ISBN: 0-88739-327-6
288 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Pub Date: 10/2000
Paperback Reprint
Price: $14.95
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One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding
Robert Gover
In 1961,after gathering praise from European critics, this decidedly American novel by upstart Robert Gover dared to rudely jerk the udders of a few of our sacred cows, while tickling ribcages of the more open-minded. Irreverent as all works of satire are duty-bound to be, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding returns for new readers to savor and enjoy.
College sophomore J.C. Holland, fortified by his father's simplistic traditionalism, enters a "Negro house of ill-repute" to meet Kitty, a 14-year-old prostitute. Sort of ashamed to be there, but feeling the need for the kind of educational complement such a place can provide, young J.C. flashes a gift from his aunt, a hundred dollar bill, to Kitty, who's just sure that's only the first dividend of her "invessment." Misunderstanding from them both abounds, along with a funny insightful tour of the hypocrisy underpinning modern morality.
Review: "[One Hundred Dollar] Misunderstanding is a kind of beat bedroom farce. A college sophomore spends a weekend with a pretty 14-year-old Negro prostitute under the manly misapprehension that she has invited him because she finds him irresistible. The girl, on the other hand, is convinced that it all is to be a paying proposition. Outraged when her guest refuses payment, she steals her rightful $100 fee from his pants pocket. He tries to get it back."
-Time
"Like Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita' and J.P. Donleavy's 'The Ginger Man,' Robert Gover has written a 'special' book, a freak of a novel; he has farced up the race, sex and money issues in American life by caricaturing two amorous antagonists in a series of burlesque monologues, extended exercises of style."
-Herbert Gold, New York Times
"... I hope this book will be read by every adolescent in the country."
-Gore Vidal, Esquire
"Gover writes like a Salinger with guts."
-Robert R. Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
Bio: ROBERT GOVER lives in a small Delaware coastal community and continues to write-he just can't seem to stop tweaking American sensibility.
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