The Lost Country by William Gay

Contents:

• “THE LOST COUNTRY,” BY WILLIAM GAY
• THE LOST COUNTRY, A POSTHUMO NOVEL BY WILLIAM GAY, REVIEWED BY MICHAEL A. FERRO
• THE LOST COUNTRY — WILLIAM GAY
• THE LOST COUNTRY BY WILLIAM GAY EBOOK

“THE LOST COUNTRY,” BY WILLIAM GAY

The Lost Country was published posthumoly, ten years after thor William Gay’s ath. Fans of Gay’s work speculate when the text was posed, batg whether fell toward the begng or end of his reer.

Regardls of Gay’s origal tentns, the novel’s lack of a plete arc ftly explor the actured nature of the Amerin dream the south. Gay suggts that there is no space for nnectn wh this ght landspe – that survival and livg are distct om one another, and the latter nnot be accsed by lower-class southerners like Edgewater. Midway through the novel, Gay wr that “realy only touched Edgewater plac of transiency, jails and b statns, the highway.

THE LOST COUNTRY, A POSTHUMO NOVEL BY WILLIAM GAY, REVIEWED BY MICHAEL A. FERRO

While we nnot be certa what Gay’s tentns were for the novel when he first drafted , the rult is a hntg and visceral renrg of the Amerin south.

William Gay. The term most monly ed to scribe William Gay’s novels is “southern gothic, ” which I suppose fs his latt – and last – book well. Gay unfortunately passed before The Lost Country’s release, although he had wrten the bulk of the novel durg the seventi, long before his untimely passg 2012.

Gay had acknowledged to iends that Edgewater was a semi-tobgraphil character, albe slightly exaggerated for entertament purpos. There may be a reason for the plot’s lack of any real purpose, as the novel was bbled together through sheer termatn by Sonny Brewer and Gay’s fay after his passg. We will never know if the fished product would have differed had Gay lived long enough to plete – or if what we have been given is exactly as he tentned.

THE LOST COUNTRY — WILLIAM GAY

Born Tennsee 1939, William Gay began wrg at 15 and thored his first novel at 25 but didn’t beg publishg until well to his fifti. One nnot help but wonr what the world of southern gothic lerature might be like had William Gay published earlier life. Much like Flkner, McCarthy, and O’Connor, Gay was a master of the bleak and the betiful, able to break your heart one sentence and cut out and toss on a sptg p fire the next.

Origally nsired lost followg his ath, thanks to the folks at the wonrful die prs, Dzanc Books, Gay’s newt work has found the light of day. Much of what has given Gay a cult followg the lerary world is on high display here: a troubled and wanrg anti-hero, a wi-rangg st of vagabonds that vary om sners to sats, and a particular yearng for the quixotic ialism of certa ral small-town ge societi—plac “where liv were so margal they seemed srcely to exist at all, everythg that passed between the paper that proved their birth and the paper that proved their ath jt mormongerg and hearsay”—a landspe that n only be scribed as uniquely, perhaps pafully Amerin.

THE LOST COUNTRY BY WILLIAM GAY EBOOK

But the te phenomenon of a talent like Gay is his seemgly effortls abily to weave a tale that requir no te fable plot thread other than to mmerize the rear wh astonishg prose and a gift for storytellg— matters not where we follow protagonist Billy Edgewater throughout The Lost Country, we’re happy to be along for the ri. Edgewater, like many of Gay’s rough-cut ma characters, has been srned by the world and is stgglg to get one step ahead of his never-endg seri of setbacks the mid-1950s.

While Edgewater reflects on the women, he often ntemplat what his life might be had he done somethg differently his past, and the matns showse Gay’s immense geni for summong up the dualy of perceptn—the ntrast of the light and dark wh all. While watchg one woman whom he enters the story wh, Gay brilliantly scrib the unterpots:. As Edgewater mak his way across the ral south, hoppg om honky-tonk to honky-tonk and landg and out of lol jails, he leav a verable trail of emotnal stctn and bised bodi his wake, and he’s scribed by Gay as “the phone that rang ep the night, a ath the fay, bad news at journey’s end.