“Good writing is rare enough. Storytelling is an even rarer skill. A genuinely comic vision is beyond price. The Ordways has all three.” —Time On the annual graveyard-working day in Clarksville, Texas, families come from all over East Texas to pay respects to their loved ones. The Ordways are one such clan, and in this eloquent and original novel, our narrator recounts the story of how he and his kin arrived in this magical land where the South meets the West. The tale begins with his great-grandfather, Thomas Ordway, who lost his sight at the Battle of Shiloh and vowed to quit Tennessee forever. He crossed the Red River into Texas and stopped on the edge of the featureless prairie, a landscape too mystifying even for a sightless man. Years later, the narrator’s grandfather, Sam Ordway, was forced to leave the forest behind when his three-year-old son, Ned, was kidnapped by a neighbor. Sam scoured the vast state of Texas in search of Ned but never found the boy. The mystery of what happened to him and what his long-hoped-for return might mean to the Ordways brings William Humphrey’s brilliant second novel to its rich and satisfying conclusion. A masterful blend of comedy, tragedy, and history, The Ordways is great American fiction in the tradition of William Faulkner and Mark Twain. This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Humphrey including rare photos form the author’s estate.

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This is the first full-length study of the life and writings of the Texas novelist, William Humphrey, who died August 21, 1997. Based on research in Humphrey's vast archives at the University of Texas, it provides the first full picture of his life and identifies many untraced sources of his work. The guiding principle is an exploration of Humphrey's satire on life-destroying myths: the myths of the hunter, the South, the cowboy hero, the Depression-era outlaw, and, supremely, the myth of Texas. To his dismay, Humphrey was often seen as a celebrator of these myths.

In this deeply felt biography, Ashby Bland Crowder treats in near definitive fashion one of southern literature's unjustly neglected masters. In superb novels like Home from the Hill, The Ordways, and Proud Flesh as well as in the brilliant story collections The Last Husband and A Time and a Place, William Humphrey (1924--1997) created an imaginary East Texas Red River County, conjuring the speech and life rhythms of his native territory with artistic genius. Crowder's lyrical blending of biographical fact and incisive analysis corrects a mistaken view that Humphrey was among those writers mired in the pious cult of southern delusionary remembrance. From early short fiction set in a New York commuter village through late works of the Northeast, such as Hostages to Fortune and September Song, Humphrey allowed himself a psychic distance from the South that fueled an unsparing critique of its myths -- exemplified by the fierce deconstruction of Texas heroes found in his last novel, No Resting Place. In a poignant discussion of Humphrey's memoir, Farther Off from Heaven, Crowder demonstrates that the tragic death of his father led to Humphrey's overriding fictional themes of pain and inconsolable loss. Indeed, Crowder asserts that Humphrey failed to achieve literary renown in part because he evokes emotional experiences beyond what most people can endure. Humphrey's fiction derives its power from refusing to indulge in the false consolations of vanished people and history, from showing that living in the southern past is not living at all. Wakeful Anguish is among the first books about William Humphrey and will be greeted as one of the finest. Marshalling unpublished archival letters, interviews with persons who knew Humphrey at different stages in his life, and private correspondence and conversations between Humphrey and himself, Crowder achieves something rare in literary biography: a portrait that reveals both the sustained suffering in an author's life and work and his exultation in the triumph of his art.

Volume contains: 199 NY 366 (Ouderkirk v. Bayless Pulp & Paper Co.) 199 NY 366 (Ouderkirk v. Bayless Pulp & Paper Co.)

As one of the most successful farm organizations in the United States, the Missouri Farmers Association brought together farm clubs from all over the state to serve as the central body through which farmer-owned businesses could compete with investor-owned businesses. In Cultivating Cooperation, Raymond A. Young follows the fascinating history of MFA from its grass-roots beginning in a schoolhouse in 1914 through the upheaval that led to only the second leadership change in the organization's history in 1979. William Hirth was responsible for the early success of MFA. At the age of fifteen, Hirth became interested in farming and started lecturing on the benefits of building a cooperative of farm clubs. He continued to advocate this idea by publishing The Missouri Farmer, a magazine that informed subscribers on legislative issues and farm club news and later became MFA's house organ. Hirth believed that the farm clubs should capitalize not only on the economic advantages of joining together as a cooperative, but on the political and social advantages as well. Upon Hirth's death in 1940, Fred Heinkel took over leadership of MFA. Under his guidance, the cooperative grew at a feverish rate. Supply companies, such as oil refineries, feed mills, and seed plants, were acquired or built whenever it proved advantageous to the farmers. A sister cooperative was created to expand into neighboring states, and a national alliance was created to establish a stronger representation in Washington, D.C. MFA was also instrumental in securing a fourÞyear medical school in its hometown of Columbia in order to ensure medical care for farmers and their families in rural areas. In addition, MFA has played a role in helping Third World countries develop cooperatives of their own. With intimate knowledge of the organization, Raymond Young involves the reader in the intricacies of the formation and development of the Missouri Farmers Association, enlivening his account with liberal use of anecdotes from the pages of The Missouri Farmer. An introduction by Michael L. Cook places the story of MFA within the context of the history of the cooperative movement nationwide. Students and scholars of Missouri history, as well as farmers and those interested in agriculture, will find this comprehensive examination of MFA an invaluable resource.