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Wrestling with Angels: New and Collected Stories
 
 
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Wrestling with Angels: New and Collected Stories [Hardcover]

John J. Clayton (Author)

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Book Description

September 1, 2007
Since publishing his first collection in the eighties, John J. Clayton has continued to write "powerful stories of urban life in America, of life often enough among Jews who carry their exile and their wilderness within them. The prose is powerful, an impressive mixture of sinuous sentences--which one reads as if one overhears thoughts. All of these characters are bruised. They are often enough triumphant, though, even if locked into mortal flesh, because they have an astonishing belief in the spirit." (Fredrick Busch)

We are pleased to be publishing the definitive collection of Clayton's remarkable stories. Included are two previously published collections, Bodies of the Rich and Radiance: Ten Stories, together with a selection of previously uncollected stories, and a large collection of new stories, Wrestling with Angels, plus an introduction to his work by the author.

Clayton has been published in nearly all major literary magazines and has been reprinted in The Pushcart Prize anthologies and volumes of Best American Short Stories and O Henry Prize Stories.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Clayton's new stories, gathered here with the stories from earlier collections Bodies of the Rich and Radiance, show a steady, assured hand, delivering an exceptional and gratifying body of work. Cambridge Is Sinking! typifies his early writing, where young, menschy hippies reluctantly let go of their politics and community in the face of day-to-day struggles, ruminating on jobs, graduate degrees and rich uncles as they try to find direction. As Clayton's early characters turn away from their idealism, his later ones turn toward a larger search for meaning and often toward the divine. (In his author's preface, Clayton writes I hope for Jewish and non-Jewish readers; but I speak as a Jew.) In History Lessons Daniel Rose takes his young son to the neighborhood where he grew up, uncovering a considerable sense of loss (endemic to Clayton's stories) and a great divide between the father and son. Failed marriages, bitter children and terminal patients mark many of the tales: in The Contract, Max pores through holy books while his wife, Natalie, succumbs to cancer; the family finds comfort in the prayers' familiarity, but their meanings remain obscure. Clayton repeatedly explores a limited set of situations and emotions, but he is a master of his material. (Sept.)
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Review

"...a poignancy that comes from an intense sensitivity to the quiet suffering that most often goes unexpressed in the rush of daily life." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Clayton sees his reluctant Jewish prophets as wildly lucid, drunk on spirituality in a secular world.... Writing with compassion, simplicity and power, Clayton adjusts their visions just enough so they can find the way home." -- The New York Times

Having begun with tales of young love, marriage and divorce, Clayton's stories end their collection with professional, secularized adults having workaday revelations and dropping the hallowed names of Hasidim "Reb Yitzchak" and "Reb Menachem" (among others) as if they're water cooler co-workers or old friends from grad school -- at first just visiting, then here to stay.- -- The Jewish Daily Forward

Product Details


More About the Author

JOHN J. CLAYTON'S fourth novel, The Mitzvah Man, is being published in September, 2011. His third novel, Kuperman's Fire, about criminal evil, Jewish heritage, and the miracle of survival, was published in 2007 and made into an audiobook. Wrestling with Angels: New and Collected Stories, was also published in 2007 and has been republished by Amazon in 2011. In 2010, his stories have been published in Commentary, Kerem, Notre Dame Review, and The Journal. A story in Missouri Review was included in a recent Pushcart Prize Anthology. Recently, he has also appeared in AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, Sewanee Re-view, and many times in Commentary.

Clayton has taught modern literature and fiction writing as professor and then Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since 1969 and has taught as Visiting Professor at Mt. Holyoke College. He is now teaching at Hampshire College. His stories have won prizes in O.Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His collection Radiance, won the Ohio State University award in short fiction and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. An essay about his work appeared in the Fall, 1998 Yale Review. "The Man Who Could See Radiance" was read at Symphony Space in New York and has been aired often on NPR since fall, 2001, as part of the Selected Shorts series. It is part of the audio anthology, Getting There From Here: Best of Selected Shorts.

Clayton has edited six editions of an anthology, the Heath Introduction to Fiction. He has also written a good deal about modern fiction, including Gestures of Healing, a psycho-logical study of modern British and American fiction. His Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man won awards (Choice, MLA) in literary criticism. He has published criticism on various twentieth century writers including D. H. Lawrence, E. L. Doctorow, and Grace Paley. His feature articles have appeared in both Jewish and mainstream newspapers.

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