Three Penny Lane: A Novel - Softcover

Dawson, Fielding

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0876854463 ISBN 13: 9780876854464

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 1981

Synopsis

Often compared to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the lesser-known beat-generation writer, Fielding Dawson brings us the third novel in his Penny Lane series, not-so-cleverly titled Three Penny Lane.

The action of Three Penny Lane consists of two beery friends sitting in a bar while an acquaintance, a recently divorced poet, describes to them at great length his ideas for a movie script about a recently divorced painter. This actually turns out to be an effective narrative framework, adroitly handled by Mr. Dawson. The problem is that the poet's script, filling this clever frame, is a rambling and rather tedious soap opera, in which strident, prolonged but unrevealing altercation among the principals is mistaken for drama. The two friends hugely enjoy the poet's cinematic recitation, but they are probably drunker - and more forgiving - than the average reader.

-David Quammen, The New York Times, 1981

One of the more popular passages from Three Penny Lane epitomizes Dawson s style of dialogue: What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your own senses?" "I don't know," said Scrooge. "Why do you doubt your senses?" "Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There 's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are...

About this title

About the Author:

Fielding Dawson's fiction, essays and art/literary criticism appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad for over thirty years. During his lifetime he published 23 books--stories, novels, memoirs and poems. He attended Black Mountain College from 1949 to 1953, where he studied with such writers and artists as Charles Olson and Franz Kline. In 1956 he moved to New York City, continuing to write and create paintings, drawings and collages. In 1984 he began to teach writing workshops in U.S. prisons, and later also worked with at-risk teenagers in alternative high schools. Fielding was chairman of the PEN Prison Writing Committee and director of the PEN Prison Writing Workshop Program. His literary archives are held by the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0876854463
• ISBN 13: 9780876854464
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 111