Moon-Calf: A Novel (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from Moon-Calf: A Novel

Floyd Dell was among the most mature talents in the group of younger writers active in Greenwich Village in the period just before and after the first World War. A student of Freud, he was the first writer of stature to employ the methods of psychoanalysis in the writing of fiction. Floyd Dell was a political radical in his early years in New York, where he served as editor on The Masses and The Liberator, but he never submitted to any intellectual yoke nor participated in any school. He has on that account often found himself out of step with his literary contemporaries -not a proletarian, nor a true Freudian, - indeed he was often assailed by one group or another as a deserter. But he has steadily retained his independence as a thinker and writer and has never compromised with fashion or with commerce.

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Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Moon-Calf: A Novel

When James Fay died, he had held the office of county treasurer, and the respect of all his fellow citizens, for so long that it seemed as if it had been always so. He was Sawter County's grand old man.

It is many years now since his death, and he is still remembered in Sawter County. But the story which keeps his memory alive goes back to an earlier time, when he was not respected by his fellow citizens - to the time when he was old Jimmy Fay the crank. Old Jimmy had not changed; it was not in his nature to change. It was the whole United States, and Sawter County along with it, that had changed. It had taken a civil war to make old Jimmy Fay popular among his neighbours.

Old Jimmy was an Abolitionist - at that date perhaps the only one in southwestern Illinois. He hated slavery - profoundly and passionately. He had always hated it; and he was to live to see his neighbours go to war against it, and come home honouring him for having been the first among them to denounce it. But slavery was not an issue in Sawter County - yet. The free soil of Sawter County was washed by the Mississippi, and the sympathies of its citizens caressed by the slow pressure of a southward-moving current of interest. Speakers at the grand political meetings, knowing this to be in the zone of doubtful sympathies, avoided the subject. Politics meant little to Sawter County, anyway - less than might have been supposed from the attendance at the meetings and barbecues. The taste of fresh roast pig, after long months of salt pork, was the real attraction - not the speeches.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.