Bearings and Distances - Softcover

Arbery, Glenn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069246820X ISBN 13: 9780692468203

Publisher: Wiseblood Books, 2015

Synopsis

Synopsis

Bearings and Distances by Glenn Arbery, is a novel of comic ironies and tragic recurrences set in the “post-racial” moment of the American experiment. In the summer after Barack Obama’s election, Hermia Watson, a scholar of black history, lures the famous (and famously irresponsible) Professor Braxton Forrest back to his hometown in Georgia, using his two daughters as unwitting hostages. Returning alone while his pious wife continues touring Italy, Forrest arrives to the tremblings of his abandoned past and a confrontation with the Furies he thought modernity had left behind. In the course of a few days, Hermia realizes what violent revelations she has begun to unleash about her former lover, her mother, and her own identity—but it is too late to stop what is coming to light. Arbery revisits the obsessions of the 20th century Southern renaissance in a work that satirizes misconceptions and shallow pieties but takes seriously the wisdom of the Southern literary tradition—and its classical antecedents.

Now, I find myself in awe at the sheer brilliance of a recent novel by Glenn Arbery. The novel in question is Bearings & Distances, a work of such grim unflinching realism that one finds oneself grimacing on every page, much as one does when reading Flannery O’Connor. It is indeed not for the faint of heart, or the squeamish, or those with puritanical sensibilities. It goes beneath the surface of contemporary culture, probing beyond modernity’s smile of hedonistic self-satisfaction, to show the ugly reality of the death-culture, removing the seductive smile, the mere mask that modernity wears, to expose the sneer of cynicism which lies behind its lies. Its characters are obsessed with sex, letting their lust lead them by their nose until they and everything they touch stinks with its ugly consequences. And yet nowhere does Mr. Arbery preach. He lets the characters and their actions speak for themselves.

-Joseph Pearce

Author Bio

Glenn Arbery grew up in the small-town South during the Civil Rights era. He attended the University of Georgia before taking his Ph.D. at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Why Literature Matters (ISI, 2001) and the novel Bearings and Distances (Wiseblood, 2015) along with dozens of essays and hundreds of columns. He has edited collections on the genre of tragedy, the Southern critics, and the Confessions of St. Augustine. He now lives and teaches in Wyoming with his wife Virginia.

About this title

About the Author

Glenn Arbery grew up in the small-town South during the Civil Rights era. He attended the University of Georgia before taking his Ph.D. at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Why Literature Matters (ISI, 2001) and the novel Bearings and Distances (Wiseblood, 2015) along with dozens of essays and hundreds of columns. He has edited collections on the genre of tragedy, the Southern critics, and the Confessions of St. Augustine. He now lives and teaches in Wyoming with his wife Virginia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiseblood Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 069246820X
• ISBN 13: 9780692468203
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544