{"product_id":"hard-rain-falling-isbn-9781590173244","title":"Hard Rain Falling","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDon Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out,  but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit  of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an  orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls  of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool  hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from  which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy  has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress.  But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again  in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory  end.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Tarmac-tough dialogue and road-novel deliquent action is customised with a tender  intensity about both friendship and sexual passion.  Often savage, never cynical,  Carpenter brings gold to the grit.\"—Boyd Tonkin, \u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eHard Rain Falling\u003c\/i\u003e is a unique read; violent, tender, inexorable, and melancholic; a beat-era book of  disaffected young men devoid of \u003ci\u003eOn the Road \u003c\/i\u003eeuphoria but more poignant and gripping  for its fatalistic grounding. The small lives contained herein are indelible.” —Richard  Price\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"You always hear that Don Carpenter was a writer's writer, hugely admired  by critics and novelists for his brilliance and precision, but every civilian reader  I know was putty in his hands once that person opened any of his astonishing novels.  He could be hilarious, and he could break your heart and he could write about ego  and frailty as well as anyone on earth. I loved him like crazy.\" --Anne Lamott\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Don  Carpenter is a particular favorite of mine. His first novel, \u003ci\u003eHard Rain Falling\u003c\/i\u003e, might  be my candidate for the other best prison novel in American literature.\" --Jonahtan  Lethem\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Carpenter's masterpiece, long out of print, is the definitive juvenile-delinquency  novel and a damning indictment of our justice system that is still relevant today.\"  -- George Pelecanos, \u003ci\u003eThe Village Voice\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Carpenter's prose is all muscle and sinew.\"  --\u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Don Carpenter combines a reporter's eye for external detail with a novelist's  sense of inner depts.\" --\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eHard Rain Falling\u003c\/i\u003e roars through dim  Western streets like an articulate Hells Angel looking for a fight... The book is  tough and vital, built with slabs of hard prose.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eHard Rain  Falling\u003c\/i\u003e is \u003ci\u003eLast Exit to Brooklyn\u003c\/i\u003e amended but unaltered by cries of affection under  the heap of warped and busted souls.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Full of lyrical evocations  of a lost working-class San Francisco, the novel also contains possibly the best  two-page drunken celebration of cheap, corny, vulgar, un-cleaned-up Market Street  ever set in print.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A powerful, uncompromising book,  realistically written, brutal in the raw intensity of its action...highly recommended.\"  --\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Mr. Carpenter's debut is most auspicious. He is a serious writer.\"  --\u003ci\u003eBook Week\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Not since...Last Exit to Brooklyn has there come a first novel of such  extraordinary impact. It shouts for readers.\" --\u003ci\u003eCleveland Plain Dealer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"He chills  us with documentation...an imaginative work...boldly executed.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times  Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Don Carpenter is a natural...a tough but compassionate soul...an absolutely  honest writer who never strikes a false note.\" --Robert Brustein\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Full of passionate  intensity...rough and tumble picaresque.\" --\u003ci\u003eCharlotte Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A violent, action-filled...first  novel by an explosive 34 year old San Francisco writer...This tough guy novel that  explores an underworld is a work of real accomplishment.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Carpenter was a straight man to the more illustrious neo-Beat and -Dada artists of the era ... a steadying antidote to the counterculture bedlam of the tumultuous 1960s and beyond.” —Douglas Brinkley, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eDon Carpenter \u003c\/b\u003e(1931–1995)\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ewas born in Berkeley, California, and grew up on the West  Coast. He served in the air force during the Korean War, attended the University  of Portland, and received a B.S. from Portland State College and an M.A. from San  Francisco State College. Carpenter, his wife, Martha, and their two daughters settled  in Mill Valley, near San Francisco, and he became good friends with the local writers  Evan Connell and, especially, Richard Brautigan. His first book,\u003ci\u003e Hard Rain Falling\u003c\/i\u003e,  was published in 1966 and was followed by nine other novels as well as several collections  of short stories. Carpenter also wrote for the movies and television and spent a  good deal of time in Hollywood, the subject of several of his novels. Plagued by  poor health in his later years, he committed suicide at the age of sixty-four.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeorge Pelecanos\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of twenty books and was a writer, story editor, and producer on the HBO series \u003ci\u003eThe Wire \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eTreme\u003c\/i\u003e and is co-creator, with David Simon,of \u003ci\u003eThe Deuce\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300104753381,"sku":"NP9781590173244","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590173244.jpg?v=1767728705","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/hard-rain-falling-isbn-9781590173244","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}