Jake and the Kid - Softcover

Mitchell, W.O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771061129 ISBN 13: 9780771061127

Verlag: McClelland & Stewart, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

Jake and his friend, the Kid, on their Saskatchewan farm are part of our history. By way of the pages of Maclean’s, through episode after episode on CBC Radio and later on TV, the lively boy and his cranky old yarn-spinning hero have found their way into the hearts of millions of Canadians.

Margaret Laurence wrote about the impact on her: “These stories were among the first that many of us who lived on the prairies had ever read concerning our own people, and our own place and our own time. When grain elevators, gophers, or the sloughs and bluffs of the ‘bald-headed prairie’ were mentioned, there was a certain thrill of recognition. The same applied to the characters who inhabited Crocus. A prevalent feeling on the subject was, as I recall–that’s us; he writing about us.”

Laughter and tears, a Christmas Eve blizzard, a lost puppy, and “The Day Jake Made Her Rain” are all to be found in these tales of Crocus, Saskatchewan, along with as richly eccentric a cast of small-town characters as you will meet in a month of Prairie Sundays.

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W.O. Mitchell, the only Canadian author recognizable by initials alone, was born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan in 1914. Educated at the University of Manitoba, he lived most of his life in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Alberta, where for many years he was the most renowned resident in High River. He and his wife, Merna, subsequently moved to Calgary.

During a very varied career Bill Mitchell travelled widely and was everything from a Depression hobo to the fiction editor of Maclean’s. A gifted teacher, he was visiting professor at the University of Windsor for several years, and a creative writing instructor at the Banff Centre for many summers.

His best-loved book is Who Has Seen the Wind. Since its publication in 1947 it has sold over half a million copies in Canada alone, and is hailed as the greatest Canadian book on boyhood. The classic edition, illustrated by William Kurelek, became a bestseller in 1991. Complementing that book is his 1981 best-seller How I Spent My Summer Holidays, hailed by some critics as his finest novel, although Since Daisy Creek (1984) and Ladybug, Ladybug…(1988), Roses Are Difficult Here (1990), For Art's Sake (1992) and The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon (1993), illustrated by Wesley W. Bates, were also well-received best-sellers. Besides The Kite (1962) and The Vanishing Point (1973), he was also noted for his two collections of short stories, Jake and the Kid (1962) and According to Jake and the Kid (1989). Based on the legendary CBC radio Series, both classic story collections won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

His last book, An Evening with W.O. Mitchell, contains his most popular performance pieces, and concludes with “The Poetry of Life”, the lecture that he delivered from a wheelchair to The Writers’ Union Conference in Winnipeg in 1996.

A noted performer of his own work, W.O. Mitchell recorded cassette versions of both Who Has Seen the Wind and According to Jake and the Kid, while a selection of pieces from An Evening with W.O. Mitchell, performed by W.O., is also available on cassette.

Our novelist and script-writer was also a successful playwright whose five plays are included in the collection entitled Dramatic W.O. Mitchell. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1973, and was an honorary member of the Privy Council. He was the subject of a National Film Board documentary, and in 1994 he was awarded the Writers Guild of Alberta Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1996 the City of Calgary named its book prize in his honour. He was, in Pierre Berton’s words, “an original.”

W.O. Mitchell died in February 1998 at his home in Calgary.

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“W.O. Mitchell’s writing…touches the hem of genius. He is devoid of cliché, his narrative is as smooth as corn syrup, his plot is rarely predictable, while his talent for inventing situations fraught with humour seems limitless.”
–Globe and Mail

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McClelland & Stewart
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0771061129
• ISBN 13: 9780771061127
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar