{"title":"John Pritchard","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"junior-ray-paperback","title":"Junior Ray - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA Barnes \u0026amp; Noble Sensational Debut Novel\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Something of a miracle.\" - The Memphis Flyer\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Pritchard's acclaimed first novel, Junior Ray, takes the reader on a wild ride\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003einside the mind of Junior Ray Loveblood, a Mississippi Delta deputy sheriff\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eas bloodthirsty as he is misguidedly hilarious. Junior Ray narrates the story in\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ehis own profane, colloquial voice, telling why he hates just about everybody, and\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewhy he wants to shoot Leland Shaw, a shell-shocked World War II hero and poet\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewho is hiding in a silo from what he believes are German patrols.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough a series of sleights of hand, misdirections, and near misses, Junior Ray\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand his sidekick Voyd give a dark tour of the Delta country as they chase their\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003emysterious prey. Junior Ray's thoughts are peppered with excerpts from Shaw's\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003enotebooks-sometimes starkly different from Junior Ray's diatribe, sometimes\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eeerily similar-and by the end of the story, it is up to the reader to sort out whose\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ereality is more fantastic, Shaw's or Loveblood's, as the one stalks the other through\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe pages of this highly original and darkly comedic story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"This writer knows the country whereof he speaks, its dialect, its mores and\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efolkways. But this is not sociology. It is primitive fiction of the sort one rarely\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esees. More's the pity. Underneath this violent language and narrative, there is a\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esweet truth. It deserves to be read.\" - Harry Crews, The Mulching of America\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Junior Ray runs on a belly laugh per page. When Junior Ray, a deputy sheriff\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewho makes Flem Snopes sound cultured, sets out to track down a 'maniac' loose\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ein the Mississippi Delta, he proves to be more demented than his prey. Like his\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eprotagonist, John Pritchard's novella is outrageous and ribald, a revolt against\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe literary school of manners and a ride that takes Southern Gothic to new\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eextremes.\" - Curtis Wilkie, Arkansas Mischief\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67580420391135,"sku":"9781961938076","price":25.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/LP_MC6-c6K9781961938076.webp?v=1790423675"},{"product_id":"the-yazoo-blues-paperback","title":"The Yazoo Blues - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eJunior Ray Loveblood, one of the most outrageous and original personalities to appear in American literature in many years, returns in The Yazoo Blues, the sequel to John Pritchard's Junior Ray. Now semi-retired, Loveblood works as a security guard in one of the floating casinos that have replaced cotton as the cash crop in the Mississippi Delta. \u003c\/p\u003eIn his spare time, Junior Ray has become obsessed with the ill-fated Yazoo Pass expedition by a Union armada up the Mississippi River in 1863. He relates dual stories, that of a soldier slowly driven mad by the haunting countryside and that of Loveblood's friend Mad Owens, whose search for existential love meets its greatest challenge in the arms of the stripper Money Scatters. Loveblood's conclusions are hilarious, absurd, and at times intensely revealing.Equally profane and profound, the fictional narrator of Pritchard's novel illuminates the complex stew of evolving race relations, failed economies, and corrupt politics that define much of the post-civil rights rural Deep South.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67611165065439,"sku":"9781961938151","price":31.61,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/hcTg32wJb9781961938151.webp?v=1790477583"},{"product_id":"sailing-to-alluvium-paperback","title":"Sailing to Alluvium - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Pritchard's novels \u003cem\u003eJunior Ray\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Yazoo Blues\u003c\/em\u003e have been dubbed \"hilariously tasteless\" and \"not for the squeamish or pure of heart\"-and equally praised by \u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly, Library Journal\u003c\/em\u003e, and lovers of Southern fiction everywhere. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eSailing to Alluvium\u003c\/em\u003e, the third installment of Pritchard's \"Junior Ray Saga,\" irrepressible ex-deputy sheriff Junior Ray Loveblood and his sidekick Voyd Mudd have become \"diktectives\" to stop the murderous activities of a semi-secret, lethal organization of Southern women, the AUNTY BELLES, headed by Miss Attica Rummage. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSailing to Alluvium\u003c\/em\u003e is another brilliant tale of the bumbling duo, with an unforgettable cast of characters deeply rooted in the Mississippi Delta, a place both real and imaginary. The novel, hilarious and moving, revolves around obsessions, underneath which lies the dark history of a class conflict that exists in the Deep South, not among black and white but between the white \"haves\" and the white \"have-nots.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Pritchard's work fits well between the singing prose of James Agee and the rustic lampoon and high humor of Erskine Caldwell. The reader is treated to a unique brand of dark comedy that closes the divide between burlesque and metaphysics, fuses the profane with the sublime, and explains the Deep South as no other writer has.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67614056186079,"sku":"9781961938175","price":35.93,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/rQlmCa818A9781961938175.webp?v=1790481076"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/john-pritchard.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}