though donald harington should be a household name, instead he was called “America’s Greatest Unknown Novelist.” he was a bawdy, hilarious, immediately accessible, and erudite writer who wore his intelligence very lightly. yet he wrote sprawling, delightfully self-conscious novels whose structural experimentation arose naturally, very organically and — almost as if on a whim — expanded our idea of what the novel could do. he almost always wrote about a fictional town in the ozarks, so was trapped in a regionalist ghetto, but his books if given the chance absolutely transcended that unfortunate label.
nytimes obit | guardian obit | washington post obit | harington’s website
try any of his books, but so far, i’ve loved his WITH a whole lot… get it from toby press or from your local library.