The Third Strike by Jerry Gray

The Third Strike

by Jerry Gray

Edited by

GLENN CLARK

With a Foreword by

STARR DAILY

This is a first edition from 1949 that was published by ABINGDON-COKESBURY PRESS. This book was later published by Hazelden.

THIS is the partial autobiography of Jerry Gray-partial in that it deals only with his long struggle to overcome his alcoholic bondage.

The story begins in New York City in 1929 when the author, on the fag end of a month-long binge, determines to commit suicide, He vividly pictures his thinking as he leaves the Bowery and goes to Battery Park. His psychological self-analysis as he awakens in Bellevue Hospital is brilliant. His subsequent struggle to rescue himself is a story of great dramatic impact-one that will leave a deep and lifelong impression upon every reader.

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This is a true story, and one in which the author hides nothing. It is short, tragic, important! The author points to no moral. He simply states the facts and leaves the interpretations to the reader. Few writers have ever more successfully described the subtle sufferings in the human mind. Perhaps none has more impressively pictured any man's struggle to master himself.

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FOREWORD

JERRY GRAY * lived and died. THe THIRD STRIKE is his own unfinished story told in his own dramatic words, left by him for publication after his untimely end. What a writer he might have been had this God-given talent been turned in the right direction!

Dostoevski was the master descriptionist of the subtle suffering in human nature. Jerry Gray in this book gives us something of the pungent flavor and penetrating insight of the great Russian novelist. He has written a vivid account of his own struggle and a brilliant psychological analysis of his alcoholic bondage. His story is a short, tragic one, but, I sincerely believe, a very important one. It is written with the authority of personal experience and with the power of genius.

Thousands of alcoholics, like the lepers of old, are seemingly reduced to the hopeless state of living death, unclean, uncured, and unwanted. If there is an answer to their problem, society needs it; and if this little book can help to shed a ray of light on the darkness of the disease, it will have rendered a service to all mankind.

STARR DAILY

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This book is in very good condition with minimal wear. There is no writing or markings inside the book.

Please view all of the photos for the conditions.