Fiction. In David Evanier's new collection of stories, THE GREAT KISSER "There is a bloodshot intensity..., a drive to get hold of the world before it all gets lost, the streets, the rooms, the feeling of the times--the 60s and 70s--when personal and public life felt so terribly urgent. Evanier writes a muscular, watchful prose, and again and again he pulls it off, surprising his characters in t heir existential habitat--unsettled, confused, completely caught up in the act of becoming"--Sven Birkerts.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Author of several novels (including Red Love), biographies (Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin) and the story collection The One-Star Jew, Evanier exhibits mastery in this new collection of eight stories. They unfurl as the ongoing spiel of New York writer Michael Goldberg, tortured by feelings of inadequacy in love, family and work. In the opening "The Tapes," middle-aged Michael, an editor at Jewish Punchers, unblocks the story of his life after his highly unorthodox psychiatrist dies, leaving him a trove of their taped sessions. Michael scrolls back 25-plus years through his marriage to the chronically self-effacing, alcohol-sodden Karen, whom he met as a young mother (and whose older first husband killed himself after her affair with Michael). In subsequent stories, such as "Scraps," a younger Michael casts about for a sympathetic surrogate family, such as the parents of his high school love Rachel, whose eventual rejection sets the tone for his future relations with women. Later in life, Michael attends his ailing parents ("borderline lunatics") and, in the title story, learns that his jealous mother kept a doting diary of his childhood. Evanier's stories boil with a satisfying sense of rage, stoked by sharp observation. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"David Evanier deserves major attention and critical acclaim because he's among the best and most interesting and readable American writers today. THE GREAT KISSER is without question some of the best work of anybody's I've read in years; it's felt, original, and does what only he can do. So swift,each line a gem; a real rollercoaster ride of emotions. Filled with his vivid, energetic, intelligent writing. His work is clear, smart, strong,often funny and touching. Spare, specific, essential prose. He has a way of mixing sadness and humor like no one else. And his dialogue! I don't know who does it better. His style is always fast and pointed. It's a style he's held to for many years, and it always looks fresh. It's his, and a lot of writers will try to imitate him. But I know who got there first." --Stephen Dixon
"I was struck once again by what an original Evanier is. He sounds like no one else, and he has a great gift for infusing new life into material from which one would have thought all the juice had already been squeezed." --Norman Podhoretz
"There is a bloodshot intensity in these stories, a drive to get hold of the world before it all gets lost, the streets, the rooms, the feeling of the times--the 60s and 70s--when personal and public life felt so terribly urgent. Evanier writes a muscular, watchful prose, and again and again he pulls it off, surprising his characters in their existential habitat--unsettled, confused, completely caught up in the act of becoming." --Sven Birkerts
"I was struck once again by what an original Evanier is. He sounds like no one else, and he has a great gift for infusing new life into material from which one would have thought all the juice had already been squeezed." --Norman Podhoretz
"There is a bloodshot intensity in these stories, a drive to get hold of the world before it all gets lost, the streets, the rooms, the feeling of the times--the 60s and 70s--when personal and public life felt so terribly urgent. Evanier writes a muscular, watchful prose, and again and again he pulls it off, surprising his characters in their existential habitat--unsettled, confused, completely caught up in the act of becoming." --Sven Birkerts
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, bountiful words to love.,
This review is from: The Great Kisser (Hardcover)
Wow. David Evanier is truly a great writer. The picture he creates is clear. The words-everyone carefully poignant - and rich dialogue make up this interesting gang of short stories I consider classics in every sense. You may compare Evanier to the short list of writers who tell great stories in very few words, every word counting. It's a book to read slowly, and, if you are an old time New Yorker, it is all the sweeter.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The is a terrific book,
By Bud Stillman (New York) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Great Kisser (Hardcover)
I'd say this book was the story of my life exactly, but it's not the story of my life at all. It's honest without being a bore. It's funny without being a charade. It's brave without attitude. It's just what I want in a book. It's also just what I almost never find.
Here's a sample of the text. It's unfair, really to pull it out of the context of the story, but I wanted you to read it, hear it. " I loved them all and they loved me and they made me grasp life, even if I could not hold on to it. But I could never hold on to despair because of them. All People of the Book who stepped out of history to hold me and embrace me and not let me fall. Why have I been so lucky in this life, this Jew who came after the Holocaust-- the world had expended its Jew hatred for a while, having gotten it out of its system-- and seen such bountiful goodness, so much beauty, totally unsuitable beauty to make literature out of because it is unbelievable--so incredible it would be pointless to try to write a story about it." David Evanier has written a story about it. A collection of stories. Terrific stories.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a Gift!,
By Jude NYC (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Great Kisser (Hardcover)
...or so believes the narrator, Michael, when his psychiatrist bequeaths him the tapes of their therapy sessions--spanning 30 years! While the thought of revisiting the painful times of our lives may be horrifying to most, Michael embraces the opportunity and, "listening to the forgotten tapes, I measure what is real to me now against what was real to me then."
And that line illustrates, for me, what is one of the hands-down strengths of this fine book: on a sentence-to-sentence basis, this is poignant and heartfelt writing. The language is economical, unadorned and yet packed with emotion--nostalgia and loss and gratitude and the multitude of conflicting feelings that tangle around our memories. Except this is not memory, simply. Because memory is colored by our experience and our perceptions as we age; memory is naturally distorted. Only so much distortion can take place, however, when we are confronted by our own voice revealing what happened and what we felt ten, twenty, thirty years ago. The protagonist here takes on each character, each event from his past as if he were living it today. It is past tense and yet immediate. We are right there with Michael--in New York, in Vancouver, wherever--soaking up the scenery and facing each character from his life right along with him, albeit with the added wisdom of age. Evanier's deft prose highlights the complexities and paradoxes universal in all human beings, but what's special here is that the characters are illuminated through Michael's changing perceptions. I'm thinking, for example, of the quite troubled wife, Karen, who at times seems his destruction and at other times his salvation. There is so much to be admired in this slim book, one which ultimately feels like a love letter to all those who have peopled Michael's eventful life. I hadn't read Evanier before...what a mistake that turns out to be!
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