Cries for Help, Various
Stories
New York : Catapult, [2015]
Format: Book
Description: 182 pages ; 21 cm
Named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR and Vanity Fair
"Rifles through fear, identity, meaning, and cultural memory in forty-four short, surreal stories." -- Vanity Fair
"By turns moving, funny, and maddening.... very much in the key of Donald Barthelme." --The New York Times Book Review
"Somehow both grounded and absurd, each one of the stories trying get at that heart of the confusion and sadness at the core of contemporary life." -- VICE
From the highly acclaimed author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood , Padgett Powell's new collection of stories, Cries for Help, Various, follows his mentor Donald Barthelme's advice that "wacky mode" must "break their hearts." The surrealistic and comical terrain of most of the forty-four stories here is grounded by a real preoccupation with longing, fear, work, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. These universal concerns are given exhilarating life by way of Powell's "wit, his . . . dazzling turns of phrase" (Scott Spencer).
Padgett Powell's language is both lofty and low-down, his tone cranky and heartfelt, exuberant and inconsolable. His characters rebel against convention and ambition, hoping to maintain their very sanity by doing so. Even the most hilarious or fantastical stories in Cries for Help, Various ring gloriously, poignantly, true.
"Rifles through fear, identity, meaning, and cultural memory in forty-four short, surreal stories." -- Vanity Fair
"By turns moving, funny, and maddening.... very much in the key of Donald Barthelme." --The New York Times Book Review
"Somehow both grounded and absurd, each one of the stories trying get at that heart of the confusion and sadness at the core of contemporary life." -- VICE
From the highly acclaimed author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood , Padgett Powell's new collection of stories, Cries for Help, Various, follows his mentor Donald Barthelme's advice that "wacky mode" must "break their hearts." The surrealistic and comical terrain of most of the forty-four stories here is grounded by a real preoccupation with longing, fear, work, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. These universal concerns are given exhilarating life by way of Powell's "wit, his . . . dazzling turns of phrase" (Scott Spencer).
Padgett Powell's language is both lofty and low-down, his tone cranky and heartfelt, exuberant and inconsolable. His characters rebel against convention and ambition, hoping to maintain their very sanity by doing so. Even the most hilarious or fantastical stories in Cries for Help, Various ring gloriously, poignantly, true.
Contents:
Horses -- Love -- Joplin and Dickens -- Mrs. Fiberung -- Gift -- Sisters -- Perhaps South America -- Confidence -- Change of life -- Cries for help, various -- Longing -- Dizzy -- Dusk -- Letter from France -- Wearing a meat shirt and killing a snake -- Spy -- Thang Phong and the son of the chief of police -- Breakdown -- Mrs. Stamp -- Bedtime -- The flood parade -- Getting you some cocktail -- Solitude -- The imperative mood -- The indicitive mood -- Losing the wax -- Marbles -- Bebek -- Hoping weakly -- Gluing wood -- The retarded hermit -- The new world -- Wagons, ho! -- The cork -- Not much is known -- Matter of time -- A local boy -- Mao -- Yeltsin dancing -- Yeltsin spotted abroad in a bar -- Yeltsin and canaries -- Working for Brother Catcard -- Utopia -- No empress eyes.
ISBN:
9781936787319
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
F Powell | Main (Downtown) | Second Level, Fiction | In |