A profound and intensely moving boyhood memoir, Kaufman's Hill opens with a prosaic neighborhood scene: the author and some other young boys are playing by the creek, one of their usual stomping grounds. But it soon becomes clear that much more is going on; the child-narrator is struggling to find his way in a middle-class Catholic neighborhood dominated by the Creely bullies, who often terrify him. It's the Pittsburgh of the early and mid-1960s, a threshold time just before the counter-culture arrived, and a time when suburban society begins to encroach on Kaufman's Hill, the boy's sanctuary and the setting of many of his adventures. As the hill and the 1950s vanish into the twilight, so does the world of the narrator's boyhood.
John C. Hampsey is professor of Romantic and Classical literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he has won the University Distinguished Teaching Award. Previously, he taught at Boston University and MIT. He received his BA from Holy Cross College and his PhD from Boston College. His book, Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought won enthusiastic endorsements from fellow writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Tim O'Brien.
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