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A Raintree County Reading List
Hamilton Basso, "Two Novels," in The New Yorker, 10 Jan 1948.
Howard Mumford Jones, "Indiana Reflection of U. S. 1844-92," in Saturday Review, 3 Jan 1948.
Charles Lee. "Encompassing the American Spirit," in New York Times Book Review, 4 Jan 1948.
John Leggett, Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies (Simon & Schuster 1974). Sadly, this book isn't sourced. Cited herein as [RL]
Ernest Lockridge, Skeleton Key to the Suicide of My Father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County (Global Enterprises 2011; Createspace 2014). I am quoting from the Kindle e-book, also dated 2011. The book is fascinating but should be treated with skepticism. Cited herein as [EL]
Larry Lockridge,
Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author
of Raintree County (Viking Penguin 1994; Indiana University Press
2014). The author's second son, Larry followed his father to Indiana
University and Harvard, though he actually completed his Ph.D and became a
professor of English, teaching at Harvard, Rutgers, Northwestern, and NYU.
His professional name is Laurence S. Lockridge, though he reverted to the
short form when writing what is by all means the best study of his father's
life. I quote from the 2014 "Centennial Edition" from IU Press, which I
cite as [LL].
Ross Lockridge Jr., "The Great Footrace," in Life, 8 Sep 1947, pp. 108-110+.
Ross Lockridge Jr.,
Raintree County (Houghton Mifflin 1948; Eagle Books 1948;
MacDonald UK 1949; movie tie-in paperbacks, Dell 1957, Pan UK 1958;
Arbor House 1984; Penguin 1994; Chicago Review Press 2007. Translated into Swedish as Regnbräts Land
1949, into Norwgian as Den Store Dagen 1950, into Spanish as El Arbol de
la Vida 1958, into Italian as L'albero dell vita 1958,
into Finnish as Sadepuun maa 1959, and into various
other languages over the years. Filmed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios 1957).
I quote from the Houghton Mifflin first edition, which I cite as [RC].
The link is to the Rediscovered Classics paperback of 2007, with an
introduction by Herman Wouk. Amazon Marketplace sellers often have used
copies of the Houghton Mifflin hardcover. The early press run of about
5,000 copies has three additional words on page 152. Near the top of the
page is the sentence, "My God, My God, where would the human race be if it
wasn't for the bastards?" This was followed by "Wasn't Jesus God's?"
Too much for the pious souls at the Book of the Month Club, the three
blasphemous words were deleted for the remainder of the so-called "first
edition." The book club edition also substituted a more prudish dust jacket
and, in later printings, Houghton Mifflin economized by substituting a tan
cloth cover for the green demanded by the author. These later printings are
often sold as first editions.
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