A Story Teller's Story

The American Portrait of the Artist. - Charles Baxter ""Probably unequaled... for the austerity of moral courage and sincerity of conviction.... A book which should be read by every intelligent American."", - The New York Times ""The pilgrim's progress of a man at once a genuine artist... and a small-town, pool-playing, story-telling Midwesterner."" - Sinclair Lewis ""In the field of literary autobiography, it stands practically alone in America."" - The Nation ""The voice of the soliloquist... amplifies the drama of A Story Teller's Story, as does the persistent theme of escape, from an America of fact and factories, marketing and manufacturing, to the borderless Ohio's of imagination and creation. Part manifesto, part reverie, part romance, it is full of scene-sets, stage directions, vignettes, and 'moments'. An Epilogue replays what seems a never-ending struggle in the writer's life between 'the fanciful' and 'the physical', between the work one does for a living and the work one does to be alive...."" - From the introduction by Thomas Lynch