Bøker av Padgett Powell

A housewife revels in the secret world of her mind filled with historical characters and twisted love stories in this inventive sendup of Southern fiction. Mrs. Hollingsworth sits at her kitchen table, compiling her grocery list. The subject of the list is not foodstuffs, but memories that never happened, inventions of loves, and strange conspiracies peopled by men who appear in the lonely housewife's headmen infinitely more real to her than her own husband. Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest gallops into her story, courtesy of media giant Ted Turner and two shady criminal types named Bundy and Oswald who are engaged in a secret experiment to create ';the New Southerner.' Her prying daughters believe Mrs. Hollingsworth is losing her mind. But in truth, their mother is simply looking for love via hand-to-hand combat on the surreal battlefield inside her head. Originally published as Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men, Padgett Powell's Hologram is a stunning literary achievement. Strikingly unique, it is a poignant, funny, and unconventional fever dream brought to lyrical life.

Twenty-three surreal fictionsstories, character assassinations, and mini-traveloguesfrom one of the most heralded writers of the American SouthThere are many things that repulse ';Dr. Ordinary.' ';Kansas' is notable for its distinct lack of farmland. ';Wayne's Fate' is most unfortunate, not merely for Wayne but for the roofer pal who stands by watching his good buddy lose his head. ';Miss Resignation' simply cannot win at Bingo. And there is nothing ';Typical' about the unemployed steelworker and self-described ';piece of crud' who strides through this collection's title story.Welcome to the world of Padgett Powell, one of the most original American literary voices in recent memory. Typical is both a bravura demonstration of Powell's passion for words, and an offbeat, perceptive view of contemporary lifean enthralling work by a one-of-a-kind wordsmith, and a redefinition of what short fiction can be.

Hailed by Time as an ';extravagantly comic' novel, A Woman Named Drown is a wild and strange journey through America's South that follows a young PhD dropout who falls in with an amateur actresscum-pool sharkOn the brink of earning his doctorate in chemistry, the unnamed narrator decides to chuck it all away in favor of real life. So begins an odd pilgrimage through the American South. In Tennessee, our hero is bewitched by an older, gin-swilling, pool-playing sometimes-actress who claims to have recently starred in a theatrical production about a ';woman named Drown.' He moves in with her and just as quickly begins encountering her strange compatriots. Before he knows it, they're heading farther south togetherto Floridawhere the data that the dropout scientist is collecting from life's laboratory is about to get quite contradictory.Richly influenced by offbeat literary giant Donald Barthelme, Padgett Powell's A Woman Named Drown offers readers a smorgasbord of literary strangenessa surreal series of adventures in which nothing muchand yet everythinghappens at once.

In the sequel to Powell's acclaimed debut, Edisto, Simons Manigault is olderif not particularly wiserand searching for the cure to his restlessness in memory, travel, and forbidden loveFourteen years after we first met Simons Manigault, our protagonist is newly graduated from Clemson University, bored, unfocused, and idling his summer away at his mother's home in Edisto, South Carolina. Not yet ready to fully embrace adulthood, Simons finds himself surrendering to cynicism, as well as to the temptations of his ';turned-out-well' first cousin, Patricia.To avoid sinking further into his rut, Simons embarks on a road trip through the South. After a disastrous stint as a Corpus Christi fisherman, he exits the Lone Star State, doubling back to the Louisiana bayou to spend some quality time with his former friend and mentorand his mother's ex-loverTaurus. But as even Taurus's once sought-after wisdom wears thin, Simons begins to suspect that the grass is not greener on the other sideit may be burnt, brown, and dead wherever he goes.Padgett Powell's literary return to Edisto is as outrageous, witty, and bitingly sharp as its predecessor. Readers who adored their first meeting with Simons Manigault will relish a second helping of his ennui and bad behavior. Newcomers will likewise be heartily glad they made the trip.

The idiosyncratic genius of Padgett Powell shines through in nine stories that bend the conventions of short fiction Padgett Powell's literary stage is a blurred vision of the American South. His characters are bored, sad, assured, confused, deluded, and often just one step away from madness. The stories they populate are madder still, delivered by a voice enthralling and distinctive.Whether he's chronicling a housewife's encouragement of adolescent lust, following two good ol' boys on their search for a Chinese healer, or delving into the mind of an unstable moped accident survivor as he awaits a hefty settlement check, Powell revels in the irregularities of the mundane. His people occupy bar stools and strip clubs, pickup truck cabs and mental health clinics, looking for love, drugs, answers. According to the New York Times Book Review, ';Mr. Powell is like a fabulous guest at a dinner party, the guy who gets people drinking far too much and licking their dessert plates and laughing at jokesfor which not a few of them will hate themselves in the morning.'