End As a Man

E-142: The Vanguard Press, Inc. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. 1947. Uncorrected Proof; First Printing. Paperback. Trade PB. 8vo. The Vanguard Press, New York, 1947. 350 pgs. Uncorrected proof. Wrappers lightly worn with some light shelf-wear to the extremities present. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards clean with no wear present. The author's first book concerns the students at a southern military academy. Filmed in the 1950s as "The Strange One" with Ben Gazzara. The novel while unflinching in some part's remains merely frank in others leaving stale, uneven gaps amidst blisteringly moving accounts of the aeshetic cult that raw, youthfull, brutish power often surrounds itself with. This amongst the backdrop of an age old tradition peculiar to the south, the military school, and an even older one the symbollic bizarre ''right of passage''/ to end as a man. More than some mere physical transformation is at stake the spirit and above all honor must be transformed as well. And this is the true genius of the story as it painfully and unflatteringly reveals the true face of modern nihilistic evil in detail in the visages of the unforgettable character's like Jocko Deparis and his dark eminence over other underclassmen. Willingham himself explained his own struggle to come to grips, in this novel, with not only what has so uniquely affected our past but indeed our forseeable future. End as a Man is at it's very essence about the struggle to power and the cult of personality. E-142; 8.0 X 5.4 X 1.4 inches; 350 pages .