Read In the Land of the Living Online
Authors: Austin Ratner
Leo went through the records on the shelf and found it with ease, as his parents had not touched their LPs in years:
The Roar of the Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd
by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, with a pair of hoboes on the album cover just as he remembered.
He knelt on the carpet in front of the record player. “Let’s see if this thing still works.”
When he dropped the needle, they heard the old familiar too-loud sound of the vinyl smacking the needle, then the rhythmic
click-clack
as the needle settled into its groove and trailed around and around through the dust. Mack smiled stiffly so as not to give offense at the eccentric experiment.
Anthony Newley sang:
On a wonderful day like today
I defy any cloud to appear in the sky.…
“Sorry,” Leo said. “Raindrops in my eyes.”
Mack clapped him on the shoulder. Their reflections in the imperfect plate glass looked unfocused and strange. Leo listened to the music and Mack stood by him, hearing it, maybe listening to it or maybe just waiting for the right moment to leave.
“It is,” Leo said.
“It is what?” Mack said.
“A wonderful day.”
Above and beyond the thanks I owe to many others for their faith, material, resources, time, wisdom, edits, ideas, packaging, and assistance with promotion, I owe my brother, Danny Ratner, in particular for his contributions to this book. Heartfelt thanks to Larry Kirshbaum, who sold this book; to Reagan Arthur, who saw value in it and gave me the exact edits I needed to make it a full-fledged novel; to Barry Gordon and Julian Seifter for their detailed recollections; to Barbara Perris for a sharp-eyed copyedit that among other things corrected the tenses of my Middle English; to Allison J. Warner for her magnificent cover illustration; to Ben Allen for piloting the book through the production phase; to Tony Marra for his many insightful suggestions; to Evelyn Somers, who felt such enthusiasm for the short story out of which the novel grew; to Kristin Ratner, who saw the phoenix in the ashes of this story; and to many others, including Millicent Bennett, Marlena Bittner, Sarah Funke Butler, Ethan Canin, Susanna Einstein, Will Hammond, Leslie Hodgkins, Jonathan Kandell, Deborah Kaufmann, Blake Kimzey, Josh Lambert, Speer Morgan, Sarah Murphy, Edith Ochs, Tish O’Dowd, Miriam Parker, Michael Pietsch, Gabriel Ratner, James Ratner, Susan Ratner, Virgil Ratner, George Rohr, Sami Rohr, and John Burnham Schwartz.
Austin Ratner’s first novel,
The Jump Artist,
was the 2011 winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Before turning his focus to writing, he received his MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he is coauthor of the textbook
Concepts in Medical Physiology
. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two sons.
The Jump Artist
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Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I: Nine Worthy and the Best That Ever Were
Introduction
1. Of the Mad King on a Bicycle All Green
2. Of Isidore's Quest for a Damosel
3. Of the King of Genes
4. How Isidore, Arrayed Like a Poor Knight, Came to the Demesne of Laura's Father
5. How Isidore Went to Sea without A Proper Surcoat
6. How Isidore Was Chastened
7. How the Ghost of Dr. Austrian Appelled James and Isidore of Grievous Sins
8. How Isidore Spake to His Aunt at the Feast of Saint Rufus
9. How the Lord of Chaos Came to Isidore and Made War Against Him
Part II: The Little Boys Lost
1. Grand Canyon
2. Red Right 88 / The Wampa
3. Labiaphobia
4. The Island of Neverything Ad Ban Cappen
5. The Abattoir
6. Yalensis
Part III: Highway 1 and Highway 2
1. Lizard Tail
2. The Portland Rose Garden
3. The Cairns of the Kootenai
4. The Hog Butcher
5. Dead Man’s Curve
6. Wedding at the Metropolitan Ballroom
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Austin Ratner
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by Marathon Lit LLC
Cover design by Allison J. Warner; cover art: knight by Jacobe Halder / Getty Images; basketball by Burazin / Getty Images
Cover © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and Company
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First e-book edition: March 2013
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From the David Merrick–Bernard Delfont Production
THE ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT—The Smell of the Crowd,
“A WONDERFUL DAY LIKE TODAY.” Words and Music by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. Copyright © 1964 (renewed) Concord Music Ltd., London, England; TRO—Musical Comedy Productions, Inc., New York, controls all rights for the U.S.A. and Canada. Used by permission.
ISBN: 978-0-316-20610-5