Description
The stories in Drowned Moon are set in Southeast Texas, where the Old and the Lost Rivers meet and empty into the bay. This unique geographic location, with its unpredictable waters, its sinking swamps, its bayous and sloughs, provides a haunting landscape for Glenn Blake's characters.
Let's face it, being born and raised between the Old and Lost Rivers is going to do something permanent to your consciousness, and what it has done in Glenn Blake's case is stick there. So much so that when he writes about it, you can feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it, see it, that strange, lost, unknown corner of Texas. It is a whole other country and Blake gives it to you with all its oddity and mystery, as it is. -- Molly Ivins Reticent, closely guarded, and cryptic, Glenn Blake's terse prose partakes of poetry's careful measures. His stories concern rice fields, houses that disappear into the encroaching high water, and the poignantly named Old and Lost Rivers. He has caught with a peculiar mixture of sadness and humor the personality of this rough, modest, and little-known place. -- Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After Glenn Blake is an eloquent singer of gulf coast storms and tides, both meteorological and human. This first collection of his stories is a delight. -- John Barth
About the Author
Glenn Blake teaches creative writing in the English Department at Rice University. He was awarded "Special Mention" for the Pushcart Prize in 1997 and received the PEN Southwest Award for fiction. He has published stories in American Short Fiction, Southwest Review, Grand Street, and other literary magazines.
Reviews
With deceptively spare prose, Glenn Blake has packed considerable depth, mystery, and sense of place into this debut collection of short stories. -- Si Dunn Dallas Morning News These eight stories evoke the mysteries of nature and the human heart and the intersection between the two. -- Fritz Lanham Houston Chronicle Blake's prose story-telling style is deceptively simple. He writes in a straightforward manner that belies the complexities of the human experience he is at the same time subtly presenting to his reader. -- Jere Real Richmond Times-Dispatch Glenn Blake's stories are ambitious, hard-edged, with much at stake. The starkness of the style is a reflection of the environs in which the stories of Drowned Moon are set... Drowned Moon is a dark, foreboding book-a drowned moon put into print... Each of these stories is tight, finely beveled and curt, eerie. The weight of what is not said is crushing, broods like the hot and damp petrochemical air... In Drowned Moon, Glenn Blake gives us a voice from a place most of us would not inhabit or visit, a place we'd avoid. Yet though we'd likely stay away from Chocolate Bay, such places aren't going away. They're fertile ground for fiction. The rules of engagement there are ancient, universal, brutal and pure. -- Eric Miles Williamson Southern Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780801870934
Author Glenn Blake
Format Paperback
Page Count 120
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 204g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 9mm
Let's face it, being born and raised between the Old and Lost Rivers is going to do something permanent to your consciousness, and what it has done in Glenn Blake's case is stick there. So much so that when he writes about it, you can feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it, see it, that strange, lost, unknown corner of Texas. It is a whole other country and Blake gives it to you with all its oddity and mystery, as it is. -- Molly Ivins Reticent, closely guarded, and cryptic, Glenn Blake's terse prose partakes of poetry's careful measures. His stories concern rice fields, houses that disappear into the encroaching high water, and the poignantly named Old and Lost Rivers. He has caught with a peculiar mixture of sadness and humor the personality of this rough, modest, and little-known place. -- Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After Glenn Blake is an eloquent singer of gulf coast storms and tides, both meteorological and human. This first collection of his stories is a delight. -- John Barth
About the Author
Glenn Blake teaches creative writing in the English Department at Rice University. He was awarded "Special Mention" for the Pushcart Prize in 1997 and received the PEN Southwest Award for fiction. He has published stories in American Short Fiction, Southwest Review, Grand Street, and other literary magazines.
Reviews
With deceptively spare prose, Glenn Blake has packed considerable depth, mystery, and sense of place into this debut collection of short stories. -- Si Dunn Dallas Morning News These eight stories evoke the mysteries of nature and the human heart and the intersection between the two. -- Fritz Lanham Houston Chronicle Blake's prose story-telling style is deceptively simple. He writes in a straightforward manner that belies the complexities of the human experience he is at the same time subtly presenting to his reader. -- Jere Real Richmond Times-Dispatch Glenn Blake's stories are ambitious, hard-edged, with much at stake. The starkness of the style is a reflection of the environs in which the stories of Drowned Moon are set... Drowned Moon is a dark, foreboding book-a drowned moon put into print... Each of these stories is tight, finely beveled and curt, eerie. The weight of what is not said is crushing, broods like the hot and damp petrochemical air... In Drowned Moon, Glenn Blake gives us a voice from a place most of us would not inhabit or visit, a place we'd avoid. Yet though we'd likely stay away from Chocolate Bay, such places aren't going away. They're fertile ground for fiction. The rules of engagement there are ancient, universal, brutal and pure. -- Eric Miles Williamson Southern Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780801870934
Author Glenn Blake
Format Paperback
Page Count 120
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 204g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 9mm
