Fever in the Earth

Description

Slipcover comments: (1) "I began FEVER last evening about dusk and read it straight through, finishing after midnight. A gripping experience. The narrative interest is intense, highly sustained, and cumulative. The episodic detail is vivid, often explosive, always earthy and convincing. The dialogue is fluent, fast-paced, true-to-life, as is the sexual distinction between men and women. I mean the inner psychology between the sexes. The sense of region is full and authentic, of deep substance and broad scope, panoramic, but crisp with detail. The myth-like vision is powerful, and is of convincing substance. Altogether the work pulsates with a marvelous energy and vitality.... You have wrought a strong, beautiful, astonishing book, Bill." (William Everson, aka Brother Antoninus) (2) "Hotchkiss' curiously great book deals to a large extent with the nature and location of God. Not, one must understand, a universal, codified or even codifiable God, but a certain God that a certain man must find and come to terms with on his own." Stan Hager) SPECIAL NOTE: See LAST BEAR McCAIN, a revision of this poetic rendering in prose.

Description

From Author's Note: Some fifteen years were to pass between the beginning of work on FEVER IN THE EARTH and its completion as a published volume—with thirteen of those years being devoted to its writing. The book was begun in late autumn, 1962, as a direct result of a conversation ... with Jim Hall..., my M.F.A. advisor at the University of Oregon.... ...[A] first draft being completed in March and a second ... in June[,] From that point onward the volume went through numerous full revisions—sometimes starting from scratch, sometimes refining and reorganizing the whole. Sometimes the book lay untouched for as much as a year or more; but always I was drawn back to it. Characters were eliminated. Characters came into being. Finally about 1970, I began to experiment with the story as narrative poetry; and in the summer of 1974 I gave in to the inherently poetic nature of much of the material and so began the composition of the long narrative as it now exists. ... October 24, 1977, Newcastle, California

Subjects

Other Editions

• Fever in the EarthPaperbackBlue Oak Pr1977-12-01
• Fever in the EarthHardcoverBlue Oak Press1977-12-01