THE HONEST RAINMAKER

A full-length extension of profile material which appeared in the New Yorker and which concerns Colonel Stingo, the nom de plume of a grandiose old gaffer ne James A. Macdonald. The Colonel, who believed that "fortune swims... in the shallows where the suckers moon", never found his pot of gold but lived a life of dubious enterprise and high aquavital content. His experiences, as a rain-maker and keeper-away, as a hog caller, as a reporter back in New Orleans where he came from- and as a columnist on New York's only Sunday afternoon paper, and his florid memories of the turf of tipsters and touts and socialites- are expressed in his own idiom- which is peculiarly his own...A character- who in his exuberance of speech- a formal rhetoric touch-off by rummy phrases- is reminiscent of W.C. Fields, but his many "labyrinthine digressions" may prove— labyrinthine.