Fiction. THE WABASH TRILOGY includes three new novels by William J. Palmer: The Wabash Baseball Blues, The Redneck Mafia, and Civic Theater. Each novel shows Palmer at his most poignant and hilarious as he tracks his characters through the tragicomedy of life in the Midwest.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
William J. Palmer is the author of the "Mr. Dickens" series of Victorian murder mysteries which have been selections of The Literary Guild, The Book of the Month Club, The Mystery Guild, and The Doubleday Book Club. Two of these novels have also been optioned for feature film production. He has also written books on film history and novel criticism. He is a professor in the English Department at Purdue University and lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, in close proximity to the Wabash River.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
William Palmer's wonderful novel is set in the towns of Wabash and West Wabash, which stand for Lafayette and West Lafayette, Indiana. Most literature written today is set in more glamorous places like New York, Paris and London, leaving areas like the Midwest underrepresented in our literary imaginings. No need to worry anymore, Palmer's trilogy manages to get at the heart of the Midwest with humor, honesty and a great sense of the tangled adventures to be had in factories, civic theater productions, pimped-up cars and the much visited fields of softball dreams and strip joint stages.
At its heart, The Wabash Trilogy is concerned with performance. Whether the performance is by softball players, orphaned girls stripping for revenge or bored people losing themselves in their emerging Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn personas, the novels explore the ways in which embodying different roles both nourishes and at times cripples our lives. In some of the novels' most engaging and effortless moments, we are also invited to join the performance of friends and rivals sitting around bar tables, nursing beers and telling stories, lost in the charm and hyperbole of their own mythologies. Much of the stories told deal with the last kind of performance that pervades the trilogy--sexual performance. Lust, longing and sexual joy populate the novels in a natural, engaging fashion as Palmer explores the hidden and vital ways in which erotic desire drives human beings in most of our actions.
Palmer resists the urge to grant life-changing epiphanies and sweeping happy endings to his characters, instead being more concerned with the ways in which life slightly nudges us in different directions and how those changes can affect us over time. I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the American spirit in all its fragmented playfulness.
At its heart, The Wabash Trilogy is concerned with performance. Whether the performance is by softball players, orphaned girls stripping for revenge or bored people losing themselves in their emerging Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn personas, the novels explore the ways in which embodying different roles both nourishes and at times cripples our lives. In some of the novels' most engaging and effortless moments, we are also invited to join the performance of friends and rivals sitting around bar tables, nursing beers and telling stories, lost in the charm and hyperbole of their own mythologies. Much of the stories told deal with the last kind of performance that pervades the trilogy--sexual performance. Lust, longing and sexual joy populate the novels in a natural, engaging fashion as Palmer explores the hidden and vital ways in which erotic desire drives human beings in most of our actions.
Palmer resists the urge to grant life-changing epiphanies and sweeping happy endings to his characters, instead being more concerned with the ways in which life slightly nudges us in different directions and how those changes can affect us over time. I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the American spirit in all its fragmented playfulness.
Format:Paperback
William Palmer's Wabash Trilogy is an excellent book. I recommend it for a day of traveling or just sitting on the couch enjoying a good book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
