Life on the Bolotomy

by Eric Kraft

Overview

Peter Leroy recalls a childhood journey of discovery that he made from the mouth of the Bolotomy River to its source, traveling with his best (and imaginary) friend Rodney “Raskol” Lodkochnikov. The journey begins with the work of turning a packing case (which Cap’n Andrew Leech intends to use, later, as a coffin) into a shallow-draft boat, it involves encounters with a philosophical vagrant and a gaggle of beautiful nymphs, and it ends with the metaphor of life as a river turned on its head.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012228987
Publisher:	The Babbington Press
Publication date:	02/25/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	74
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He met or invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year at Harvard. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they have two sons. After earning a Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. Since then, he has undertaken a variety of hackwork to support the Kraft ménage and the writing of the voluminous work of fiction that he calls The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. He has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England; and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Editorial Reviews

"Life on the Bolotomy concerns the river journey of Peter and his chum Raskolnikov to the source of the Bolotomy River — a riotous inversion of both Thoreau's Merrimack expedition and Huck ’n’ Jim's Mississippi quest"

Cleveland Plain Dealer - John Stark Bellamy

“It is strikingly American, recalling in its nature, and in the affectionate cultishness with which it was welcomed, the cartoons of R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar (whose miserable autobiographies are sometimes drawn by R. Crumb), and Art Spiegelman.”

The New Yorker - Anna Shapiro