Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea: A Novel

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HarperCollins Publishers, 1996 - Fiction - 342 pages
Richard Bausch's new novel is a comedy of innocence that is by turns funny and moving, gently nostalgic and profound. Set in 1964, the year after JFK's assassination, the story turns on young Walter Marshall, a devout, idealistic, amiable nineteen-year-old who lives at home with his mother and attends radio broadcasting school at night. Like many young men of the time, Walter has been stirred by the example of the recently martyred president, and has decided upon a life in politics. In fact, he has set his sights on the White House. There only remain the roughly twenty years of living to do before he can take up the torch. And Walter has some important lessons to learn, several of them involving women... The story of this sheltered young man's very-much-less-than-suave fumbling toward manhood unfolds against the backdrop of powerful descriptions of a country in the midst of great change.

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Contents

Section 1
38
Section 2
47
Section 3
91
Copyright

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About the author (1996)

Richard Bausch was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1945. After serving in the U.S. Air Force as a survival instructor, he entered George Mason University, from which he received a B.A. in 1974. He then earned an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa and worked as a singer and comedian while writing fiction. He became a professor of English at George Mason University in 1980. His work includes the novels Real Presence, I Don't Care If I Never Get Back, The Last Good Time, Mr. Field's Daughter, and Violence. He has also published two collections of short stories, Spirits and Other Stories and The Fireman's Wife and Other Stories. He was shortlisted for the 2015 Bad S-x in Fiction Award. for his title Before, During, After.

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