Assorted fire events
Subtitle: stories
By: David Means.
Publisher: Context Books
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 165
Description: From a married man consummating a hazy summer affair and getting lost in a reverie that explains the far-away look in his eyes" ("Coitus") to a recently widowed mother who must decide what to do with a video of her honeymoon love-making ("The Widow Predicament"), David Means probes the depths of the human heart. The stories collected here range the American landscape: suburban sprawl leads to disastrous consequences in Pushcart Prize-winning "What They Did;" a Depression-era hobo holds on to a freight train that roars through the desert night as well has his scattered past ("The Grip"); sneaking into a wedding reception, a homeless man forever changes the lives of all present ("The Interruption"); and in "The Railroad Incident," a business executive sheds his shoes for an evening walk straight into the heart of darkness. Everywhere crystalline moments emerge that seem strange yet gritty and remarkably real. Means never fails to find the locus of grace and redemption in the most complex, and sometimes horrifying situations.
Table of contents: title: Railroad incident, August 1995; title: Coitus; title: What they did; title: Sleeping Bear lament; title: The reaction; title: The grip; title: What I hope for; title: The interruption; title: The widow predicament; title: Tahorah; title: The gesture hunter; title: Assorted fire events; title: The woodcutter.