“Counterpoint would have done enough for American letters this year had it simply released Don Carpenter’s novel Friday’s at Enrico’s…he remains one of the best unheralded American novelists of the last half of the twentieth century.…The three novels gathered here, informed by what Carpenter saw in Hollywood, are, for me, his greatest achievement. (That individual editions of the books have been very expensive when you can find them at all is another reason to be thankful to Counterpoint.” —Barnes & Noble
“Two of these insider’s novels…give fresh impetus to the Carpenter revival.”—Kirkus
Praise for Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling
“Don Carpenter is a particular favorite of mine. His first novel, Hard Rain Falling, might be my candidate for the other best prison novel in American literature.”—Jonathan Lethem
“Carpenter’s masterpiece, long out of print, is the definitive juvenile—delinquency novel and a damning indictment of our justice system that is still relevant today.” —George Pelecanos, The Village Voice, screenwriter of The Wire
“Don Carpenter combines a reporter’s eye for external detail with a novelist’s sense of inner depts.”—Los Angeles Times
“Hard Rain Falling roars through dim Western streets like an articulate Hells Angel looking for a fight…The book is tough and vital, built with slabs of hard prose.” —The New York Times
“Full of lyrical evocations of a lost working—class San Francisco, the novel also contains possibly the best two—page drunken celebration of cheap, corny, vulgar, un—cleaned—up Market Street ever set in print.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
Praise for A Couple of Comedians
“Nobody around today writes as skillfully and authoritiatively about the crazy world of movies and show biz as Don Carpenter. He is doing for present–day Hollywood what Daniel Defoe did for 18th–century London—charting its licit and illicit commerce, exploring its underside, relevaling in precise detail how the place works.” —Bruce Cook, Washington Post Book World
“I never knew what they meant when they said so–and–so writes like an angel, but now I do. Don Carpenter gives us a superb prose, light, fast as the speed of reading, quick in its turns, luminous, tender, humorous, sad, full of wise woe and cosmic optimism.” —Norman Mailer
Praise for The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan
“Geroge Pelecanos and others helped get his first novel back into print, but Carpenter wrote several others that are, in their fashion, just as good. Loved this cat since the 70’s, man, and chose this novel because it has a nice reach—showbiz, streets, the ups and downs; as is so often the case with Carpenter, he seems most closely related to Nathanial West, only West isn’t forgotten.” —Daniel Woodrell
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