{"product_id":"9781598535723","title":"Pick-Up: A Library of America eBook Classic","description":"First published as an unheralded paperback original, \u003ci\u003ePick-Up\u003c\/i\u003e is an authentic underground classic, an explosive bulletin from the urban underbelly of mid-1950s America. It was Charles Willeford’s second novel, after a rough and wandering earlier life that had taken him from Depression-era hobo camps and soup kitchens to wartime battlefields. The unblinking story of two lost and self-destructive drifters—a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence—trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco, \u003ci\u003ePick-Up\u003c\/i\u003e is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best: Willeford’s preferred title for the book was \u003ci\u003eUntil I Am Dead\u003c\/i\u003e. Its bleak vision of life beyond the edge is haunted by rape, racism, alcoholism, suicide, and inescapable poverty, yet shot through with a tenderness and compassion sustained against all odds in a society offering few breaks to its outcasts and misfits. \u003ci\u003ePick-Up\u003c\/i\u003e’s many twists and violent turns culminate in an ending that continues to surprise, confirming it as what critic Woody Haut has called “a  razor-sharp narrative that rips open the genre.”","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47151266431216,"sku":"9781598535723","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781598535723_p0.jpg?v=1763812972","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781598535723","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}