God Head (Switchgrass Books) - Softcover

"Mr. Cline unfolds the magnificence of a saga. . . . His prose holding light like a steel net which transmutes a wild melodrama into an ordered and thrilling rhythm of word and scene." --Nation "Cline has sung up a wild headlong fantasy, a tale that flings its way stupendously through stupendous doings. A gorgeous poem of a tale." --New York Evening Post "A symbolical and highly imaginative story." --Times Literary Supplement "In many ways God Head is a forerunner of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction and film noir. Brooding, disturbed, alternately comic and despondent, Paulus is a noir protagonist. . . the stylistics of the book are an unqualified delight. Cline's style is loose and readable. His diction is clever and often amusing. . . God Head is good literature."--Brian Libgober "HTML Giant "

Lavished with praise at the time of its 1925 publication, Leonard ClineAEs phantasmagoric God Head is being republished so a new generation of readers can marvel at its dark magic. ClineAEs mesmerizing debut follows the journey of Paulus Kempf, a fugitive labor agitator who takes refuge with a colony of Finns on the remote shores of Lake Superior in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Kempf, a former surgeon, poet, writer, sculptor, and hyper-intellectual, is at first deeply impressed by the folklore and traditions of the quiet, gentle Finns, not to mention their generosity and hospitality. But he soon begins to play upon their superstitions and exploits their kindness through the power of his cunning and imagination, manipulating them into seeing him as a kind of a god. As ClineAEs novel hurtles toward its unforgettable climax, KempfAEs capacity for compassion or mercy swiftly falls to the wayside as he seduces his hostAEs wife and then murders the man in cold blood. Soon thereafter he carves a giant God Head into the side of a nearby mountainside, which the villagers look upon with awe and fear, held in the thrall of KempfAEs mysterious intimations of its malicious power. Having achieved complete domination over the Finns, Kempf ultimately tires of their gullibility and returns to civilization, his quest for self-mastery complete. God HeadAEs descent into the dark void of the human heart will thrill modern readers who are sure to cherish this lost literary artifact from the shadow canon of American fiction.