From Library Journal
Powell (Edisto Revisited, LJ 4/1/96) has written a sometimes baffling, often fascinating, and always unique collection of short stories. The characters are drinkers, strippers, the mentally ill, and others you may not want to meet in real life, but they are compelling on the page. Not much may happen plotwise, but as the characters philosophize in a manner approaching stream-of-consciousness, Powell has fun twisting language and exploring how the human mind works. His style is at times excessive, and his verbs have a tendency to get lost from their subjects amid extended modifying clauses, but the author's willingness to take risks is admirable. For literary collections.?Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., Moscow
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A second collection (after Typical, 1991) from the author of the novel Edisto Revisited (1996), etc.: nine pieces--some previously published in Esquire and Harper's--suggesting that Powell may now be one of our most linguistically inventive writers. His landscape is a South defined (that ``vale of dry tears'') by Faulkner, Ray Charles, and Andy of Mayberry, peopled with characters who flirt with madness and find the perfect language to reveal their inner turmoil. The bored housewife in ``Trick or Treat'' encourages the attentions of an unlikely suitor, a 12-year-old ``Lolito'' with a singular crush. Powell brilliantly captures the voice of his brain-damaged narrator in ``Scarliotti and the Sinkhole,'' the sad and loony ravings of a moped accident victim as he drinks beer, forgets to take his meds, and waits for his hefty settlement check. The lowest of the low, the roofer of ``Wayne,'' feels left behind by the times, not to mention his wife and kids. The three parts of ``All Along the Watchtower'' start with the drunken lyricism of its ``classical anarchist'' narrator, a Peeping Tom who skips his outpatient appointment at a mental-health clinic to fly to Mexico in search of a 50-pound chihuahua, which he finds, along with a sexy nurse who has a huge supply of Percodan. This leads into a prose-poem rant by a stroke victim--a defense of silliness and quitting--and ends with the too-long fable of loneliness and twisted desire that takes place along the watchtower, looking over ``a giant spoilbank of broken hearts.'' Powell's other man-boys, who resist being ``properly stationed in Life,'' include the abandoned dad and husband of ``Dump'' and two guys in ``Two Boys'' who seek out a Chinese healer for their various afflictions. The boozing strip-club habitu of ``A Piece of Candy'' comes to the sobering revelation, being now a father himself, that all those women are also daughters. If Powell crashes here and there, it's because he's raised the bar so high: This is fiction that provokes, challenges, and renews your faith in possibility. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“Powell is an inordinately gifted writer.” —The New York Times Book Review “Powell has written a sometimes baffling, often fascinating, and always unique collection of short stories. . . . [He] has fun twisting language and exploring how the human mind works. . . . The author’s willingness to take risks is admirable.” —Library Journal “Powell’s stories are . . . gleefully non-narrative, aggressively stylized, linguistically inventive, and often very funny.” —The Washington Post
About the Author
Padgett Powell is the author of six novels, including The Interrogative Mood and You & Me. His novel Edisto was a finalist for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Little Star, and the Paris Review, and he is the recipient of the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Whiting Writers’ Award. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches writing at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.
