For Crying Out Loud: A Memoir

For Crying Out Loud is a bracing memoir by Richard Harsham, veteran
freelance writer who is, also, a noted essayist, and a playwright with
some twenty stage plays to his credit. For Crying Out Loud embarks on
an exploration of the personal past with verve and finesse. By turns
unflingchingly candid and riveting, Harsham's telling devoid of
self-pity, with lyrical recall at the ready, he successfully skirts
the pitfalls of sentimentally and the self-congratulatory clicking
that many memoirs are heir to. Partial to William Faulkner's
observation ("The past is never dead. It's not even past."), Harsham
takes as his guiding precept the notion that attention must be paid
pointing to the biblical injunction--"This, too, shall pass"--he is
forever aware that only through Memory do we retrieve what would
otherwise be lost to the mists of time.

"Noteworthy, Mr. Harsham writes very well and has something to
say--two conditions not often found these daysin the publishing
world."
-- Russell Baker (Pulitzer Prize for Growing Up and The Good Times.)
Commenting on Harsham's Rude Awakenings from the American Dream.