The Light Possessed [Paperback]

Alan CHEUSE (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Peregrine Smith Books; 2 edition (1990)
• ISBN-10: 0879053631
• ISBN-13: 978-0879053635
• ASIN: B000UZLWQQ
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

More About the Author

ALAN CHEUSE


"The Voice of Books on National Public Radio"--that's how novelist, essayist and story writer Alan Cheuse has been described. For over twenty-five years, Cheuse has been "reading for America" every week on NPR, and he's also been writing a number of books of his own, and teaching the art of narrative and literature at George Mason University for over twenty years.
He is the author of the novels The Bohemians, The Grandmothers' Club and The Light Possessed. His latest novel, To Catch the Lightning (winner of the 2009 Grub Street Prize for Fiction), follows the career of turn of the century photographer Edward S. Curtis and his quest to photograph the western tribes of North America. He is also the author of several collections of short fiction and a pair of novellas published under the title The Fires. He is the co-editor with Nicholas Delbanco of Talking Horse: Bernard Malamud on Life and Art, and co-author with Delbanco of Literature: Craft & Voice, a major newly published introduction to college literary study, and also the co-editor of Writers Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction, and editor of Listening to Ourselves: Great American Short Fiction.
Cheuse's essays, short stories, and reviews have appeared in numerous places, such as The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and other venues. His essay collection, Listening to the Page, appeared in 2001. His collected travel essays came out in June 2009 under the title A Trance After Breakfast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The light and vastness draw only those whose souls bleed., December 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Light Possessed: A Novel (Paperback)

Don't miss Rick Bass's Foreword. Then those who have lived in the East, been transplanted or at least traveled in the Southwest, fallen in love with the ochre and vermillion mix of color as it is beheld in New Mexican light, are those who will love the Georgia O'Keefeness of Alan Cheuse's story. The question of what is fact and what is fiction haunts the reader all the way through. I would remind the reader to accept the story for what it is rather than comparing what seem to be facts to the real life of the famous painter. Cheuse has sensitively captured the various voices of the characters who narrate. A bit slow-going at first, the pace picks up until the reader is pulled into the passion in spite of the seeming objectivity of the narrative style. Having been to the home of Georgia O'Keefe, and having reclaimed my soul that wandered there ahead of my visit, reading the novel was like returning home. I cannot help but wonder how a reader who has not experienced that "light possessed" can appreciate Cheuse's description of the Blue Mesa.