Little Follies [Paperback]

Eric Kraft (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1995

In 1962, as a college sophomore, Eric Kraft fell asleep in the library. Among the books surrounding him, he began to dream...of a nameless boy, sitting on a dilapidated dock in the warm sun of a summer day, playing a game: He was trying to bring the soles of his bare feet as close as he could to the surface of the water, without touching it.

That boy became Peter Leroy, and from Kraft's dream grew one of the most delightful, unusual projects in contemporary literature. Funny, touching, witty, mythic, and profound, Kraft's novels, featuring Peter, his friends and family, and the seaside town of Babbington create an alternate reality-a world in which we see ourselves, darkened and wavering, as reflected by deep water.

Little Follies gathers nine Peter Leroy novellas into one volume: the perfect introduction to an irresistible cycle of books by an author sometimes compared to Cheever, Proust, Twain, Borges, Russel Baker, and Garrison Keillor, but who is uniquely Eric Kraft.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an acclaimed collection of nine novellas and a novel detail, Kraft details the early years of Peter Leroy, his perennial protagonist and alter ego.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Nine charming novellas of an all-American boy, all but one of which appeared individually in paperback in the early 1980's, here offered as a hardcover ``serial novel.'' Kraft (Reservations Recommended, 1990; Herb 'n' Lorna, 1988) is a veteran comic writer with an occasional dark touch. Here, he recaptures childhood for all of us, as a time of exploration, flights of the imagination, and sexual confusion. He also captures the small-town atmosphere of 1950's Long Island, with its innocence and easy living and yet also with its repression. In ``Do Clams Bite?'' Peter Leroy is staying in his father's old room when he discovers photographs of a naked woman whom he slowly comes to realize is May, a friend of his father's still but not his wife; May has never married. To twist the knife, Kraft has May tuck Peter into bed and caress him gently. It's a funny story, full of clamlore, but there's also an underlying terror rather like that in John Knowles. Then there's the man in ``My Mother Takes a Tumble'' who, masquerading as a woman, writes to lonely men--with hilarious results. Most of the pieces are about sexual initiation in one way or another: in ``Life on the Bolotomy,'' otherwise a kind of parodic salute to Mark Twain with its boy's river odyssey, May makes love to Peter's older friend; and in ``The Girl with the White Fur Muff,'' Peter is introduced to female anatomy, if not quite to sex. But the mood is gentle and comic, innocent at heart, in the end far more reminiscent of Booth Tarkington than of John Knowles. Peter stays a child, and in ``The Young Tars''--a sendup of Boy Scouts and 4-H and all those other clubs for youth--he's a boy rather like Penrod or the Tom Sawyer who can talk you into painting his fence. Nine novellas do not quite a novel make, but these are delightful and satisfying stories from a sure stylist, sweet without ever being sentimental. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: Picador (January 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312119283
• ISBN-13: 978-0312119287
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,860,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He studied English at Harvard, where he invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they now have two sons.

After earning a Master's Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. After a series of positions in editing and publishing, Kraft and his wife founded Kraft & Kraft, an editorial-services company for educational publishers. Throughout the years, he wrote daily, trying to discover the stories that Peter Leroy had to tell.

Eric Kraft is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England. He is also a recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Learn more at www.erickraft.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN UNDISCOVERED GEM., September 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Follies (Paperback)

Several weeks ago a friend recommended that I read LITTLE FOLLIES. He was so insistent and it was such a heartfelt endorsement, I really felt like I had no choice.

What's it about? It's a story within a story, a fictional memoir within a fictional memoir, about growing up in the 1950s. On the surface, everything's sunny; underneath, life in the Long Island town of Babbington is a little, shall we say, odd. Kraft offers sly and hilarious variations on time-honored coming-of-age conventions. He lightly peppers his story with literary allusions, and peoples them with wonderful, oddball characters. His writing is simply wonderful: crisp, clever, occasionally profound. Kraft continues to explore this world in subsequent novels. Begin here, and you'll want to continue with WHERE DO YOU STOP, AT HOME WITH THE GLYNNS, and LEAVING SMALL'S HOTEL, all of which are first-rate.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Destined to be a classic, October 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Follies (Paperback)

When I was working on my doctorate I was enrolled in a class about contemporary fiction. This was not surprising, because I majored in English. The professor's attitude, however, surprised me. He thought that any book that should be a classic would be. Sales and word of mouth advertising would bring any obscure book to 'classic' status. When he asked if anyone in the class knew of any great books that were obscure, I was ready with Eric Kraft. The Peter Leroy stories wshould be classics, yet they are not. Maybe, by writing positive reviews through Amazon.com, I can help change that. Yeah, right. Erik Kraft's finely constructed pseudo-nostalgias chronicling the life and times of his alter-ego, Peter Leroy, should be classics. They are written with affection tempered by a sparkling wit that is often too subtle to see the first time around. No problem! The Peter Leroy books are a joy to reread. Originally a series of long stories or short novels, the adventures of Peter Leroy have been collected and expanded upon to please the newcomer. They are about growing up in the '50's, (which I didn't do), and about the New York Coast (where I've never been). Whether you have shared these experiences with Eric Kraft, you will find yourself nostalgic.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soft strenght of unpretentious humorous vivid intelligence, September 11, 2003

By 

edis (Klaipeda, Lithuania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Follies (Paperback)

This one came into my hands as 1EUR sale item passing Vienna. It was single book worth taking with from the pile of various stuff - and it still was plenty of luck, that it got there, and that I took hold of it. So many qualities of good literature are present in this book, that there is warranty of pleasure for any intelligent reader. Pleasant value even exchanged for full price.