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The Logic of the World and Other Fictions - Hardcover

 
9780929701899: The Logic of the World and Other Fictions
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Four previous volumes of Robert Kelly's manifestly original fictions have been hailed as “exhilarating...full of signs and wonders”; in the New York Times Book Review, “sparking, multiform, yet indivisible” in American Book Review, and “tantalizing, unsettling” in the Review of Contemporary Fiction. Choice rightly points to his “affinities with the writings of Borges, Nabokov, Calvino, and Coover.” The thirty works in this fifth collection of short fictions the first to appear in sixteen years knowingly trespass into fictional realms of droll lyricism, audacious description, studied anachronism, sensual immediacy and subtle compassion. In one, a woman waits at a window for the moon to return her body; another reveals the triple identity of Don Juan; in still another, an itinerant tragedian invents a dangerous form of theatrical performance; in the title story (which has been selected for inclusion in Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2010) a dragon questions a youthful knight's errancy, as well as his sanity. Scattered throughout are nine pieces known as “sudden fiction” a genre Kelly named, while other tales appear in the guises of myths, letters, rituals, and quite frequently dreams. “That is the single mystery of sleep,” one narrator reminds, “to teach us to wake up.” The author's agile imagination mines from the thick substance of language the numinous qualities buried within it. His fictions defy the conventionally plotted short story, and seem to conjure narrative from an infinitely recombinant DNA of the psyche. After reading The Logic of the World, the reader risks awakening to discover a hitherto unexplored territory of the mind.

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About the Author:
Robert Kelly was born in 1935 in Brooklyn, and educated at CCNY and Columbia, where he studied mediaeval literature and linguistics. His first book, Armed Descent, was published in 1961; since then he has published over sixty more, including novels, short fiction collections, and poetry, receiving many awards. He has been especially interested in collaborations with artists (The Garden of Distances, Shame) and other poets (Mont Blanc, Unquell the Dawn Now). For over fifty years he has been involved with such celebrated journals as Chelsea, Trobar, Caterpillar, Alcheringa, and Conjunctions. For almost a half century he has taught at Bard College, where he is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature and co-directs the Program in Written Arts. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, the translator Charlotte Mandell.
Review:
There is such beauty and mystery and surprise on the path we are seductively invited to follow in Robert Kelly's The Logic of the World. Do not miss this deeply charmed and haunting foray --Carole Maso, author of AVA

Highly prolific and highly experienced writer Robert Kelly brings his fans another treat with The Logic of the World, and Other Fictions, as he brings a collection of short stories touching on countless themes of the world and countless settings ranging from the metaphysical to the fantastic to the realistic. With something for everone and much in the way of originality, The Logic of the World is a fine anthology to add to any community library short fiction collection. --The Midwest Book Review

"Rarely does a collection's title so perfectly capture the strategy of its constituent stories' composition with the exception that its phrasing implies a book concerned only with one logic and one world. In stories written in modes ranging from fantasy and fable to a letter to Thomas Bernhard to a realist account of a young woman interviewing an elderly author, Robert Kelly pursues fragments of logic to the point of their exhaustion. These logics are often small and slim. They are exhausted quickly, frequently in the space of two or three pages. These logics, whether embodied or disembodied, spoken or unspoken, become the protagonists of their stories. In 'Baby,' a newborn explains to the reader in high-flown, insistent language the reasoning behind his assertion that he is God. In 'The Sacred Garden,' monks mark off a section of land to watch and study without interference. In 'The Example of the Hawk,' a young actor reads a story entitled 'The Example of the Hawk,' and it changes his life, transforms his ideas of theater. He lives and dies by this epiphany. The actor's story, a dramatic response to Robert Kelly's fiction, suggests how Kelly might hope to affect readers. He is not afraid to demand, command, explain, or insist: 'Trigonometry,' a story told in chapter headings, instructs readers explicitly in how they are meant to receive and understand it. We are meant to take something away from these stories which sometimes barely qualify as narrative back into the world with us. However, as the ambivalent ending of 'The Example of the Hawk; suggests, Kelly harbors no utopian dreams. Even pursuing the best idea, putting one's faith into the most beautiful story, is no guarantee. Kelly wants to change the world, but harbors little hope that it will be much better after. It will only be changed." --Mike Meginnis, The Review of Contemporary Fiction

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  • PublisherMcPherson
  • Publication date2010
  • ISBN 10 0929701895
  • ISBN 13 9780929701899
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages223

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