A Hasty Bunch (Lost American Fiction) - Tapa dura

A Hasty Bunch was published a half--century ago in Paris in a limited edition by Contact Editions--and never re-printed until now. The first story, "Backslider," chroni-cles Gert Northrup's fall from grace with ironic understanding. In "Sing the Baby to Sleep, Marietta," McAlmon's lyricism and sharpness of eye for the colors of the New Mexico desert create an almost unbearable tension in a story of two women in love with the same man. "Light Woven into Wavespray" displays McAlmon's youthful self-consciousness about a man's romantic yearnings. "A Boy's Discovery" is a moving example of the tough, poignant analysis of the young which is charac-teristic of McAlmon's work. "The Psychoanalyzed Girl" portrays a mem-orable--and astonishingly modern-- young woman in Montparnasse. "A Family Business" is a delightful charac-terization of an ailing guest at the "Rest an Hour Kosher year-round hotel." And in "Abrupt Decision" a docile housewife is brought to a realization of the futility of all things. Students of McAlmon's work will welcome this republication of his al-most inaccessible collection of short stories. General readers of fiction and short stories unfamiliar with McAlmon until now will be astonished by the range and diversity of one of the most influential writers of the Paris renais-sance of the 1920s.

Robert McAlmon was born in Clif-ton, Kansas, in 1896. He returned to the United States in 1935. He died in Desert Hot Springs, California, in 1956. Kay Boyle recently retired from the faculty at California State University at San Francisco. Her most recent novel is The Underground Woman.