
Pick-Up
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Benjamin Charles
First published as an unheralded paperback original, Pick-Up 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, Pick-Up is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best: Willeford’s preferred title for the book was Until I Am Dead. 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. Pick-Up’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”.
©1967 Softcover Library, Inc. (P)2020 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...










excellent psychological thriller
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The plot is a little thin, and there's a pretty clear delineation between the first act and the rest of the book that feels like the author wanted to end it there but then decided against it.
If you like adverbs you'll get as many as you want.
I was immersed beginning to end.
I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about the big reveal.
Gritty Fun That Revels in Genre
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
one of CWs best
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.