These nine stories reveal a dazzling variety of styles, tones and subject matter. Among them are some of Stanley Elkin s finest, including the fabulistic On a Field, Rampant, the farcical Perlmutter at the East Pole, and the stylized A Poetics for Bullies. Despite the diversity of their form and matter, each of these stories shares Elkin s nimble, comic, antic imagination, a dedication to the value of form and language, and a concern with a single theme: the tragic inadequacy of a simplistic response to life."
These nine stories reveal a dazzling variety of styles, tones and subject matter. Among them are some of Stanley Elkin s finest, including the fabulis...
-- First paperback edition. -- A ghost story unfolds simultaneously across three centuries and two continents; a young cannibal details the daily life and appetites of his clan; a man slowly, and without pain or blood, loses his limbs, his tongue, and his sight. A collection culled from Coleman Dowell's entire career, The Houses of Children displays the wide range of his talent in a dense and beautifully stylistic prose. -- Coleman Dowell is the author of five novels including Island People and Mrs. October Was Here, and a memoir, A Star-Bright Lie, which won an Editor's Choice Lambda...
-- First paperback edition. -- A ghost story unfolds simultaneously across three centuries and two continents; a young cannibal details the daily l...
-- Dying in a bamboo bed, Captain Clancy hallucinates several philosophical conversations with a snake and a tiger. Meanwhile, Captain Knightbridge and Nurse Jane of the Search & Rescue Unit have sex in their helicopter -- the Bamboo Bed -- at 10,000 feet, setting a wartime record. Down below, two hippy kids wander the forest trying to end the Vietnam war with a dream and a guitar. In the tradition of Catch-22 and Dr. Strangelove, The Bamboo Bed treats with hilarity and outrage the grim absurdity of war.
-- Dying in a bamboo bed, Captain Clancy hallucinates several philosophical conversations with a snake and a tiger. Meanwhile, Captain Knightbridge an...
Surrounded by cemeteries in the flatlands of New Jersey, the small town of Lud is sustained by the business of death. In fact, with no synagogue and no congregation, Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn has only one true responsibility: to preside over burial services for Jews who pass away in the surrounding cities. But after the Arctic misadventures that led him to Lud, he wouldn't want to live (or die) anywhere else.
As the only living child in Lud, his daughter Connie has a different opinion of this grisly city, and she will do anything to get away from it--or at least liven it up a bit. Things get...
Surrounded by cemeteries in the flatlands of New Jersey, the small town of Lud is sustained by the business of death. In fact, with no synagogue an...
-- Talking bridges the stylistic gap between David Antin's early experimental poems and the "talk pieces" for which he is most well-known. Combining one poem with two improvisations and his first published talk-poem, Talking is a unique book that cannot be classified as solely poetry, fiction or criticism. Infusing the lyricism of poetry with the compelling pull of the spoken voice, this collection is a testament to David Antin's reputation as one of the most influential artists of the contemporary era.
-- Talking bridges the stylistic gap between David Antin's early experimental poems and the "talk pieces" for which he is most well-known. Combining o...
The three novellas collected in Van Gogh's Room at Arles demonstrate once again Stanley Elkin's mastery of the English language, with exuberant rants on almost every page, unexpected plot twists, and jokes that leave readers torn between laughter and tears. "Her Sense of Timing" relates a destructive day in the life of a wheelchair-bound professor who is abandoned by his wife at the worst possible time, leaving him to preside -- helplessly -- over a party for his students that careens out of control. The second story in this collection tells of an unsuspecting commoner catapulted into royalty...
The three novellas collected in Van Gogh's Room at Arles demonstrate once again Stanley Elkin's mastery of the English language, with exuberant rants ...
Well-respected throughout his career, Douglas Woolf created some of the most startlingly original works of the twentieth century. The two novels collected here create a dreamlike vision of America where helplessness prevails and the actions of the sane seem tinged with madness. Ya! takes place during the Christmas reunion of a penniless novelist and his teenage daughter at the nightmarish home of a super-American family; John-Juan begins with an amnesiac who finds himself in a Mexican border town with only his pajamas and watch before becoming part of a surreal and somewhat frightening...
Well-respected throughout his career, Douglas Woolf created some of the most startlingly original works of the twentieth century. The two novels colle...
An ambitious, digressive, and endlessly entertaining account of the thousand-year history of the George Millses, George Mills is the antithesis to the typical Horatio Alger story. Since the First Crusade, there has always been a George Mills, who despite his best efforts is unable to improve his position in life or that of his descendants. Instead, all the George Millses are forced to accept their lot as true blue-collar workers, serving important personages in a series of odd jobs ranging from horse talker in a salt mine to working as a furniture mover in contemporary St. Louis. But the...
An ambitious, digressive, and endlessly entertaining account of the thousand-year history of the George Millses, George Mills is the antithesis to the...
Taken from throughout Mills's career, the essays collected in this volume delve into the work of such influential writers as Wallace Stevens, Denise Levertov, Samuel Beckett, Galway Kinnell, Edith Sitwell, Theodore Roethke, Karl Shapiro, Richard Wilbur, Isabella Gardener, James Wright, David Ignatow, Donald Hall, Robert Bly, Philip Levine, and Stanley Kunitz. Mills examines how the personal element informs the works of these writers and enables them "to speak to us, without impediment, from the deep center of a personal engagement with existence."
Taken from throughout Mills's career, the essays collected in this volume delve into the work of such influential writers as Wallace Stevens, Denis...
Paying homage to the Italian-American experience, Italian Stories celebrates an Italian neighbourhood in the Bronx during the 1930s and '40s, and mourns the loss of this ethnic identity with the migration of subsequent generations to the suburbs. With stories that are both melancholy and comic, Papaleo here explores the contradictory desires of assimilation: his characters want to live the life of the average American while maintaining a strong link to their rich heritage. In addition, Papaleo rails against the damaging stereotypes of Italian-Americans propagated by the media in movies and...
Paying homage to the Italian-American experience, Italian Stories celebrates an Italian neighbourhood in the Bronx during the 1930s and '40s, and m...
