This book seemed so-so right up until the last two sentences, when it blew me away."Pick-up," by Charles Willeford, was published in 1955. I have a Black Lizard edition.
The book revolves around Harry, a hard-luck loser of sorts who bounces around aimlessly, and of the troubled gal he befriends and romances. We see him in all kinds of contexts--in bars, with friends, with criminals, with the police, at work, with the gal's mother, in jail--some of everything. Nothing much really happens. There is no mystery to be solved. We just see Harry interacting with a lot of different people in a lot of different situations.
Frankly, it sporadically bored me. As I turned the last page, I was already thinking about the next book I would start. Then I got to the last couple lines:
I left the shelter of the awning and walked up the hill in the rain.
Just a tall, lonely Negro.
Walking in the rain.
Until that point, I didn't realize Harry was black. Willeford gave no clues. So throughout the book, I had pictured a white guy interacting with people in all of these situations. And since it's written in first-person, from Harry's point of view, I thought I was seeing everything through a white man's eyes.
But after learning that he was black, it changed the whole book. Now I had to insert a black man into all of those interactions in 1950s Los Angeles. And that made it a whole different story. I found myself retracing the various scenes of the book, replacing my white guy with a black guy. And I realized how brilliant the book was.
Imagine the extra impact this would have had when it was published in 1955. (Sorry I ruined the ending, but I figured this isn't a book you would ever come across.)
Career-wise, I've been hanging around and writing about and cheering on churches and pastors for the past 25 years as my denomination's Communications Director.
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