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Prince Elmos Fire — Ernest Lockridge
"A big book, rich in themes, rich in diversity, rich in fidelity to the thoroughly American grain from which it was hewn. The people in it speak an earthy tongue. . . . At their best they are a tribute to Ernest Lockridge's ability to capture them in the act of talking, in the fullest sense, naturally. This is the story of Prince Elmo Hatcher, backwoods baby, student, stud, sculptor and soldier. Hungry for life, he first has it shoved at him, begins to shove back and finds out that one man alone can't shove enough. . . . He strikes out on an adventurous and gutsy search for something which, unluckily for him, always seems to elude definition.. He begins by reaching out, but ends by overreaching, unconscious of the function of boundaries to protect as well as restrain. His success is laced with disappointment. That disappointment is shared by other people, such as his foster mother: 'Sometimes I wish I could beak loose from some of the old hidebound patterns that make me feel so cramped, and take off into a clear blue sky.' His epic fornications recall his freewheeling hill-country roots. He becomes a commercially successful artist, goes to war in Vietnam, becomes a hero, then turns into a wealthy eccentric. Lockridge assigns him the problem of getting in touch with the uncivilized and authentic roots of life, of learning to bevel satisfaction and achievement. But the book's subject isn't really the picaresque adventures of Prince Elmo Hatcher. The subject is the contemporary line between the ludicrous, which is funny, and the surreal, which is frightening. A good book." Michael Edgerton, SUN TIMES SHOWCASE
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"A fulminating exposition of the shriving of contemporary man -- from the cave to today's cultular carnage. It all begins with the childhood acre of Prince Elmo, product of a family of neanderthals. There's Grandpa and his memories of French whores, loony Grandma, Daddy Dick who runs out and down, brother Duke headed for this world's goods, sister Cissie, hot as steamed squash, and mother Helen, impregnated by Prince Elmo. Elmo is sent to a foster family of decadent intellectuals and is on his way to fame in the art world via his pulsating nudes. From then on it's a montage of corpses -- at home and abroad in Vietnam -- and Elmo, at the close a billionaire recluse, has his final cleansing vision."
Kirkus Service
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"Prince Elmo Hatcher comes from an ordinary family--ordinary, that is, for the backwoods of Indiana. Daddy is shiftless, older brother steals to put bread on the table, older sister follows in mamma's footsteps by becoming a whore, and grandpa is a very dirty old man. Brother and sister leave for a life of vice in the big city. Grandpa, in a fit of more than usual cantankerousness, shoots a honor student from the local high school and then gets killed trying to bust out of jail. Mamma is arrested for doing daddy in. And Prince Elmo, the youngest of this colorful backwoods clan, is left alone. But not friendless. Prince Elmo has been drawing pictures for as long as he can remember. And, thanks to a local art collector (who was one of his sister's customers), he studies art at the university and becomes an overnight sensation, the darling of the art crowd--until his local draft board catches up with him. He is sent to Vietnam, where he barely escapes the far-from-tender clutches of a fearsome female Vietcong guerilla leader, moves on to Paris for a bittersweet sojourn with the girl who might have been, and finally returns home again to Indiana a wealthy and perhaps wiser man." BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH-CLUB NEWS, June, 1974
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