Saved by Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald (Contemporary Writers Series) - Hardcover
With Richard Brautigan's knack for the compact and Ray Carver's knack for the poignant, Allen Woodman moves through a landscape of bizarre, yet disturbingly familiar scenarios. For whether Woodman is employing fairy tales or longer, contemporary stories, all his characters ring -- not just true -- but you.
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Review:
Allen Woodman, originally from Alabama, directs creative writing at Arizona State. This collection of 23 stories, his fifth book, contains some clever plotting, memorable characters, and pleasant whimsy. The whimsy does not keep Woodman from claiming to write more realistically than various modernists: the title story regularly jokes about Fitzgerald, though I got more pleasure from a passage in which Woodman has a bird he taught to quote Faulkner, saying, "Between Grief and nothing I will take grief." . Occasionally the whimsy - or is it the realism? - goes too far, as some stories depend on easy satire, end pointlessly or depende on sex used in the plot as a panacea. I enjoyed the story "In the Hall of the Lost World" until protagonist Cloetta chooses to accept a love I cannot believe in. I prefer an ending like that of "Bones of Marriage," in which magical events happening to the protagonist, Harley, do not finally save her marriage. My favorite stories in the collection are a series of three bizarre "Tales of Rucar," which leave behind the usual satirizing of American pop culture; "The Bear Tamers," "The Church of Summer Sausage," and "The Pleasure Garden of the Root Vegetables" are Woodman at his most original. -- From Independent Publisher
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- PublisherLivingston Pr
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0942979427
- ISBN 13 9780942979428
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages104
- Rating
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