Car: A Novel

"Car" by Harry Crews, published by Morrow. ''Everything that's happened in this goddam country in the last fifty years has happened in, on, around, with or near a car.'' Herman Mack is set to devour a 1971 Ford Maverick, bumper to bumper, half a pound a day, in half-ounce cubes, for a paying audience in the ballroom of the largest hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. His junkyard operating blue collar family isn't having it, but the whole car-crazed country pours in to watch the first bite - and the first ''pass'' - and if the deals can get signed, and the bomb threats don't pan out, and everything that's exploitable gets exploited, and the entree can be kept sanitary, and the hotel prostitute can apply the ointment, then ... Then the grand sideshow stunt could just pass into legend. Doctors are consulted. TV cameras are brought in, set to broadcast coast-to-coast and beyond. A blowtorch cuts off a piece of the bumper. And it's served up to the ultimate consumer. Money, pride, celebrity, dreams - a myth in the making - are all on the line. Herman Mack grew up cleaning, fixing, selling, salvaging, wrecking, living and breathing cars. But can he really eat one? In Car , the acclaimed author of A Feast of Snakes totals America's all-consuming love affair with the automobile -- purveying his grotesque and farcical iconoclasm in typically Crewsian fashion -- with knife, fork and bared teeth. ''This book is exceedingly funny, indeed painfully so ... Car has flash after flash of genuine brilliance.'' - The New York Times Book Review Book details: published 1972. Order now on BookShops.in with fast, reliable delivery across India.