Durable Beauty - Hardcover

Twa, Garth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 096489744X ISBN 13: 9780964897441

Publisher: Parissound Pub

Synopsis

To read Durable Beauty by Garth Twa is to enter a world peopled by an array of unforgettable and singular characters who may be, by turns, bizarre, hilarious, and surprising, but who all remain deeply touching as they scramble to make sense out of the world around them and try to find their place in it.

You’ll meet:

THUNDRA BAUM, a poetess who writes book on manners and hygiene—in verse

GRAHAM BALLARD, a man on an obsessive quest to find the transvestite who robbed him

MANIA FISH, a songwriter trapped at her job at the Checks Cashed/Donuts who finds inspiration when an unemployed actor shows up with a gun

KINGSLEY TOTBOTHAM, a professor of Durable Beauty whose quest to save the world from "unbeauty" might just awaken something laying dormant in his own heart

BINGO DEPUE, the senator’s wife, who is locked in mortal battle with her mother, Xavia Jamais, the Queen of Burlesque, over the hearts and minds of men

JEREMY HATCH, a former matinee idol who is now in his final tail-spin trapped in Rondo, North Dakota, giving a seminar on "Surviving In The Hollywood"

DETECTIVE NICKY HEART, on a fruitless search through Los Angeles as he tries to solve the murder of Delores Sperrow, who nobody even noticed when she was alive

BRENDADA FUCKOFF, a reluctant artist swept up into the Assaultive Art movement under the tutelage of Angry Helen, an artist who paints using only animal by-products, and

TERRA GAE, a career woman in search of the perfect sperm cell

These and others will delight and surprise you in this premier collection of stories from a writer who destined to become one of this year’s most influential and innovative writers.

About this title

From the Publisher:

When was the last time you had a good laugh? If you’re like most of us, they don’t come often enough. Epiphany Press is pleased to present DURABLE BEAUTY, a collection of stories by one of the most promising (and funny) new authors today, Garth Twa.

A resident of Venice, CA, Garth has startled the literary community with his debut collection of stories.

T. Coraghessan Boyle, noted author and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, calls Garth Twa "dangerously funny, a subversive satirist in the grand and twisted tradition of Waugh, Amis, and Fielding."

DURABLE BEAUTY comes off the press while film aficionados are still applauding Mr. Twa’s film Birds Die which was honored at numerous festivals, including the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Fargo Film Festival, where it won "Best Comedy Short."

An array of noted actors, including Mink Stole (of John Waters fame) and John Fleck (of Waterworld and Tales of the City) have embraced Mr. Twa’s work and are eagerly joining him in bookstore readings from DURABLE BEAUTY.

Award-winning director Curtis Harrington said, "It’s hard to believe that someone who was raised with the Eskimos could have as incisive a grasp of the foibles of such a cross section of society."

Enter Mr. Twa’s world of humor and discover a world of misfits who have in common what we all have in common: heart, innocence, and the simple need to find their places in an increasingly perplexing world.

The breadth of his fiction encompasses one end of the social strata to the other, from senator’s wives in Washington to a failed song writer working in a Hollywood donut shop. No matter how outrageous or prosaic his characters, Mr. Twa writes about them with honest compassion and startling insight.

We hope you enjoy the read.

From the Author:

Growing up in an Eskimo settlement called Repulse Bay on the Arctic Circle, all we had to eat was fresh caribou and whale meat," Mr. Twa says, "and I think that growing up as a white kid in the Arctic gave me an appreciation for the outsider trying to find his place in the world, which is what my stories are about."

On his first writing: The first thing I wrote was in second grade. It was a play called The Magic Ring. Admittedly an early work, the rather minimalist plot centered on someone sneezing on me and blowing me through a wall (made up of stacked cardboard boxes that I’d saved for over a month) only to find, behind the wall, a magic ring. The end. It definitely could’ve used some revisions, but I didn’t find out about revising until I went to Columbia.

On inspiration: Inspiration, as Mania Fish in "Day Job" knows, can be found anywhere. I dreamed "Durable Beauty." "Survival in the Hollywood" happened after I had taken one too many classes at the Learning Annex. "Thundra, Awake!" happened because one day I misheard someone say something that sounded like "Thundra" and thought that that would be a good name for a woman. But then I had to figure out what to do with her.

About this edition

• Publisher: Parissound Pub
• ISBN 10: 096489744X
• ISBN 13: 9780964897441
• Binding: Hardcover