Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes: Difficulty at the Beginning Bk. 3: Difficulty at the Beginning Book 3 - Softcover

Maillard, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1897142080 ISBN 13: 9781897142080

Publisher: Brindle and Glass Publishing, Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

It is the summer of 1965. The assassination of JFK has left John Dupre - and all of America - with Lyndon Baines Johnson, 'hat Southern asshole' with a public persona cut from an old rock and roll song: 'I ride from Texas to enforce the law'. It's oppressively hot, the kind of heat that makes it practically impossible to do anything, or even think straight - and if John's brains aren't addled enough by the temperature, there's the endless obsession with girls - the persistent problems of his old flame Cassandra Markapolous and her younger sister Zoe. There's also the massive Civil War novel he's been studiously not working on. And to make things worse, LBJ's starting to call up the reserves. This is John in that gruelling summer waste land, 'a fat, broke, horny, unemployed, draft-eligible, Buddhist Confederate', who, if he doesn't do something drastic, is going to find his fat, broke, horny ass shipped overseas to get it shot off. "Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes" is a delightful performance, a crackerjack novella that works on multiple levels, as intoxicating as a mint julep and as tightly wound as the spring in a home-made time-bomb.

About this title

Review:

'Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes' is haunted by the spectres of the Vietnam War, the draft and Lyndon Johnson himself. --Globe and Mail

-- (03/15/2006)

Four well-crafted, handsomely produced novels . . . follows protagonist John Dupre from his high-school years in the late 1950s through the early '60s counterculture to the late '60s, when Americans who didn't agree with the Vietnam War but got drafted were faced with the major ethical dilemma of their young lives. --Globe and Mail

-- (03/15/2006)

About the Author:

Keith Maillard is the author of thirteen novels, including Two Strand River, Alex Driving South, Motet, Hazard Zones, Gloria, The Clarinet Polka, and Difficulty at the Beginning, his four-volume Bildungsroman. He has won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (Motet) and was shortlisted for both the Commonwealth Literary Prize (Hazard Zones) and the Governor General's Literary Awards (Gloria). The Clarinet Polka was awarded the Creative Arts Prize by the Polish American Historical Association. His poetry collection, Dementia Americana, won the Gerald Lampert Award in 1995 for the Best First Book of Poetry Published in Canada.

Keith was born and raised in Wheeling, West Virginia, the inspiration for the fictional town of Raysburg, which serves as the setting for many of his novels. He has been a musician, a contributor for CBC Radio, a freelance photographer and journalist, and a designer of distance education courses. His reviews, essays, and poems have appeared in many journals, ranging from Event to Flare. He is currently chair of the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia. He lives in West Vancouver with his wife and two daughters.

The Globe and Mail called Difficulty at the Beginning "a work of terrible beauty and grace, a masterpiece fit to contend with the best novels of the last century." Be sure to check out all four volumes--Running, Morgantown, Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes, and Looking Good--now available as e-books!

Please visit Keith online at keithmaillard.com. You can also find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter at @keithmaillard.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brindle and Glass Publishing, Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1897142080
• ISBN 13: 9781897142080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160