Bøker utgitt av Livingston Press at the University of West Al

An Excerpt: Some decades back, a Quaker named Richard Millhouse Nixonwrote a book entitled Six Crises. An opposition psychiatrist wasquick to pick up on this title and note that President Nixon saw hislife in typically manic-depressive fashion. Psychiatry and politics andreligion aside, I suspect many of us perceive our lives just as that past-President did: if not in crises, at least in watersheds where we chooseone muddy river path over another; then fall onto or avoid a sunningcottonmouth; where we either sadly stumble over or gladly hop overthe mighty snag of regret.So what did Josey learn from Mr. Garner's visit and thoseuntimely deaths? I'd like to say-my friend, I'd truly like to say-that he absorbed a myriad of lessons. But he's forever been unable toassimilate even a damned comic book moral, much less true epiphany'sinspiration. In consequence he views himself not as a higher spiritualbeing, not even as a genetically select, silken white rat capable ofconquering life's mazes, but rather as the world's thinnest fat man, continually stunning crowds below by tossing off some dazzling jewel. . .

Jake Garrett, a writer living in New York's Greenwich Village, is paid a surprising late-night visit from the husband whose wife, Vera, Jake had an affair with ten years earlier. Even more surprising: the husband asks Jake to help find her, for she's disappeared. Jake is thrust back into a world he thought had been lost to him forever. Jake's undying love for Vera propels his search for her through the night-time streets of the city and, finally, to the remote beaches of the Carolina coast. This is a tale of lost love, adultery, and crime told in a taut, lyrical style-keeping the love story and the mystery inseparably intertwined. At its heart pulses the greatest mystery of all: the Self-why we do what we do, how we make amends for a life gone wrong, and how in the darkness of night, we see ourselves in the clearest light.

Southern Writers Reading was the literary scene gone rogue,upsetting the apple carts of more than a couple of self-satisfied editorsin the region. It was the anti-establishment strain of the literary family,the kids in the back of the classroom shooting spitballs, lobbing rottenapples, thumbing their noses at grammatical prudes. And Williamhad nothing but disdain for posturing and preening, academic airs,mercenary social climbing, obsequious ass-kissing. And limousines. Nowonder he kept returning.1998-2008: these were literary magic years, with Big DaddySonny Brewer bringing the juju, along with partners-in-crime like JimGilbert, Kyle Jennings, Skip Jones, and Martin Lanaux. The communitycame alive, venues volunteered, folks opened their homes to lodgeauthors, throw parties, banquets, lunches and brunches, and the ABCstore did a very brisk business. The weekend's events all fell under theumbrella of Southern Writers Reading.Why "Southern"? There's been much debate over the lastcouple of decades about whether the classification should even existanymore. For my own self, I just know that when I was doing researchfor my 2003 novel In a Temple of Trees, I explored some very dark,Deliverance-like parts of West Alabama that took me right back to mychildhood days in southwest Georgia-in the 1950s. Places where timehas stopped. My protective guide took me to dives and honky tonksand drove me around with a man and his six-year-old son, both ofwhom enthusiastically chewed and spat tobacco. We visited a womanin jail accused of carving her boyfriend's rectum out with a fish scalingknife. I witnessed an elderly African American man address a teenagewhite boy as "sir," and not in an ironic way. Confederate flags were notuncommon.

In this Cloud Atlas-style speculative novel, humans are the alien invaders. The reader learns through many documents-police reports, legal depositions, speech transcripts, and diary entries-that a human company named HealthCorp has attempted to enslave two alien species: the Laffians stranded on a planet-wide ocean and the feline HoFe living on a bed of hofellium. Now, those same aliens have come to Earth in the hopes of using the planet to safely repopulate. The overriding question becomes whether these three groups can reconcile on Earth without killing each other first. . . .

"The sixth-century world of the poet called Merlin of the Wilds is one of sharp contrasts: savage battles and rivalries are set against natural beauties part homely and part magical. It's a world in which the role of the poet is not just to sing but to prophesy to kings. Larry Beckett's renderings of Merlin's world and words, derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini, are richly sonic and songlike, full of refrains, repetends, pulsing four-beat lines, and musical Welsh names. They make a distant world-picture-and a poet's enigmatic life-tangible for us, in laments and foretellings, histories and prayers." - Maryann Corbett, winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize .

Many of these stories-most especially "The Man Who Haunted Himself" and the title story-were inspired by dream visions. I try to take such visions and search for the human truth concealed within, working within a framework of verisimilitude. While I partially envy the creating of "realistic" fiction, I'm typically happy to write in the romantic mode. Um, gee, Vonnegut, Emily Bronte, and Laurence Sterne strike me as worthy of emulation. Nonetheless, several other stories in this collection ("Soft Queen," "Ontological," and "All Lovely") were originally intended for a novel of linked stories that basically aimed toward an admixture of psychological/love/detective realism. For the sake of that novel's plot progression the three were trimmed, to be included herewith. And then the stories "Breakdown Club" and "The Secret Life of Atheists" from whence? The latter came from my youthful infatuation with Sartre and Camus. Why not, I figured, toss in some wine and Simone DuBeauvoir? And what of "Breakdown Club"? The junction of a trip to the zoo and my year and a half apprenticeship as a concrete finisher brought that one about. No matter the inspiration, I do think that all these stories offer a vision of life that comes across a bit skewed. And what life doesn't offer that jaunty description, in the end?

"Karen Heuler's THE SOFT ROOM starts with a provocativepremise and twists its way into unexpected territory. Exploringthe meaning of pain and duality, her characters end up in aweirdly life-affirming landscape-the shape morality takes whenfaced with cruelty and senseless harm. Heuler's writing is clearand thoughtful, and as full of surprises as her story. She has a giftfor the oblique, a quirky take on things that flows through thenarrative like the atmosphere of a planet almost like our own.THE SOFT ROOM is a pleasure to read, fitting for a novel aboutsensation, and it also rewards the reader with memorablecharacters and ideas about important themes of our time." -Sally George, FROG SALAD"This absolutely stunning novel is told from the perspectives oftwin girls, one of whom is born without the ability to feel anyphysical pain. The mesmerizing prose and deep characterizationsnearly render the plot-while excellent in and of itself-almostunimportant." -Debi Lewis, BOOKLIST starred review,!7IB9D1-jicdca!:P;l;o;T;pISBN

Tartt First Fiction Award! Zombie ant fungus, Self-conscious crash test dummies-you surely understand the black humor focus of this collection. The author recently commented, "A lot of the stuff I'm publishing these days in philosophy involves defenses of pessimism and misanthropy. I credit the last few elections for inspiring this new research line."

The author's first collection. As the title promises, these stories range from a small town sheriff who rids his town of a drunken murderer in his own way (after discussing the matter with a local mountain), to woman who on the gad dyes her hair with a teen-ager's piurple streak to wait on staid lawyers and judges in an up-and-coming restaurant, to a priest who-yes-slips right into current headlines of sexual child abuse in a moment of terrifying lonelines and confusion. But just as the title shifts from magnificent to commonplace, so do the characters. And Taylor reminds that we all-despite our flashes into one glorious or ignoble end of life's spectrum-that we all muddle along in life's ragged gray.

A totally illuminating collection of stories centered around China's Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, which, as we learn, continues even today-with both sides still holding out, with "apologies forthcoming." Xujun's older sister fought and died in the Cultural Revolution. Xujun herself lived in China during that tumultuous period and now makes her home in America. This, her first story collection, is both disturbing and enthralling.

Fiction. Hope comes as a hopscotch board on the sidewalk entrance of a hospital in Greensboro. Despite efforts to remove the board, it re-appears until physicians, hospital employees, and patients, including Emily, an 8-year-old fighting cancer, and Stan, an Iraqi War veteran, are drawn toward it. In this moving and sensitive gem of a story, Steve Cushman takes us to the grounds and wards of a city hospital, places he knows well, places where hope and despair, death and healing exist side by side. But when a hopscotch board mysteriously keeps reappearing on a sidewalk near the hospital entrance, despite attempts to have it scrubbed away, what occurs is a kind of miracle. This is not the miracle that makes patients well or alters the reality of their conditions. Rather it is the miracle that comes from remembered joys and shared laughter, from choosing to live fully despite disability and the lifespan that's allotted, however short or compromised by pain. Though Cushman's wonderful cast of characters may make you cry, they will also warm your heart, allowing you to believe again in the power of friendship rediscovered over a childhood game.--Miriam Herin

Fiction. At the end of the 18th century, two grave robbers, a secretive doctor, the village midwife, and the young sole survivor of a mysterious disease combine to tell a story in the strange coastal village of Chilling. Imagined as a prequel to Dickens' Great Expectations.