Men, Women, and Vehicles: Prose Works - Softcover

Bromige, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0876857977 ISBN 13: 9780876857977

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 1995

Synopsis

Is the automobile the new dog? David Bromige's Thurberesque title suggests that it is. In this collection of humorous stories, prose poems, and casual essays, Bromige gives us modern life as it was lived in by a romantically complicated Northern California male from the 1950s through the 1980s - and as it was seen from behind the wheel of a T-Bird, a Volkswagen Beetle, and a BMW.
Bromige's stories capture the concentrated essence and the startling insight of poetry in everyday language. He writes about grad students striving and slackers growing slacker; about young love flowering and old marriages foundering; about poets and therapists and, quite often, about Sven, a poor immigrant lad whose great ambition is to own a Cadillac but who is endearingly, tearfully attached to his aging '75 Chevy Nova. A charming memento of a bygone era, this book will remind many people of a certain age about what they once thought they needed, and about how that neediness felt.

About this title

About the Author:

David Bromige is a Canadian born in England and resident in the United States. He was (by choice) on the fringe of the Vancouver Tish Group in the sixties, and he's in the neighbourhood of the "language" writers now. Bromige's Desire: Selected Poems 1963-1987 (Black Sparrow) won the 1988 Western States Book Award

From Library Journal:

This collection includes some pieces that are no more than one or two pages long and nothing longer than ten pages. Though almost always engaging, the pieces are often puzzling. Reading them is like having a stranger grab your lapel in a bar and then proceed to tell you about persons and events that are not only strange to you but strange to the teller as well. By re-creating the immediacy of such brief encounters, Bromige seems to be trying to capture the concentrated essence and the startling insight of poetry in everyday language. He writes about grad students, about marriages breaking up, about cars and what they mean to their owners. His stories are entirely contemporary, concerned with how some of us live now, what we think we want, and how we feel. They are not for the reader who wants a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
-Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0876857977
• ISBN 13: 9780876857977
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 171