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Back of Town
This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection
152 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1953
About the author
Maritta Wolff
8 books8 followersMaritta Martin Wolff Stegman (December 25, 1918 – July 1, 2002) was an American author.
She was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake, Jackson County, Michigan. She grew up on her grandparents' farm and attended a one-room country school. Wolff was a senior at the University of Michigan when she wrote a novel-length story for an English composition class that won the 1940 Avery Hopwood Award, a university prize for excellent writing, worth $1,000. Whistle Stop is a seamy tale of the Veeches, a shiftless family living in a whistle-stop town near Detroit. The novel, depicting incest, violence, and containing much more vulgar language than was usual at the time, was published the next year by Random House. That Wolff, a mere 22-year-old, was the author of so hard-boiled a novel gave her an instant notoriety, and Whistle Stop became an immediate best-seller, going into five editions and a special armed forces edition. Yet the book was not without literary merit, Sinclair Lewis calling it "the most important novel of the year."
Wolff's second novel, Night Shift, attracted more critical praise, especially for its dialog. Over the next 20 years she wrote four more best-selling novels. Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher's request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction.
While at the University of Michigan she had met and married a prolific young writer, Hubert Skidmore, who published six novels before he was 30. Skidmore died in a house fire in 1946. In 1947 Wolff married a costume jeweller, Leonard Stegman, by whom she had a son, Hugh Stegman.
After Wolff's death, the manuscript for Sudden Rain, which had been kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.
She was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake, Jackson County, Michigan. She grew up on her grandparents' farm and attended a one-room country school. Wolff was a senior at the University of Michigan when she wrote a novel-length story for an English composition class that won the 1940 Avery Hopwood Award, a university prize for excellent writing, worth $1,000. Whistle Stop is a seamy tale of the Veeches, a shiftless family living in a whistle-stop town near Detroit. The novel, depicting incest, violence, and containing much more vulgar language than was usual at the time, was published the next year by Random House. That Wolff, a mere 22-year-old, was the author of so hard-boiled a novel gave her an instant notoriety, and Whistle Stop became an immediate best-seller, going into five editions and a special armed forces edition. Yet the book was not without literary merit, Sinclair Lewis calling it "the most important novel of the year."
Wolff's second novel, Night Shift, attracted more critical praise, especially for its dialog. Over the next 20 years she wrote four more best-selling novels. Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher's request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction.
While at the University of Michigan she had met and married a prolific young writer, Hubert Skidmore, who published six novels before he was 30. Skidmore died in a house fire in 1946. In 1947 Wolff married a costume jeweller, Leonard Stegman, by whom she had a son, Hugh Stegman.
After Wolff's death, the manuscript for Sudden Rain, which had been kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
February 20, 2020
Bob Culp purchased the book on August 30, 1952.
He signed his name and dated it inside the flyleaf.
But he never read the book.
I had to cut open page 321 from 320
with my pocket knife.
I am sure Mr. Culp had every
intention of reading it. I can attest
to the book’s merit. Inside find adulterous affairs--
two, and the protagonist is in both--
attempted murder, drinking, nightclubs,
death, sex--but sex between the lines--
and enough tawdry arguments
to fill an ashtray over and over.
For nearly 70 years the book
has waited to be read.
I doubt books have lives.
But like the fabled genie in the lantern,
who, when released, can grant wishes
I rubbed this lantern by reading
Mr. Culp’s purchase. Reading it
has granted me a wish to finish
what Mr. Culp started. True, I don’t
know him. I don’t know where he lived
nor where he purchased the book.
I don’t know if he was balding,
married, a smoker, in the insurance
business or a movie producer,
but I bought into the same dream he did--
to be transported into another town,
to hear different voices, to go somewhere else.
Mr. Culp, sir, I made it. I read it cover-to-cover.
In it, the author has cloaked herself as Nell, the female
protagonist, who is brassy, sexy, intelligent, kind, and
every man’s fantasy in bed. Mr. Culp, this protagonist
speaks her mind. She is a woman for every occasion.
She’s the kind of character that makes every man
think she is his future ex-wife. I know you would
have liked reading it, Mr. Culp. I did.
He signed his name and dated it inside the flyleaf.
But he never read the book.
I had to cut open page 321 from 320
with my pocket knife.
I am sure Mr. Culp had every
intention of reading it. I can attest
to the book’s merit. Inside find adulterous affairs--
two, and the protagonist is in both--
attempted murder, drinking, nightclubs,
death, sex--but sex between the lines--
and enough tawdry arguments
to fill an ashtray over and over.
For nearly 70 years the book
has waited to be read.
I doubt books have lives.
But like the fabled genie in the lantern,
who, when released, can grant wishes
I rubbed this lantern by reading
Mr. Culp’s purchase. Reading it
has granted me a wish to finish
what Mr. Culp started. True, I don’t
know him. I don’t know where he lived
nor where he purchased the book.
I don’t know if he was balding,
married, a smoker, in the insurance
business or a movie producer,
but I bought into the same dream he did--
to be transported into another town,
to hear different voices, to go somewhere else.
Mr. Culp, sir, I made it. I read it cover-to-cover.
In it, the author has cloaked herself as Nell, the female
protagonist, who is brassy, sexy, intelligent, kind, and
every man’s fantasy in bed. Mr. Culp, this protagonist
speaks her mind. She is a woman for every occasion.
She’s the kind of character that makes every man
think she is his future ex-wife. I know you would
have liked reading it, Mr. Culp. I did.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review