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AmazonEncore
April 2012
On Sale: April 3, 2012
598 pages
ISBN: 1612182976
EAN: 9781612182971
Kindle: B006VFZPK8
Paperback / e-Book
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Fiction
The first book in nationally renowned librarian Nancy
Pearl’s new Book Lust Rediscoveries series, this lost
literary classic is available for the first time in decades.
As funny and entertaining as it is captivating and
heartrending, A Gay and Melancholy Sound is a shattering
depiction of modern disconnection and the tragic
consequences of a life bereft of love. Joshua Bland has lived the kind of life many would define as
extraordinary. Born in a small Iowa town to a controlling,
delusional mother who had always wanted a daughter rather
than a son, her anger at him colors his life. His father, a
compassionate drinker incapable of dealing with Joshua’s
mother, walks out on his wife and son, leaving a vacuum in
the family that is damagingly filled by his
tutor-cum-stepfather Petrarch Pavan, scion of a wealthy New
York family who has secrets of his own. Playing on Joshua’s
brilliance, Petrarch trains him to win a nationwide
knowledge competition, but Joshua’s disappointing results in
the finals are met with anger and disbelief by both his
mother and stepfather. If Petrarch was unsuccessful in
teaching Joshua the information he needed to win the
contest, he had more success in instilling Joshua with the
cynicism, self-doubt, and self-hatred that fill his own soul. Enlisting in the army during World War II, he serves first
as an infantryman, where his irreverent letters home turn
him into a best-selling author. Then, as a paratrooper, he
meets the physical challenges he thought were beyond his
reach and helps free the concentration camps before being
wounded as the Allied forces free Buchenwald. Back home
after the war, he becomes a wildly successful producer—and
all of this by the age of thirty-seven. But when his
production company flounders amid critical and financial
woes, the reality of who he is becomes perfectly,
depressingly clear: he has had a lifetime of extraordinary
experiences—and no emotional connection to any of it.
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