Milking the Moon: a Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet

Publisher Marketing: FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITIC CIRCLE AWARD This sumptuous oral biography of Eugene Walter, the best-known man you've never heard of, is an eyewitness history of the heart of the last century-enlivened with personal glimpses of luminaries from William Faulkner and Martha Graham to Judy Garland and Leontyne Price-and a pitch-perfect addition to the Southern literary tradition that has critics cheering. In his 76 years, Eugene Walter ate of "the ripened heart of life," to quote a letter from Isak Dinesen, one of his many illustrious friends. Walter savored the porch life of his native Mobile, Alabama, in the the l920s and '30s; stumbled into the Greenwich Village art scene in late-1940s New York; was a ubiquitous presence in Paris's expatriate cafe society in the 1950s (where he was part of the Paris Review at its inception); and later, in 1960s Rome, participated in the golden age of Italian cinema. He was somehow everywhere, bringing with him a unique and contagious spirit, putting his inimitable stamp on the cultural life of the twentieth century. "Katherine Clark...has edited Eugene Walter's oral history into a book as amazing as the man himself." JONATHAN YARDLEY, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD "Milking the Moon has perfect pitch and flawlessly captures Eugene's pixilated wonderland of a life.... I love this book-and I couldn't put it down." PAT CONROY "Surprising and serendipitous." NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Anecdotes so frothy they ought to be served with a paper parasol over crushed ice." PEOPLE "A rare literary treat...the temptation is to wolf it down all at once, but it's much more satisfying to take your sweet time. The most unique oral history of the mid-twentieth century." TIMES-PICAYUNE (NEW ORLEANS) "An exceptionally fun read." ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION" Contributor Bio:  Clark, Katherine Katherine Clark holds an A. B. degree in English from Harvard and a Ph. D. in English from Emory. She is the co-author of the oral biographies Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story, with Onnie Lee Logan, and Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet with Eugene Walter (a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award). A former student of Martin Hames, the inspiration for the character of Norman Laney, Clark has written three additional Mountain Brook novels featuring Laney and his students--All the Governor's Men, The Harvard Bride, and The Ex-Suicide, all forthcoming from the University of South Carolina Press imprint Story River Books. Clark is currently collaborating with Pat Conroy on his oral biography, also forthcoming from the University of South Carolina Press. She lives on the Gulf Coast. Contributor Bio:  Walter, Eugene Eugene Walter (1921-98), a native of Mobile, Alabama, and author of the classic "American Cooking: Southern Style", was a pioneering food writer and editor who enjoyed long sojourns in New York, Rome, and Paris when he wasn't at home in the South. A translator, screenwriter, novelist, puppeteer, artist, costume designer, actor, and more, Walter was a man of arts, letters, and food. "The Happy Table of Eugene Walter", a cookbook that Walter was working on in the final years of his life, is the first new book by Walter to appear in more than a decade.