The Lost Get-Back Boogie

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Eighteen years ago The Lost Get-Back Boogie, James Lee Burke’s sixth work of fiction, found a home at Louisiana State Univeristy Press after nine years of making the publishing rounds and 111 rejections. For Jim Burke, there’s a good story in everything, even rejection; he likes to tell how the manuscript would be returned torn and gouged and stained, as if the editors who’d read it had worked out their anger on its pages, and their assistants had been careless with their coffee before putting it back in the mail.

There’s no anger or residual bitterness when Jim tells the travels and travails of The Lost Get-Back Boogie. There is only humor — his wide grin and infectious laugh as he describes with relish the various work-overs received by his beleaguered manuscript — and gratitude to the people at LSU Press. He always mentions each by name — Martha Lacy Hall, Les Phillabaum, John Easterly, and the late Michael Pinkston — those who revived his flagging career by publishing his collection of short stories, The Convict, in 1985, followed by The Lost Get-Back Boogie in 1986, which was critically acclaimed and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to The Convict, Jim’s work had gone unpublished in hardback for thirteen years.

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