num_pages: 192
description: Sparkman in the Sky and Other Stories introduces the strikingly original work of Brian Griffin—a Southern writer with a voice both down-to-earth and poised for flight. His stories bear out Gertrude Stein’s statement, What good are roots if you can’t take them with you? Griffin is a writer who yanks his roots from their native Southern soil to survey the entire planet.In story after story, Griffin’s narrators attempt to sort out the confusing early sixties in rural Tennessee. Nascent men look to Hank Aaron and Rico Carty, Tarzan, Superman, and Captain Marvel, as well as to their fathers, older boys, coaches, and preachers for a model of manhood.Meanwhile, some romanticized version of the Vietnam War rages in the backs of their minds. In “Goats: The Courtship of Dixie Pepper,” Hal’s marriage crumbles, leaving him to ponder: “‘Why does anybody need marriage?’ I said to Marty as a summing up kind of thing. ‘I mean what good is marriage when you can join the army and blow things up?’”Griffin’s characters surpass the limits of their lives with fantasy—whether it’s dreams of hang gliding, blowing things up, or voyaging into space. Their very real struggles “to escape back home” demonstrate our need for imaginative transcendence and for the perimeters of our own backyards: “That’s how it always is: when you come at something from a slightly different angle you might not recognize it—even if it’s the place where you grew up and know like the back of your hand.”
language: English
title: Sparkman in the Sky & Other Stories
titlecomplete: Sparkman in the Sky & Other Stories
genres: Short Stories
ratings_count: 7
publisher: Sarabande Books