Ron Carlson - Böcker

In this tender, comic novel, Larry Boosinger—graduate student, writer, garage attendant, escaped convict (and perhaps a person)—has one foot in late adolescence while he searches frantically for a place to put the other. Beset by illusions, attracted by paradoxes, Larry carries on his allegorical fistfight with life. He operates in a movie-created world where attempts are made at perfection. Enamored of the romantic ideals of old movies, popular songs, and his own personal hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald, he seeks experience that will match his expectations.

Collin Elder is running away from a “home” for wayward teenagers. Louisa Holz is escaping from her father, a carnival daredevil. Heading west from Arizona, they meet a third member of the novel’s family—Will Clare, elderly and forgetful but full of rich memories.

Ron Carlson's stories, sometimes wicked or bittersweet, often zany, are rich with a hard-earned hopefulness frequently absent in contemporary fiction. In this generous gathering from collections no longer available, longtime fans and new readers alike can savor the development of a master of idiosyncrasy.Properly celebrated for his range, Carlson offers us a rural sheriff who's wary of UFOs ("Phenomena"), a lawyer on a mission in remote Alaska ("Blazo"), a baseball player turned killer-by-accident ("Zanduce at Second"), and a nineteen-year-old who experiences an unsettling sexual awakening during an Arizona summer ("Oxygen"). Here also is a man accusing Bigfoot of stealing his wife, followed by Bigfoot's incomparable response. Not least of the treasures is "The H Street Sledding Record," a story perfect for family holiday reading, in which a young father creates the magic of Santa by throwing manure on his roof on Christmas Eve.This book proves Carlson's axiom that "a short story is not a single thing done a single way," and it offers us—finally—a full view of his remarkable talents.

Whether it is a husband trying to bring his marriage back together or Bigfoot finally coming forward, Carlson's characters speak with radical honesty that is disarming. They are the men and women all around us who open the refrigerator at two in the morning and see the faces of missing children on the milk carton. The world is a large dose sometimes, and they wonder whether they can measure up to its danger and its magic.

In the title story, a young man waiting in the Hotel Eden discovers—as others have—that Eden is not a permanent domicile. In "Zanduce at Second," a baseball player turned killer-by-accident undergoes a surprising transformation. We root for escaped felon Ray (“A Note on the Type”) as he carves his name on a culvert wall. We drive the sweltering summer streets of Phoenix as a nineteen-year-old narrator goes through an unsettling sexual awakening ("Oxygen"). In these and other stories, whether his characters are getting sabotaged by nightcaps or encountering nudists on a rafting trip, Carlson takes us to new places in a new way.

Here are men and women in the middle--of life, of relationships. There is a difference between what they set out for and what they get. A single mother keeps house on an aircraft carrier. A new father finds himself seduced by a motorcycle. A lonely professor is forced to face a few truths. Braced by honesty and lifted by affection for the world, these stories are a stunning showcase for a writer tackling universal themes in new ways. Get ready: when Plan A breaks down, Ron Carlson is here.

How did one of AmericaÆs most gifted fabulists come to write a collection of poetry? For thirty years, Ron Carlson has joked about writing one poem a year, and to look for his book of them in 2012. The joke came true: Room Service: Poems, Meditations, Outcries and Remarks is a genre-bending collection of traditional verse, prose poetry, microfiction, and—why not?—a play or two, dancing easily from the lyrical to the surreal to the comical, capturing the long sweep of lifeÆs simple necessities and small triumphs. Brimming with CarlsonÆs signature good humor, these pieces were written over many years in many places, and are unified, as befits a first book of poetry, by hope. Room Service reminds us why poetry is necessary, and will leave you wondering what took him so long.

Ron Carlson is a master of the contemporary short story. In The Blue Box, he extends that mastery to the short short story, offering us a captivating glimpse of a writer at play. With that voice of his—sharp, sensitive, and wry, brimming with good humor—Carlson inhabits one standby after another of the American pop landscape, past and present: monster flicks, action heroes, unsupervised teenagers, blogging. Coming in for special scrutiny is the world of education, in hilarious send-ups of recommendation letters, teacher evaluations, style guides, and a MOOC. Whimsical, wistful, and gently surreal, The Blue Box delights in life’s unending absurdities, and reminds us not to take anything—especially ourselves—too seriously.