|
"A quick scan through the pages reveals a book that is indeed dense with the feel of the 1960s, so much so that even those who didn't live through that infamous decade might come away feeling a little lightheaded."
—See Magazine
"Taken as a whole, the quartet does a better job of capturing the entire panorama of the 1960s in the USA than any novel I've read."
—Librarian in Tie-Dye
"Fiercely entertaining, sweetly
heartbreaking, Difficulty at the Beginning follows
John Dupre as he grows up through the late '50s to the '70s in Raysburg,
a fictionalized town in West Virginia. John is a compellingly flawed
adolescent everyman, falling in love every few minutes, dreaming
of being a writer, and struggling with his sense of self, all against
a backdrop of many of the most significant events of the 20th century.
Keith Maillard has constructed a credible world in Raysburg, through
which the reader gleans new insights into the politics, pretences,
and possibilities of the both the recent past and the disturbing
present."
—Natalee Caple, author of Mackerel Sky
"You will be moved and impressed by the luminous prose ... The work records not only the coming of age of one fully realized and memorable character, but of an entire generation in a pivotal moment in history. ... a superb introduction to a major North American talent."
— Globe and Mail
Oddly enough, this expatriate might have written the great American
novel."
— Owen Sound Sun-Times
Difficulty at the Beginning is Keith Maillard’s
most ambitious project yet: a four-volume novel published
between September 2005 and September 2006. It is his magnum opus,
the keystone of his writing career and “the book he was born
to write.”
Difficulty at the Beginning follows John
Dupre from his awkward high-school years in the late 1950s through
the burgeoning counterculture movement of the early 1960s to the
tumultuous and devastating late-1960s political and psychedelic
underground. The quartet comprises a single novel: a compelling
portrait of a turbulent time in North American history, a time when
the USA was divided as it had not been since the Civil War, brother
against brother; when an unjustifiable war was tearing a distant
country apart and bringing ever-increasing numbers of soldiers home
in body bags; when social and sexual boundaries were being breached
at the same time the status quo was being re-entrenched by the power
élite. A time very much like the present.
Each of the four volumes is written in the style
of the times. Running reflects the relative simplicity and
optimism of the post-WWII years. Morgantown hums and throbs
with the freewheeling energy and free-floating angst of youth pushing
against the boundaries of social acceptability in the early 1960s.
Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes situates the anxiety of
the years following Kennedy’s assassination and the impending
threat of the Vietnam draft in the oppressive heat of a West Virginia
summer. In the final volume, Looking Good, all the currents
of the high 1960s draw together in an explosive climax.
Readers of The Clarinet Polka and Gloria
will eagerly welcome this latest instalment in the Raysburg series.
Those new to Maillard’s work will be astonished to discover
a major author—as readable and humane as John Irving and as
literary as Faulkner. By any measure, Difficulty at the Beginning
is a major addition to American and Canadian literature, a brilliant
and supremely readable social chronicle that ranks with the best
of North American fiction.
"Difficulty at the Beginning is the
real autobiography of a fictional character who was there. Keith
Maillard is a novelist that doesn't know how to lie."
—Robert Kroetsch
"Difficulty at the Beginning … four
well-crafted, handsomely produced novels … follows protagonist
John Dupre from his high-school years in the late 1950s through
the early '60s counterculture to the late '60s, when Americans who
didn't agree with the Vietnam War but got drafted were faced with
the major ethical dilemma of their young lives."
— Vancouver Sun
"Fiercely entertaining … One of the
greatest strengths of [Difficulty at the Beginning] is the
wide variety of feisty, clever women in John's life and his complicated
respect for them."
—Calgary Herald
|
