Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings Book

	Introduction	xiii
Part 1	Pine Forests and Pure Thought 1936-1940
	from Background	3
	Repulsion May Race Here in Exhibition Feature!!	6
	from Football Novella	8
	Jack Lewis's Baseball Chatter	17
	[One Long Strange Dream]	19
	Count Basie's Band Best in Land; Group Famous for "Solid" Swing	21
	Go Back	24
	Nothing	26
	A Play I Want to Write	28
	Concentration	30
	We Thronged	33
	[A Day in September]	35
	[I Know I Am August]	41
	Radio Script: The Spirit of '14	44
	[I Remember the Days of My Youth]	50
	from Raw Rookie Nerves	52
	Where the Road Begins	57
	New York Nite Club--	61
Part 2	An Original Kicker 1941
	from Background	65
	There's Something About a Cigar	66
	God	72
	If I Were Wealthy	79
	[One Sunday Afternoon in July]	82
	The Birth of a Socialist	85
	No Connection: A Novel That I Don't Intend to Finish	93
	On the Porch, Remembering	97
	The Sandbank Sage	99
	Farewell Song, Sweet from My Trees	104
	[I Have to Pull Up My Stakes and Roll, Man]	113
	Odyssey (Continued)	116
	[At 18, I Suddenly Discovered the Delight of Rebellion]	118
	Observations	119
	Definition of a Poet	121
	America in the Night	123
	Woman Going to Hartford	126
	Old Love-Light	127
	I Tell You It Is October!	129
	[Here I Am at Last with a Typewriter]	130
	[Atop an Underwood: Introduction]	132
	The Good Jobs	135
	From Radio City to the Crown	138
	... The Little Cottage by the Sea....	140
	The Juke-Box Is Saving America	142
	... Hartford After Work....	143
	... Legends and Legends....	145
	... A Kerouac That Turned Out Sublime....	148
	The Father of My Father	150
	Credo	153
	... Hungry Young Writer's Notebook....	155
	A Young Writer's Notebook	157
	[I Am Going to Stress a New Set of Values]	160
	[I Am My Mother's Son]	162
	[Howdy!]	164
	Today	167
	This I Do Know--	169
	Search by Night	170
Part 3	To Portray Life Accurately 1942-1943
	from Background	179
	Sadness at Six	181
	The Joy of Duluoz	184
	Famine for the Heart	188
	[The Very Thing I Live For]	198
	The Mystery	200
	Thinking of Thomas Wolfe on a Winter's Night	204
	from The Sea Is My Brother (Merchant Mariner)	205
	Beauty as a Lasting Truth	225
	My Generation, My World	228
	The Wound of Living	230
	Wounded in Action	232
	The Romanticist	235
	The Boy from Philadelphia	237
	The Two Americans	242
	Acknowledgments	247