Bøker av Jonathan May

An White 84-year-old resident of Sawyerville, Alabama except for his 27 years working in the Columbia University Libraries in New York reflects on growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in a racist rural society, describes his own and his family's interactions with Black neighbors over time, ponders his own evolving attitudes concerning racial matters, and reveals his family's recent discovery of a number of mixed-race first and second cousins and how that is dealt with in various ways. Along the way he gives a great deal of information about his community, its past, present, and possible future. Using his community as primary focus he thinks about race in America. His conclusions share both hope and despair. An opinionated old codger, he is not averse to sharing those opinions. He often starts with facts and moves into matters speculative, always trying to clarify wen that occurs.

Movie publicist Tom Miller (who used the name Canford for his writings) had before his death written a memoir, A Fever of the Mad, about his experiences working on the troubled production of Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky and Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club, that manuscript edited and published by his surviving friend Jonathan May. In later years May wrote down his memories of what he had been told by Tom of his experience on other movies, and with the tales having first come from the publicist himself, he decided it only appropriate to list Canford as first author. Movies discussed include the original Shaft, Ryan's Daughter, Blow Out, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, The Wrath of God, The Last American Hero, and two directed by Paul Newman. Actors encountered include Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth on the last film she completed, Jeff Bridges, Frank Langella, Joanne Woodward, Bruce Dern, Donald Sutherland, John Travolta, and Lynn Redgrave.

Jake loves his friends and his community. Eric kills. Eric secretly watches Jake and those he loves. No one near to Jake is safe, and the tension and the body count rise. Set in rural Alabama, "A Howling in the Night" is a psychological thriller with nods to classics of horror, the bastard child of Eudora Welty and Stephen King.