By William Cobb
Like a curving river, the large sweep of Cobb’s turbulent lifestyles comprises either startling cataracts and desultory eddies, top occasionally into shadows or starting into unforeseen solar. With unsentimental readability, Cobb recounts coming of age in his local Demopolis within the churning center years of the 20th century. It’s there he has his first tantalizing tastes of alcohol and starts to drink habitually. Readers then shuttle with Cobb to Livingston college (now the collage of West Alabama) after which directly to Vanderbilt college. alongside the way in which, readers enjoy his first reports of affection and good fortune as a author, resulting in a occupation as a professor of writing at Alabama university (now the collage of Montevallo) in 1963.
From there Cobb’s struggles with alcohol and melancholy bring about elongated years of tumbling artistic output and the cave in of his marriage. The summer season of 1984 discovered Cobb in rehab, step one in his route to restoration. His unflinching memoir narrates either the milestones and telling information of his extreme remedy and years in Alcoholics nameless (AA). within the sober thirty years on account that, Cobb has released a string of severely praised novels and a prize-winning number of brief tales. The capstone of his comeback was once profitable the Harper Lee Award in 2007 for special fiction writing.
In 2000, almost immediately after retiring, Cobb constructed NPH, which disappointed his experience of stability and caused dementia indicators and different maladies. 9 years later in 2009, mind surgical procedure introduced Cobb a dramatic restoration, which started the 3rd act in his writing occupation. very important, sincere, and unique, Captain Billy’s Troopers captures the lifetime of an Alabama original.
Read or Download Captain Billy’s Troopers: A Writer’s Life PDF
Similar memoirs books
The Noise of Infinite Longing: A Memoir of a Family--and an Island
A fantastically written memoir a few Puerto Rican relatives, whose siblings reunite for the 1st time upon their mother's loss of life, after having scattered to numerous areas and numerous lives once they reached early maturity. it's also a common tale approximately family members connections and what occurs to them as we develop up.
Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life
Drawing on especially accrued oral historical past, this biography totally portrays the individual, the paintings, and the educating of 1 of the most vital figures in sleek Christianity. Pastor, apologist, and political activist Francis Schaeffer had a impressive effect on either the highbrow and the common-or-garden laborer, the scientist and the artist, the doubting Christian and the skeptical non-believer.
Before Fidel: the Cuba I remember
Prior to Fidel Castro seized strength, Cuba used to be an ebullient and chaotic society in an everlasting kingdom of turmoil, combining a raucous tropical nature with the evils of arbitrary and corrupt executive. but this interesting interval in Cuban background has been principally forgotten or misrepresented, although it set the level for Castro's dramatic takeover in 1959.
Ellie loves her fatherland, task, and ally Jake. yet Jake is a women guy that might by no means cool down. Ellie cannot stand to determine him with different girls anymore, so she is packing up and leaving Cedar Grove and every thing she likes to commence over. an evening of unforeseen ardour makes her begin to imagine might be issues can figure out among them, until eventually she occurs upon a mystery Jake has been preserving for greater than a yr.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition (Mark Twain Papers)
- Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag
Extra resources for Captain Billy’s Troopers: A Writer’s Life
Sample text
I must have been in a state of shock, blood running down my chin, my shirt ripped up the front and bloody, but I was safe. The pony was galloping around and around the pen like some maniacal dervish. I saw clearly then what had made the pony run away from me. Standing in front of the group of excited and frightened children, mostly girls, was a boy slightly larger than the rest. He had a handful of rocks and was still pelting the pony with them as it 30 c a p ta i n bi l ly ’s t r o o p e r s ran.
The Five Satins,” I said, and I heard Lester yelling “Goddamit, I told you so! ” The owner of the radio station was a man named Mack Jordan, who was a good friend of my father’s, so I knew him. John Cooper had told me there were some part-time hours opening up at the station, so I asked Mack Jordan for a job. He gave me one, and offered me considerably more an hour than I was making at the Marengo Theater and the Grove, though I continued to work there as well. I was still in high school and working two jobs, able to pay for my car and achieve a little independence.
Some irate parents got involved, and the book was soon withdrawn from circulation. The sweet little lady who ran the library pled that when she ordered it, she had thought it was a baseball book. Her name was Mrs. Probst. One day after all the hoopla had died down, I was reading in the library and I looked up and she was looking at me from her desk. She gave me a huge wink. I read From Here to Eternity then, too. I was reading just about anything I could get my hands on. I clearly remember a book that Lester Crawford found and brought to school for me to read called The Werewolf of Paris.