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The Color of Air

The Color of Air

Scenes from the Life of an American Jew: Volume 1

by John Sanford

$16.95 USD
$16.95 USD
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Product Details

Black Sparrow Press

Softcover
ISBN: 978-0-87685-643-7
Pages: 304
Size: 5.85" x 8.96"
Published: September 1985
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In his five volume epic autobiography, John Sanford once again juxtaposes reminiscence with documentary material--not only brief, lyrical bio-vignettes on earlier American heroes and heroines, but also excerpts from personal letters, diaries and transcripts of court testimony--to build an impressive mosaic of the past, giving back full multi-dimensional vividness to history by returning it to the intimate field of experience, registered through his unique prose construction method: that elusive quality of vanished time which he himself has aptly termed "the color of the air." For all his reliance on the distancing elements of fact, record and assemblage, it becomes increasingly clear as Sanford's critically acclaimed work reaches its conclusion that the method is as personal as any other major writer's.

"Whether we know it or not," he himself recently suggested, "we all draw on ourselves for what we've seen, done, heard, imagined; on our stock, our savings, and we use it till it's gone."

Also available from Godine: Volume 2: The Waters of Darkness, Volume 3: A Very Good Land to Fall With, Volume 4: A Walk in the Fire, Volume 5: The Season, It Was Winter

Author: John Sanford

John Sanford is the name of the principal character in The Water Wheel, a first novel by Julian Shapiro published in 1933. Adopting it as a pseudonym, the writer has used it ever since. Born in the Harlem section of New York on 31 May 1904, he attended the public schools of that city, Lafayette College, and finally Fordham University, where he earned a degree in Law. He was admitted to the Bar in 1929, and at about the same time, influenced by his friend Nathanael West, he too began to write. Published at the outset in vanguard magazines of the period- The New Review, Tambour, Pagany, Contact- he soon abandoned the legal profession and produced through the years a series of eight novels. Concerned always with the course of American history, he interspersed his fiction with critical commentaries on the national life from the Left-Liberal point-of-view. As a result of such dissent, he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and for refusing to cooperate with it, he was blacklisted. In spite of difficulty in obtaining publication, he continued to write in his chosen vein, ultimately stripping his work down to its historical content only.