The Red Truck - Hardcover

Wilson, Rudy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394558464 ISBN 13: 9780394558462

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987

Synopsis

This is the first Ravenna Press edition of Wilson's novel, a cult favorite originally published in 1987 by Knopf, with a new Introduction by Marc Kipniss. Published alongside his short story collection, Sonja's Blue, these books are interesting evidence in the controversy over the influence of former Knopf editor Gordon Lish (who edited The Red Truck but not the short stories.) Lish edited Wilson as he edited Raymond Carver, with dazzling results that may be compared to the author's original and unedited writing in Sonja's Blue.

About this title

About the Author:

Rudy Wilson received an MFA degree at the University of Iowa and has taught in the Iowa Writer s Program. He is the recipient of an NEA grant and the Michener Award as well as the GE-CCLM award for short fiction in The Paris Review from the Coordinating Council for Literary Magazines. He is the author of a companion volume from Ravenna Press, the collection Sonja's Blue and the novel A Girl Named Jesus.

From Publishers Weekly:

Wilson's daring but overly ambitious first novel is written in the voices of Billy-Billy Jump and Teddianne Sayers, two mentally scarred protagonists who, through reincarnation, have connected with each other in several violence-fraught lifetimes. They share a keen love of Christ; Teddianne envisions Christ, who also "goes on forever," as a red truck. Staccato sentences often evoke powerful images and emotions, such as Billy-Billy's description of his near-death by suffocation inside a locked refrigerator at age seven, an incident that claimed his brother's life. But many teasing paragraphs withhold their secrets from the reader who can only wonder what to make of the convoluted concepts: "Then the yellow started coming . . . . There were hundreds of yellows. . . . I put back my head and opened my mouth to let some out. Then I saw how yellows weren't yellow at all, but were made out of no-color, then only later they changed to become their colorness, yellow." Even those who share the author's powerful belief in the transmigration of souls may need a road map to follow Billy-Billy and Teddianne through their various mutations.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0394558464
• ISBN 13: 9780394558462
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 178