City Limits
Memories of a Small-Town Boy
(amazon)Terry Teachout (View Bio)
Hardcover: Poseidon Press, 1991; Paperback: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
"It is clear from this book that music has been Mr. Teachout’s first love and lifelong inspiration. Many of the incidents revolve around bands, concerts, school and high school musical productions and musical idols such as Woody Herman and Harry Jenks. Mr. Teachout came to New York through writing, but he came to writing through music—writing reviews of performances for The Kansas City Star. And Mr. Teachout’s prose has a lively rhythm and good pacing" — Jane Smiley, The New York Times Book Review
"Musings about the path that led Teachout from small-town America to New York City. Early on, Teachout promises to explore the larger paradox of willful displacement (‘I am like a million other Americans...We cannot go back; we are not at home where we are’) in the course of tracing his journey from the ‘narrow and kind and decent and good’ southeastern Missouri town of Sikeston…. Teachout’s loving evocation of the charms of small-town life should strike some chords among the many Americans wrestling with similar feelings of dislocation. He raises some interesting, heartfelt questions." — Kirkus Reviews
