- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (Jan 12 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618515259
- ISBN-13: 978-0618515257
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.7 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,232,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Pushing the boundaries of narrative and form, two-time PEN/Faulkner Award–winner Wideman (Hoop Roots, etc.) delivers a sometimes electric and sometimes confounding collection of 10 short stories. In the best of these, such as the heartfelt "Are Dreams Faster Than the Speed of Light," about a dying man, and the racially charged "Fanon," Wideman wields his stream-of-consciousness prose to great effect. Often, however, the clever allusions and deft turns of phrase rise one after the other in an almost Sisyphean struggle toward perfection. For instance, in "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence," a full page and a half is devoted to describing a coyote "camouflaged by hovering darkness, by mottled fur, a shadow itself, instantly freezing, sniffing the air" as it roams outside a prison. The language is beautiful, but the detour is so long it stops the story dead. The most frustrating example of this calculated experimentation is "The Silence of Thelonious Monk," which starts with a pistol fight between Verlaine and Rimbaud, shifts into the opening lines of a love story and then heads off into an imagined biography of Monk himself. All of which Wideman pulls off with undeniable virtuosity, but it's precisely this sort of narrative acrobatics that too often robs his stories of their power. The full range of Wideman's talents are on display here, however, and even those stories that don't quite live up to expectations are punctuated by moments of brilliance. (Feb. 9)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Technical virtuosity, without showiness or gimmickry, is Wideman's hallmark, and obviously one of the factors contributing to his receiving the prestigious Rea Award for outstanding accomplishment in the short story. In his latest challenging collection, which numbers 10 stories, he pushes the form's envelope, not to thin lengths but to increased heights of effectiveness. "Weight," one of the best in the collection, assumes the shape of a segment of autobiography as the first-person narrator pays piquant tribute to the quiet strength of his mother (and hence the title of the collection, which comes from the narrator's comment, "The weights she lifts are burdens--her children's, her neighbors, yours"). In "Who Invented the Jump Short," Wideman plays with time and place in a mesmerizingly inventive narrative about, on a metaphysical level, what is truth, and on a more earthly level, race relations past and present. "Sharing" is told from the perspective of a white woman as she relates her encounter with a black neighbor--a brilliant demonstration of Wideman's versatility in adopting voices. Any reader who believes that short stories are too formulaic and constrictive for authors to truly exert their individuality should be required to experience these. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
This writing hits you like walking into Steel Blast Furnace, July 26 2005
By rodboomboom - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: God's Gym: Stories (Hardcover)
I was particularly attracted to the title, and the first of this collection of stories concerning his mom being a weightlifter, that is carrying huge burdens for children, their faith, well-being, etc. This was the best for me out of this, which progressively wore on this reviewer.The style is grating after a bit, but does raise one's sensitivities a great deal with the staccato scene shifts, in and out of someone's reality, etc.
One can only pause at times and breathe deeply, as this writer certainly has a way with getting across emotions which most of us think continually, yet never broadcast nor write down all of them as this does.
Some left me in a daze, e.g. where did the jumpshot come from.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
