O'Rourke, William

New York. 1981. February 1981. Delacorte Press. 1st Printing. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 0440040647. 435 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by James L. McGuire. keywords: Literature America . FROM THE PUBLISHER - Passionate, analytical, witty, and erotic, IDLE HANDS reveals the other side of the often told story: What do contemporary young men feel? How are they affected by relationships with today's women? No contemporary novel has depicted women with the same compassion and lust, bafflement and empathy, deference and satirical bite, and at the same time exposed so completely the carnal and intellectual life of a modern young man. Covering the turbulent period between the assassination of JFK and the Bicentennial summer, this richly descriptive novel presents us with the premature sexual memoirs of Andrew S. Orr, ‘last season's most promising young playwright.' Through his eyes we are exposed to a succession of remarkable women - from the crushes of his adolescence, through a variety of thwarted amorous pursuits, to his mature involvements with women of the world - and seldom in fiction have we seen them in such luminous detail. Though women and erotic adventure occupy the foreground of the novel, its dramatic background - the harsh and humorous early career of an aspiring playwright, which takes him from a southwestern opera company to his first success in the New York theater world - provides a vivid, affectionate, and enduring portrait of our country and the era. Rarely in a novel are time and place and the evocation of history so brilliantly interwoven with intimate experience. Already hailed as one of the finest writers of his generation for his beautifully wrought prose, in IDLE HANDS William O'Rourke has written an important, powerful, and profoundly moving novel, a major work. inventory #9136 ISBN: 0440040647.