Customer Reviews

In The Park Of Culture

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone who looks at current best seller lists and wonders what ever happened to serious writing can find an answer here. "Literary short fictions" is the publisher's way of describing this collection from Edward Falco, author of two novels and numerous poems and short stories. In the afterword Falco explains that whatever labels have been applied to these pieces individually, all were approached in a spirit of experimentation, "disregarding the various conventions of form to see where such contraventions might lead." Themes include the intersection of cultural forces and personal desires and the difficulty of maintaining faith in a world marked by violence. The language is vivid: "asleep in his clothes on furniture that owned him," and "a place where we know each other by what's in our hearts," and "I'm lit up bright as a movie screen."

The longest piece is 13 pages, the shortest less than half a page. Formats are varied. "Memories" is made up of six vignettes subtitled "Four from Boyhood" "One from My First Marriage" and "One, Recent, from My House in the Suburbs." "Magic" is a single, 14-line sentence of circular phrases.