ISBN-13: 9780803249769 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 180 str.
A farmer perishing under a fallen tractor makes a last stab at philosophizing: There was nothing dead that was ever beautiful. It is a sentiment belied not only by the strange beauty in his story but also in the rough lives and deaths, small and large, that fill these haunting tales. Pulp-fiction grim and gritty but with the rhythm and resonance of classic folklore, these stories take place in a world of shadowy figures and childhood fears, in a countryside peopled by witches and skinflints, by men and women mercilessly unforgiving of one another s trespasses, and in nights prowled by wolves and scrutinized by an agonized and lamenting moon. Ervin D. Krause s characters pontificate in saloons, condemning the morals of others as they slowly get sloshed; they have affairs in old cars on winter nights; they traffic in gossip, terrorize their neighbors, steal, hunt, and spy.This collection includes award-winning stories like The Snake and The Quick and the Dead as well as the previously unpublished Anniversary, which stirred a national controversy when it was censored by the University of Nebraska and barred from appearing in Prairie Schooner. Krause s portrayal of the matter-of-fact cruelty and hopeful fragility of humanity is a critical addition to the canon of twentieth-century American literature.
Learn more about Ervin D. Krause."