Double Toil and Trouble: A New Novel and Short Stories by Donald Harington

Donald Harington, Brian Walter (Editor)

$32.95

Publication Date: September 25th, 2020

Publisher:

University of Arkansas Press

ISBN:

9781682261422

Pages:

176

Description

Double Toil and Trouble is the first new volume of fiction in more than a decade by beloved Arkansas writer Donald Harington (1935–2009). Featuring the long-lost suspense novel of the title and four previously unpublished or uncollected stories, this volume adds several new chapters to the saga of Stay More, the fictional Ozarks village that serves as the setting for more than a dozen other Harington novels.

Edited by longtime Harington scholar Brian Walter, Double Toil and Trouble also includes an appendix featuring the author’s spirited correspondence with the editor who originally inspired the title novel, providing an insider’s look at the American literary scene and Harington’s own early assessment of his work. Spanning several decades of the author’s career, this volume gives readers a Harington who is at once familiar and fresh as he experiments with new formal possibilities, only to once again endear the vagaries of love, life, and folk language to us.

About the Author

Donald Harington taught art history in New York City, New England, and South Dakota before returning to his home state to teach at the University of Arkansas for twenty-two years. The author of fifteen novels, he received the Oxford American Lifetime Award for Contributions to Southern Literature, the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, and the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence.

Brian Walter is professor of English at St. Louis College of Pharmacy. He is the editor of The Guestroom Novelist: A Donald Harington Miscellany and director of the documentaries Stay More: The World of Donald Harington and Farther Along: The World of Donald Harington, Part 2.

Praise for Double Toil and Trouble: A New Novel and Short Stories by Donald Harington

“For those of us who continue to treasure Donald Harington and his work, there’s something tremendously moving about receiving this late addition to the Stay More chronicles—a message in a bottle from 1973. In the novel (and four stories) you'll find here, he displays all the warmth, wit, goodness, and love of humanity that make his books so essential, as if he were reaching out from decades ago to remind us that the world is beautiful and we are of value to each other.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories

“The ‘sense of place’ and ‘love of illusions and irreality’ that Donald Harington recognizes as his twin gifts in a letter reproduced here are present in abundance in Double Toil and Trouble. This new collection holds riches both for those who have long appreciated Harington’s genius and for readers new to his work, whether they are aficionados of Arkansas writing and lore, fans of mystery fiction, students of publishing history, or simply appreciators of artful storytelling.”
—Linda Hughes, Texas Christian University