THE OXYGEN MAN

Denver, CO: MacMurray & Beck, Inc. , 1999. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. Denver, CO: MacMurray & Beck, Inc. , 1999. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 280 pages. The author's breakthrough debut novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only by a small independent press (in Denver, Colorado). The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Steve Yarbrough's" "The Oxygen Man". Small-town blues: The story of a Deep South man who works nights checking the oxygen levels in fish farm ponds. "Daze and Ned, sister and brother, live restlessly and hopelessly in the small town of Indianola, Mississippi. The sharp and ragged edges separating the races and classes there are glaringly obvious. Ned, who drives through the fog-spooked back roads of Sunflower County by night, checks the oxygen levels in Mack Bell's catfish ponds. The rest of Mack's employees are black, but Ned perceives a vast difference in the ways he and Mack are white: 'The difference has a lot to do with the fat content of the foods they'd grown up eating, the odor of the toilet bowls they'd grown up using, the number of evenings their Daddies had spent at home, the number of evenings their Mommas stayed gone'. A deliberately severed injector line ruins one of Mack's ponds, costing him money and making him suspicious of the three oppressed black men he employs. Long-suffering, quiet Daze, meanwhile, doesn't flourish in the close quarters she shares with her brother, as their intimacy reveals its dark, manipulative side. Set in 1996, with frequent, lengthy flashbacks to the early 1970's, when Daze and Ned were in high school, Yarbrough's bleak and yet extremely tender first novel explores the sad origins of their situation and exposes the sordid complications of small-town small-mindedness. Violence and racism claw their way into nearly every scene, and the language used by Yarbrough's characters can be disturbing and offensive, on the mark" (Publishers Weekly). "One of the best writers to come out of the South in many years" (James Lee Burke). An absolute "must-have" title for Steve Yarbrough collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Steve Yarbrough. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Yarbrough's signature on this copy is the best we have ever seen. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. One of the most brilliant American writers of our time. A fine copy. . ISBN 1878448854.