THROUGH THE WHEAT

VG/VG. Original "$8.95" price still intact on dust jacket. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978). One of the Lost American Fiction series edited by Matthew J. Bruccolli. Reprinted from the original Scribners 1923 edition. Unique to this edition: an Afterward by James Dickey. 278 pages. ~~~~~ Through the Wheat was recommended to Scribners by F. Scott Fitzgerald and received highly favorable notice on its appearance from Edmund Wilson, among others. Boyd served with B Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines at Belleau Wood, Soissons, St Mihiel and Blanc Mont, where he was seriously gassed. After the war he worked as a journalist and writer, publishing nine books of fiction and history. He died at 37 of a cerebral hemorrhage. ~~~~~ EXCERPT: "For a distance of two miles, from the ravine to the village where the supply wagons were stationed, men lay dead and dying. In the woods and particularly in the gulley that ran through the woods to the village, the thick yellow gas clung to the ground. Wherever the gas had touched the skin of the men, dark flaming blisters appeared. Like acid, the yellow gas ate into the flesh and blinded the eyes. The ground was a dump-heap of bodies, limbs of trees, legs and arms independent of bodies, and pieces of equipment. Here was a combat pack forlorn, its bulge indicating such articles as a razor, an extra shirt, the last letter from home, a box of hard bread. Another place a heavy shoe, with a wad of spiral puttee near by. Where yesterday's crosses had been erected, a shell had churned a body out of its shallow grave, separating from the torso the limbs. The crosses themselves had been blown flat, as if by a terrific wind." ~~~~~ "There is no battle scene in Tolstoy's War and Peace, no conflict in Stendhal's account of Waterloo, to equal the drama and terror of Boyd's account of Private Hicks' advance through the wheat." --- James Dickey. ~~~~~ This hardcover edition originally published in 1978 at $8.95, now OUT OF PRINT.