Someone was kind enough to send me the URL for a terrific review of my book from the Shepherd Express, a Milwaukee weekly, by Martin Jack Rosenblum. The full page, courtesy of the npaper website, is here.
He writes, among much else, that the book is not only a biography of McTell, but "It's also a detailed, atmospheric, cultural rendering of rural Southern life during McTell's lifetime. The story of the artist and his times are clearly delineated by a brilliant historian and the specifics of a way of life are captured in ways that only a poet knows."
How can anyone have mixed feelings about that? Well, only because I wish this very generous review could be appearing not currently, while there's no North American edition of the book available, but in the future, when one will be. People in Milwaukee whose interest is engaged will go to Amazon.com, fail to find the book there, and be stumped. It's always pity to frustrate would-be readers, and it will occur to very few of them that if they tried Amazon.co.uk, they'd be able to buy it at enough of a discount to counterbalance the airmail postal charge... Still, a great review.
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3 comments:
Your book is so essential, and your approach so revealing and eloquent, that considerations regarding its availability as you accurately describe them were negated in order to go into print even at this level of distribution.
Dr. Martin Jack Rosenblum
Author of Milwaukee/USA Shepherd-Express book review under "mixed feelings" discussion.
Well, I can only thank you again: this was such a direct and complimentary response. No further mixed feelings: just gratitude that you not only value the book so much but that you have troubled to say so, and twice over.
Cordial best wishes~
Michael Gray
I admit without hesitation that I have never before entered the blogsphere, and so do with pleasure again relative to your book -- and, let me state, your entire canon. I shall use the book as a text for one of my University classes once it becomes available in the States, I would like to add, along with sincere appreciation for your response.
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