A Lament for Barney Stone

New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. (c.1961). First Edition. Hardcover. [slight fading to cloth along top and bottom edges, a bit of age-toning to edges of text block; jacket also a little age-toned, light spotting to upper right corner of front panel, a few tiny nicks at spine ends]. "A richly comic novel of academic life. Its mock hero is Professor Stone; its setting, a small college in the west." The book was written, like you couldn't have guessed, by a college English Lit teacher. Kirkus Reviews noted the publisher's attempt to liken it to Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim," but while they thought the book's "satire [to be] amusing and intelligent," they felt that Kelly's protagonist came up short of Amis's in the exuberance department. The publishers did manage to line up one impressive jacket blurber (Wallace Stegner), but despite their efforts the book appears to have been both the beginning and the end of Kelly's novelistic career. Speaking of laments. .