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Smithy is a 279-pound, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, 43-year-old misfit, who works in a G.I. Joe factory putting arms and legs on the action heroes. He is also the most beguiling anti-hero to come into view in a long, long time. McLarty, an award-winning actor and playwright best known for his many appearances on TV in Law & Order, Sex and the City, The Practice, and Judging Amy, has added another star to his creative crown with this novel. Stephen King wrote in Entertainment Weekly, "Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, your Yossarians." McLarty’s novel has already received significant attention for its unusual genesis as an audiobook. Now, in a major publishing event, Viking heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction with his stunning debut, The Memory of Running. (Amazon.com) |
Ron
McLarty has joined the ranks of writers of the quirky hero with The
Memory of Running. His hero, Smithy Ide, is in the grand tradition
of Ignatius J. Reilly of a Confederacy of Dunces and Quoyle of The
Shipping News. What these gentlemen have in common is their lumpen-loser
looks, their outsider status and their general befuddlement about the
way the world works and their place in it. Smithy rises above them
because of his self-effacing nature, his great capacity for love, his
inability to show it and his endless willingness to forgive.