New Bad News (The Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature) - Softcover

Ridge, Ryan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1946448567 ISBN 13: 9781946448569

Publisher: Sarabande Books, 2020

Synopsis

“Ryan Ridge’s verbal prestidigitation suggest a more rueful Mark Leyner, and he can make you both laugh and wince, but he can also kick up your pulse with a storytelling urgency that thrums under the attractively fragmented surfaces. His hard-boiled punchlines are rooted in geography and yearning and real American sadness.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Feral Detective

 

In New Bad News, the frenetic and far-out worlds of fading celebrities, failed festival promoters, underemployed adjuncts, and overly aware chatbots collide. A Terminator statue comes to life at the Hollywood Wax Museum; a coyote laps up Colt 45, as a passerby looks on in existential quietude; a detective disappears while investigating a missing midwestern cam girl. Set in Kentucky, Hollywood, and the afterlife, these bright, bold short-shorts and stories construct an uncannily familiar, alternate-reality America.

About this title

About the Author

Ryan Ridge grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of four books, including the hybrid novel, American Homes (University of Michigan Press, 2015), which became the inaugural book club pick of Michigan Library Publishing Club. His work has appeared in American Book Review, The Collagist, DIAGRAM, Los Angeles Review, Lumina, Passages North, Salt Hill, Santa Monica Review, and elsewhere. In 2016, he received the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction judged by Jonathan Lethem. An assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, he co-directs the Creative Writing Program. In addition to his work as a writer and teacher, he edits the literary magazine, Juked. He lives in Salt Lake City with the writer Ashley Farmer.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"JACKSON BROWNE"

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain. ––Jackson Browne

These days he strums his guitar with an unregistered handgun in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. The acoustics are astonishing. After the failure of the ‘60s came the disappointment of the ‘70s. Now every decade feels like the last. It’s a story older than prime real estate itself. In the Country Western sunshine, our heartbeats beat in three-four time as you waltz into an Albertson’s on Alvarado to buy a bag of avocados. Everything costs more in California. Nothing is sacred but profitable cinema. Out of work actors can’t catch a break, so, instead, they fall into afternoon movies: comedy, dramedy, urban tragedy. Most lives are silent films no one sees. He handguns his guitar in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. His weapons of choice are: (1) his voice, and (2) an acoustic piano dropped from a ballroom balcony in the rain, but it rarely ever rains anymore. These minor chords sound exactly like the distance between us. And the ocean? It belongs only to itself.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1946448567
• ISBN 13: 9781946448569
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180