The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind

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The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind (eBook) Pub. Date: 4/13/2011 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind (Reprint) Pub. Date: 4/28/1996 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

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The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind Pub. Date: 10/1/1996 Publisher: Gale Group
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The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind Pub. Date: 8/1/1989 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind (Cassette - Unabridged, 2 Cassettes) Pub. Date: 4/30/1996 Publisher: Random House Audio Publishing Group

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Overview

Like his novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, for which he received the PEN/Faulkner Award, Guterson's beautifully observed and emotionally piercing short stories are set largely in the Pacific Northwest. In these vast landscapes, hunting, fishing, and sports are the givens of men's lives. With prose that stings like the scent of gunpowder, this is a collection of power.

Editorial Reviews

Lois Nesbitt

These short stories, set in the America of baseball lots, suburban homes, vans and campsites, evoke the mores and dilemmas of middle-class life with a familiarity tinged with nostalgia and tempered with irony....Mr. Guterson's voice, often submerged under the influence of Hemingway and Faulkner, emerges erratically. Many of the stories in ''The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind'' concern growing up and are structured around pivotal moments in their protagonists' boyhood or youth. -- New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Reprint of Guterson's 1989 debut, a collection of short stories set mostly in the Pacific Northwest. (Jan.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780679767183
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 4/28/1996
Edition description: Reprint
Edition number: 1
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 706,991
Series: Vintage Contemporaries Series
Product dimensions: 5.16 (w) x 7.99 (h) x 0.48 (d)

Meet the Author

David Guterson

David Guterson is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind; Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense; Snow Falling on Cedars, which won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award, the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award, and was an international bestseller; and the national bestseller East of the Mountains.

Biography

Like many great writers before him, David Guterson draws on the rich local culture of the Pacific Northwest for inspiration in creating unforgettable characters and settings. Guterson credits many influences on his writing, beginning with his father, Murray Guterson, a distinguished criminal defense lawyer: His father's example taught him first and foremost to choose a career he would love, which also meant making positive contributions to the world.

Guterson was intrigued by the narrative of his father's cases. He often sat in on trials, but never felt the urge to become an attorney. When he started college, after one week in a creative writing class, he decided to become a writer. He eventually studied under Charles Johnson (author of Middle Passage), developing his ideas about the moral function of literature, and concluded that it is the obligation of writers to present moral questions for reflection.

As Guterson honed his writing skills, he investigated a variety of jobs that would afford him the time to practice his craft. He finally chose to become an English teacher, mainly because he wanted to surround himself with great books and authors. He moved to Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, teaching at the local high school, writing short stories, and freelancing as a journalist for Sports Illustrated and Harper's magazine.

During his years as a teacher, Guterson discovered another major influence in To Kill a Mockingbird. "No other book had such an enormous impact [on me]" he has said of Harper Lee's splendid Southern classic. "I read it 20 times in 10 years and it never got old, only richer, deeper and more interesting." He admits freely to borrowing many of the novel's structural and thematic elements for his own 1994 tour de force, Snow Falling on Cedars.

Although it was not his first book (he had previously published a collection of short stories and a treatise on home schooling), there is no denying that Snow Falling on Cedars -- ten years in the making and a true labor of love -- put Guterson on the literary map. Set in 1954 on an island off the coast of Washington State, the novel tells the intertwined stories of an interracial love affair and a murder trial that divides a community still haunted by its shameful wartime past. Critics responded ecstatically, calling it "haunting" (L.A. Times), "compelling...heartstopping" (The N.Y. Times Book Review), and "luminous" (Time magazine). The book went on to win the 1995 Pen/Faulkner Award; and the following year, Guterson was named to Granta's list of Best Young American Novelists.

Far from prolific, Guterson writes slowly and with great deliberation, averaging a book every four to five years. Blessed with almost preternatural descriptive skills, he is known as a writer's writer, polishing sentences to pristine perfection and creating stories of elegiac grace. He is disarmingly candid about the difficulties of his craft, claiming that each literary endeavor brings with it a paralyzing fear of failure that slows the process even further. "It doesn't matter who you are, how many awards you've won, how popular you are, or how much critical acclaim you've had," he has said. "When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task." Fortunately for his many fans, Guterson's misgivings seem totally unfounded!

Good To Know

When he won the 1995 Pen/Faulkner award for Snow Falling on Cedars, Guterson quickly recognized the reclusive Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird for his success. He wrote to Lee asking her to come to the award ceremony in Washington, D.C., but being a highly private woman, she didn't attend.

Snow Falling on Cedars was adapted for a 1999 film of the same title, directed by Scott Hicks and starring Ethan Hawke. The movie received an Academy Award nomination for cinematography.

1. Hometown:
  
  Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound
1. Date of Birth:
  
  May 4, 1956
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Seattle, Washington
1. Education:
  
  M.A., University of Washington

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