![]() It’s a rare thing indeed, but Cooper keeps their company. Very few American short-story writers have met this standard, and even fewer novelists have managed the feat: perhaps Hemingway, maybe Marilynne Robinson, Roth in Portnoy’s Complaint, Updike in Rabbit, Run. ![]() For Purvis, Martha’s arms ‘fold like the blades of a feeler gauge.’ The expressions on a changing face shift ‘like the elusive colors on a fish scale.’ Someone’s abnormally symmetrical face appears bisected ‘as if someone had snapped a chalk line on it.’ Edgar Allan Poe wrote that every word in a short story should contribute to the effect of the whole. But Cooper understands that a redneck sees through a redneck’s eyes. ![]() ![]() “We’ve seen antecedents to Cooper’s story and characters before: Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, Faulkner’s Sanctuary, Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee novels, Chris Offutt’s Kentucky Straight, Barry Hannah’s Yonder Stands Your Orphan, and Michael Gills’s Why I Lie. ![]()
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