Mercury House is proud to launch the NEA Heritage & Preservation Series, which celebrates the multicultural diversity of American letters by restoring to print unduly neglected modern classics of cultural identity. Our second title for this series, which will include an introduction by Ishmael Reed, is The Wig by Charles Wright.The Wig is the story of Lester Jefferson, a young man of good will, whose repeated attempts to become a part of The Great Society are doomed in advance. Aided, thwarted, and confused by numerous, curious companions, Lester conducts his inevitable search for happiness in a series of absurdist misadventures that begins with the transformation of the hair on his head into burnished silken curls.</P>

"Charles Wright's Negro world explodes with the crazy laughter of a man past caring. . . . His style, as mean and vicious a weapon as a rusty hacksaw, is the perfect vehicle for his zany pessimism. . . . The Wig is a brutal, exciting, and necessary book."-Conrad Knickerbocker, The New York TimesCharles Stevenson Wright was born in New Franklin, Missouri, in 1932. At the age of 18 he attended the James Jones & Lowney Turner Handy Writer's Colony in Marshall, Illinois. A former columnist for the Village Voice ("Wright's World"), he has also written for Vogue and The New York Times. He served two years in the U.S. Army, the last year in Korea. He is the author of three published works: The Messenger (1963), The Wig (1966), and a "journal-novel" Absolutely Nothing to Be Alarmed About (1973). He lives in New York City.Ishmael Reed, a preeminent figure of contemporary African-American letters, has been nominated twice for the National Book Award (for Conjure and Mumbo Jumbo). A lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, he lives in Oakland, where he runs Ishmael Reed Publi-cations (www.ishmaelreedpub.com).</P>