Welcome to Hard Times
by Edgar Lawrence Doctorow
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Read in February, 1979
I happened upon this novel in a Florida bookstore while on vacation in 1978. The back cover warned that, once I started reading it I wouldn't be able to stop. "Ha! We'll see about that!" I said to myself and proceeded to scan the first page. "I can put this down," I told myself proudly, and I walked out of the store.
Then I spent the rest of that vacation worrying about it! As soon as I got home, I found another copy and added it to my permanent collection. I also made a p...more
Then I spent the rest of that vacation worrying about it! As soon as I got home, I found another copy and added it to my permanent collection. I also made a p...more
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"Nothing is ever buried, the earth rolls over in its tracks, it never goes anywhere, it never changes, only the hope changes like morning and night, only the expectations rise and set. Why does there have to be a promise before destruction?"
This simple novel, set in the Dakota flats well before statehood, is written simply and directly and somehow contains a few sharp insights and phrases to be found echoing through all of Tragedy. To be sure, these thoughts are not original. There...more
This simple novel, set in the Dakota flats well before statehood, is written simply and directly and somehow contains a few sharp insights and phrases to be found echoing through all of Tragedy. To be sure, these thoughts are not original. There...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
people who like a good read and don't mind a harder story line
Kick butt book! Man, I loved this thing. It made me think of the west in a new way. Thank you Doctorow! This is a hard story (it is "Welcome to Hard Times" after all) and the narrator isn't a hero, but you feel for him and get angry at him. It's the story of what happens after the Bad Man from Bodie comes into a small western town and shoots it up and burns it down. I also think that the story is in it's perfect form -- meaning it's meant to be read as a book, not watched as a mo...more
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Read in January, 1997
Talk about a book I could read over and over and over again. Being introduced to this novel as a teenager is one of the many reasons I'm so grateful that my Mom is an anti-social, brainiac bookworm that has never read a Danielle Steele novel.
What other Mom would enthusiastically recommend a story about an old west town destroyed one night by a Bad Man from Bodie to be rebuilt by an assortment of prostitutes, cowardly old men, a drunk Russian, and a deaf and dumb Indian? And people still won...more
What other Mom would enthusiastically recommend a story about an old west town destroyed one night by a Bad Man from Bodie to be rebuilt by an assortment of prostitutes, cowardly old men, a drunk Russian, and a deaf and dumb Indian? And people still won...more
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Read in March, 1978
Gritty western novel that is something of a forerunner to the sort of thing done by Cormac McCarthy, though I liked this one a hell of a lot more than the work of McCarthy. Really evocative and emotionally visceral.
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Read in November, 2007
I just read this book at the end of last year and was blown away. I just gave it to a friend. Love the spare writing style for emotional impact.
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in January, 2005
I am not a Western fan, but this was such a well written story about a small town in the new American west......really good for the genre.
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Read in January, 1997
Had to read this for a contemporary lit. class. Not a big fan of E.L. Doctorow, but this is a good book.
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Read in January, 1995
recommends it for:
deadwood fans
Deadwood owes a lot to this one... a good look at human nature and how the West can twist it.
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Read in January, 1979
Bleak and deliberately anti-generic, but probably one of the greatest western novels ever..
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Don't read if depressed...
Excellent look at the attempt to make a town in the old west.
Excellent look at the attempt to make a town in the old west.
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Read in January, 1979
Reminds me a bit of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
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kicks cormac mccarthy's ass
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