"Aw Hell"

Chicago/New York: The Reilly & Lee Co.. Very Good in Good dj. (c.1927). 2nd printing (see note). Hardcover. (price-clipped) [good solid book, very slight deterioration to cloth at bottom edges of both covers, one teeny-tiny wormhole in front joint, one-time owner's name and place of purchase in ink at top of ffep; jacket has some minor chipping and slight paper loss (especially at corners and at top of spine) but with no loss of text]. Self-declared as "THE Great War Novel," this might as well be subtitled "A Hillbilly's Adventures in the Great War." The author was a WWI veteran who hailed from Missouri (his military service bona fides are detailed on the rear jacket flap), and while his alter-ego protagonist, Jeptha Montgomery Brice (called "Jep") maintains his cornpone accent and attitude throughout, the author at least doesn't fall into the trap of letting Jep also narrate the story, which would likely have rendered it unreadable. (Let's just say that Clarke Venable was no Ring Lardner, and leave it at that.) The book was apparently well-reviewed in its day -- the entire jacket design, at least of this printing, consists of a couple of dozen single-word quotes from various newspapers ("Sparkling"; "Vivid"; "Genuine"; "Absorbing"; etc.) -- although I haven't been able to turn up any actual contemporary reviews from which I might have been able to pull a more full-bodied quote. The bulk of this author's literary output (both under his own name and using the pseudonym "Covington Clarke") seems to have been boys' adventure fiction, often with an aviation theme; this would appear to be the only time he incorporated anything resembling autobiographical content, although admittedly that's a bit of an assumption based on his acknowledged war service. [NOTE that while the book itself states "Second Printing," the jacket is labeled as "Fourth Printing." You can believe what you want to believe.] .