s a dream that isn’t constantly snatched away from some. But for
others, it’s too far away to reach.
But like Gatsby
reaching out for the Green Light from his position on the pier, she never stops
reaching. Or at least thinking about reaching.
Let me add, I
like how this novel feels, how it is written, how the characters are presented,
even more than the plot. Which, is indeed engaging, but this is not a novel of
stick figures chasing to the last page. It’s got meat on its bones and blood
under its hide.
But the color of sweat and despair,
the sounds of tragedy and unexpected comedy, the taste of hope covered in shit,
will fill a readers head before one truly understands what it all means. Or
before one understands that this is a quintessential American novel, in the way
Wise Blood is, in the way Gatsby is. It seems simple, but buddy, it means bloody
business.
I wish I had
written this.
A writer can’t
offer another writer greater praise.
Truth is,
though, only one writer could have written such a marvelous and constantly
surprising book.
Les Edgerton.
And long may he
write.
Joe R. Lansdale
Nacogdoches, Texas
Big Bear Manor
Just two East Texas boys...
Blue skies,
Les
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