By the Light of the Jukebox [Hardcover]

Dean Paschal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2002

An unusual first collection of fiction from a truly original and gifted young Southern writer. The stories gathered here are wonderfully imaginative, erotically charged, unforgettable. Dean Paschal explores a variety of different worlds, like that of "Sautéing the Platygast," where evolution and the culinary arts have run amok, or the hospital emergency room of "Genesis" visited by a badly hemorrhaging drug addict. Elsewhere a clockwork maiden seduces a mechanically inclined boy, and a woman metamorphosed into a python relives some of the erotic moments of her previous life.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This debut short story collection features characters and situations that are unique but somehow universal. The narrators include a man living in nonverbal suspended animation as his bartender wife's only patron, a dying street dog, and a woman who has become a python. Paschal has a knack for breathtakingly economical prose "She condenses beauty out of the air" and for opening the characters' very consciousness to the reader. The python suggests, "Let us pause to digest the above." Dark humor and irony abound, as in two men's comments immediately after being revived from death by defibrillation: "One said: Son of a bitch! The other said: You do that again and I'll kill you!" The strongest story, "Genesis," which takes place in an emergency room, is utterly compelling and believable, hardly surprising considering that Paschal is an E.R. physician himself. This powerful literary medicine is prescribed for all public and academic libraries. Jim Dwyer, California State Univ., Chico
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Exhuming a grotesque menagerie of characters from their resting places in the collective unconscious, Paschal animates them with dark desires and the occasional metaphysical musing. A 14-year-old boy has a sexual affair with a very strange doll; a woman, reincarnated as a python in a zoo, reminisces about bizarre orgies from her past life; a man contemplates killing a friend (a former lover) as a way of saving her from the consequences of her wild sexual escapades; an abandoned dog, near death, demonstrates the moral decay of the humans around him through the dignity of his death; a puppy describes his experiences in the womb, then dies mysteriously. Shocking, inscrutable, and sometimes wise, these unusual stories dredge the murky depths of the psyche. Paschal's prose is compelling, and he skillfully presents his characters as sympathetic, despite their bizarre behavior. Strange though they may be, Paschal's protagonists aren't caricatures; they are believable personae, whose logic operates on premises different from the norm. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 165 pages
• Publisher: Ontario Review Press; 1st edition (May 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865381054
• ISBN-13: 978-0865381056
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the dark side of addiction, June 24, 2005

By 

A. Cinquemano (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: By the Light of the Jukebox (Hardcover)

This collection of eight darkly erotic short stories bear witness to a strange and shocking variety of dark worlds. In "Python" reincarnation proves to be an unsettlingly reality as a snake longs for her past membership in a secret club for adventurous housewives of the 1950s. "L'Annonciation" brings forth the emotional pain of sexual addiction and dysfunctional relationships.
Explicit descriptions of strong language, violence and sex.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Unusual Short Stories, November 1, 2003

By 

Manhattan Reader (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Light of the Jukebox (Hardcover)

This book was a surprising find. There are only eight stories in it and the book has received little wide-spread national attention: however, each story shows the versatility and complexity of the author's mind and pen. I did some research and discovered that one of the stories in the book has been selected for this year's "BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES" and another has won the very prestigious writers' "PUSHCART AWARD". I also found in this book four other stories which I would say are as strong or stronger than the two selected by the juries. The stories range from the grittily realistic to absolutely surreal. Readers of intellectual fiction and book collectors should grab copies of "By the Light of the Jukebox" before the first edition sells out!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite a Dance, May 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: By the Light of the Jukebox (Hardcover)

With echoes of Camus by way of John Hawkes, and a little Ballard thrown in, Paschal's first collection isn't exactly totally "original", though it can be quite riveting--a good first night out for an author with some penetrating sensibilities. This collection, more than most, is one that needs to be read to be understood, rendering a normal review almost churlish--and I suggest you DO read it, if you enjoy fiction with an "edge" that runs deep and leaves one with a lingering visceral twinge.