Paul Metcalf: Collected Works, Volume I: 1956-1976 - Hardcover

Metcalf, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566890500 ISBN 13: 9781566890502

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 1996

Synopsis

The first of three comprehensive volumes to present the lifetime work of Paul Metcalf, one of the Black Mountain Writers.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Perhaps it is the fate of voices in advance of their time?think of Whitman, Poe, Dickinson, Dreiser, Melville?to be lost in their own. Such is the case with Metcalf?significantly enough, a great-grandson of the author of Moby-Dick?a man now in his 80s living quietly in Massachusetts. Although long admired by poets and by prose experimenters like Guy Davenport and William Gass, Metcalf has been published only in small editions and chapbooks by some very small presses. This first volume in a three-volume effort from Coffee House promises to give a lifetime's innovative work wider exposure and a shot at the posterity it deserves. Metcalf's range of experimentation is vast. "Will West" is a precocious piece documenting the loves and travails of a Cherokee southpaw pitcher who hits the American road. "Genoa" is a spectacular confrontation with Melville's work, the journals of Columbus and molecular biology?all folded into a hallucinatory narrative about two brothers and their different paths through the American century. "Patagoni," "Apalache" and "The Middle Passage" round out the volume, each in its own way breaking new ground. Metcalf has a style all his own, constantly and restlessly renewing itself, utilizing primary source material, poetry, musical notation and straight narrative. His seems a writing career that, perhaps, needed a certain obscurity in order to remain so boldly adventurous, very much in the manner of Melville. Both explorer and archivist, Metcalf maps an invaluable literary landscape, unrestrained by any form or geography. At last, it is open to the general public.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Who is Paul Metcalf, and why are his collected works being published in three hefty volumes? According to Guy Davenport, who wrote this installment's introduction, Metcalf is an "intensely imaginative" writer. He compares Metcalf's unique collaging of literary styles to the music of Charles Ives, and this comparison extends to Metcalf's subject matter as well as his use of different voices in complex, sometimes dissonant, but always powerfully effective combinations. The great-grandson of Herman Melville and the last of the Black Mountain writers, Metcalf possesses a passionate and dramatic sense of American history. This is particularly evident in Will West, the story of a Native American baseball player, and Genoa, an intriguing tale that embraces several time frames and involves the relationship between two brothers. Metcalf is mercurial, shifting from inner monologues to action and dialogue, from fiction to poetry, history, and extended quotes. He has worked within a deep zone of privacy and artistic integrity. It is now time to make his work available. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1566890500
• ISBN 13: 9781566890502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 550