The Rooster Trapped In The Reptile Room (Paperback)

Barry Gifford

ISBN 10: 1583225250 / ISBN 13: 9781583225257

Published by Seven Stories Press,U.S., New York, 2003

About this Item

Paperback. Edited by Thomas A. McCarthyForeword by Andrei Codrescu"Everything I have to say about race and religion and politics is in the novels," declares Barry Gifford. The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room gathers generous portions of all of Gifford's thirteen novels and novellas. Nine, including Wild at Heart and Night People, are restored to original sequence. The broad contours of an episodic output emerge-a full-length view of the freaks and freakish incidents that populate Gifford's unique, human comedy. As Lula, the author's favorite of all his characters, reflects, "The whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."This world is Gifford's native habitat as much as it is his creation. The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room includes first-person essays that mirror the circumstances of his novels. There was the time he took his young son to visit his friend William Burroughs. Or the trip he took along the chain of Mexico-US bordertowns, exploring life on the seam. In selections from The Phantom Father, a memoir, Gifford describes his nomadic boyhood as the son of a racketeer father and fashion-model mother. A new short story, "The Peterson Fire," is a tale from the life of a boy who sounds a lot like the young Gifford himself.Gifford began as a poet, publishing for over a decade before writing his first novel in 1979. The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room groups seven new poems with a selection from past work. It wasn't until the 1990s that Gifford started writing for films, a pursuit represented here with a section of the screenplay to David Lynch's Lost Highway. In "Fuzzy Sandwiches or There Is No Speed Limit on the Lost Highway: Reflections on David Lynch," Gifford tells the story of his several collaborations with Lynch. Brimming with literary delights from one of America's most foremost literary figures, this anthology gathers excerpts from Gifford's six Sailor and Lula novels, selected verse, an interview, and excerpts from the screenplay for "Lost Highway, " cowritten with David Lynch. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781583225257

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Rooster Trapped In The Reptile Room (Paperback)
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press,U.S., New York
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1583225250
• ISBN 13: 9781583225257
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

"Everything I have to say about race and religion and politics is in the novels," declares Barry Gifford. The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room gathers generous portions of all thirteen novels and novellas, as well as first-person essays, generous helpings of poetry, journalism, and a new interview with the author. The broad contours of an episodic output emerge—a full-length view of the freaks and freakish incidents that populate Gifford’s unique human comedy. A world, as Lula, the author’s favorite of all his characters, reflects, "wild at heart and weird on top."
The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room provides essential reading for anyone after the soul of American writing.

About the Author

The author of more than forty works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into over twenty-five languages, BARRY GIFFORD writes distinctly American stories for readers around the globe. From screenplays and librettos to his acclaimed Sailor and Lula novels, Gifford’s writing is as distinctive as it is difficult to classify. Born in the Seneca Hotel on Chicago’s Near North Side, he relocated in his adolescence to New Orleans. The move proved significant: throughout his career, Gifford’s fiction—part-noir, part-picaresque, always entertaining—is born of the clash between what he has referred to as his “Northern Side” and “Southern Side.” Gifford has been recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart was adapted into the 1990 Palme d’Or-winning film of the same name. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.