Saturday, February 25, 2012

On To His Long Home

The news of William Gay's death this week hit me hard. His books have haunted my waking and sleeping hours alike for the last few years. I think I first knew his name through the first Surreal South anthology edited by Laura Benedict and Pinckney Benedict. His story, The Paperhanger (also included in his book of short stories I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down) remains one of the most terrifying I've ever read and I gobbled up his novels in quick succession. Like everybody else, I've been waiting for his novel The Lost Country for three(?) years now, and hoped that there'd be a chance to go see him do some publicity appearance for it upon its release. Guess not. I'll be writing more about William and his work at Ransom Notes Tuesday.

Of course Tuesday is also N@B (7pm at Meshuggah Cafe 6269 Delmar, St. Louis, MO. 63130) with guests Gordon Highland and Caleb J. Ross from Kansas City, Kevin Lynn Helmick from Chicago and representing the River City Mark W. Tiedemann. This'll be one to remember. Not your average audacity even by N@B standards. I believe you will be certifiably crazy if you do attend. So, I expect to see you there. And please, everybody keep their clothes on this time.

At Ransom Notes a couple days ago I wrote about Manuel Vazquez Montalban whose Pepe Carvalho books have been reprinted recently by Melville House. His leftist leanings got him a government room under Francisco Franco in the early 1960s. I'm reading Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner right now, and it's got me wondering how he would've been treated in my country during the same period.

1 comment:

Jon Bassoff said...

Terribly sad about William Gay. He was a writer's writer, the closest we had to William Faulkner.