Stephen Dixon – författare

"Mr. Dixon wields a stubbornly plain-spoken style; he loves all sorts of tricky narrative effects. And he loves even more the tribulations of the fantasizing mind, ticklish in their comedy, alarming in their immediacy".--"New York Times Book Review".

A collection of 18 short stories by a "very skillful storyteller (whose) grasp of the life of ordinary American city dwellers is such that he can shape it dramatically to meet the demands of his far from ordinary imagination" ("Times Literary Supplement").

In Time to Go, the author of the highly acclaimed 14 Stories, Long Made Short, and All Gone has written a dazzling book of eighteen interlocking pieces. Part short story collection, part novel, Time to Go moves from despair to hope, from the passing of things -- time, relationships, businesses, chances -- to the coming of marriage, stability, family, a new life. It is a book that can be in turn frightening and funny, touching and tough -- and one that is, on occasion, all these things at once.

Stephen Dixon's stories and novels have an original, immediately recognizable sound and feel -a weird blend of Franz Kafka and Frank Capra. Readers of his previous work will find in 14 Stories that same wry, inventive, knife-edged humor that has come to characterize his distinctive style. With an adroit use of language and a keen eye for the quirky, offbeat side of human nature, Dixon creates a world as viewed through a fish-eye lens-slightly distorted and off-center, yet recognizable and often familiar. 14 Stories is part comedy, part tragedy, part social comment and part spoof. But most of all it is a highly entertaining series of all-too-plausible vignettes that shows off Stephen Dixon's remarkable talent at its best.

Healthcare has suffered from a series of scandals where trust and patient confidence has been questioned. This timely book examines recent case studies involving every aspect of healthcare provision including the Shipman and Alder Hey cases. It shows how positive lessons can be learnt from these experiences to improve health and healthcare. The contributors offer practical advice based on their extensive and broad experience on how to regain trust between patient and practitioner following these difficulties. They demonstrate how doctors and other healthcare professionals can introduce ways to reduce error and mistrust and describe how to work better with press the public and patients. It is essential reading for all healthcare professionals policy makers shapers and commentators and those representing patient groups. ''The context of this volume is clear - the Bristol paediatric cardiac surgery debacle the Alder Hey scandal around retention and use of dead children''s organs without consent and the Harold Shipman murders largely of elderly women in their own homes by their own GP. No surprise then that a first analysis suggests a breakdown of trust. But what the various authors argue for in this volume is both a more careful commentary and a series of complex responses. Real change is gradual a response to a narrative rather than to a single shock to the system. Professional leadership cross-disciplinary working with patients and the public is what will rebuild trust trust based on honesty on listening and on a strong sense of shared values. But it is possible and desirable. The authors have hit on what is ''essentially the ''way through this''!'' Julia Neuberger in the Foreword

Healthcare has suffered from a series of scandals where trust and patient confidence has been questioned. This timely book examines recent case studies involving every aspect of healthcare provision including the Shipman and Alder Hey cases. It shows how positive lessons can be learnt from these experiences to improve health and healthcare. The contributors offer practical advice based on their extensive and broad experience on how to regain trust between patient and practitioner following these difficulties. They demonstrate how doctors and other healthcare professionals can introduce ways to reduce error and mistrust and describe how to work better with press the public and patients. It is essential reading for all healthcare professionals policy makers shapers and commentators and those representing patient groups. ''The context of this volume is clear - the Bristol paediatric cardiac surgery debacle the Alder Hey scandal around retention and use of dead children''s organs without consent and the Harold Shipman murders largely of elderly women in their own homes by their own GP. No surprise then that a first analysis suggests a breakdown of trust. But what the various authors argue for in this volume is both a more careful commentary and a series of complex responses. Real change is gradual a response to a narrative rather than to a single shock to the system. Professional leadership cross-disciplinary working with patients and the public is what will rebuild trust trust based on honesty on listening and on a strong sense of shared values. But it is possible and desirable. The authors have hit on what is ''essentially the ''way through this''!'' Julia Neuberger in the Foreword

Written before stalking became a social issue, Stephen Dixon novel about a young man''s obsessive love for a beautiful woman takes place for 24 hours in NYC.

In the ten stories that comprise Friends, Dixon writes with his unusual flair, wit, and gentle irony. Through Will and Magna, characters he first introduced in his first collection Time To Go, Dixon offers many insights into the complexities and richness of human relationships.

Shaney Fleet is the owner of a working-class bar, and his problem is garbage. When a private hauler tries to coerce Shaney into purchasing collection services, he resists. Soon no hauler will remove his black-listed trash, and garbage that is not even his own begins to appear at his front door. Ultimately, his apartment is torched, his head bashed in, and his bar closed by the health department. In this well-wrought parable of modern urban life, literal garbage becomes a metaphor for the petty encumbrances, bureaucratic entanglements, and apparently insoluble problems that surround Shaney. As in the works of Kafka and Beckett, the mood is at once ominously threatening and irrepressibly comic.

Draws a portrait of an American man through a collection of shorter stories documenting his romantic and sexual encounters over the course of forty years, showing the pain and wonder of love that are such a part of life in the modern world

Frog is a complex and paradoxical character: petulant, compulsive, overbearing, hostile, and self-righteous, but also imaginative, loving, kind, and strong. No matter how exasperating he gets, it''s still hard not to care about him. His story is a nonsequential patchwork of flashbacks, real and imagined stories, and retellings from various perspectives.

Mr. Dixon wields a stubbornly plain-spoken style; he loves all sorts of tricky narrative effects. And he loves even more the tribulations of the fantasizing mind, ticklish in their comedy, alarming in their immediacy".--"New York Times Book Review".

In 30 Dixon presents us with life according to Gould, his brilliant fictional narrator who shares with us his thoroughly examined life from start to several finishes, encompassing his real past, imagined future, mundane present, and a full range of regrets, lapses, misjudgments, feelings, and the whole set of human emotions. All of Gould''s foibles-his lusts and obsessions, fears and anxieties-are conveyed with such candor and lack of pretension that we can''t help but be seduced into recognizing a little bit of Gould in us or perhaps a lot of us in Gould. For Gould is indeed an Everyman for the end of themillennium, a good man trying to live an honest life without compromise and without losing his mind.

A collection of 18 short stories by a "very skillful storyteller (whose) grasp of the life of ordinary American city dwellers is such that he can shape it dramatically to meet the demands of his far from ordinary imagination

Stephen Dixon''s stories and novels have an original, immediately recognizable sound and feel --a weird blend of Franz Kafka and Frank Capra. Readers of his previous work will find in 14 Stories that same wry, inventive, knife-edged humor that has come to characterize his distinctive style. With an adroit use of language and a keen eye for the quirky, offbeat side of human nature, Dixon creates a world as viewed through a fish-eye lens--slightly distorted and off-center, yet recognizable and often familiar.

20 well-crafted tales. Highly charged, insistent, often expressing themselves in gritty urban vernacular, his narrators emerge as ironic, sensitive, self-deprecating losers and loners.

One of Dixon''s earlier short story collections.

Philip Seidel, un reconocido escritor, es el protagonista de estos treinta y un relatos tan intrínsecamente conectados que bien podrían leerse como una novela. Su mujer, con quien compartió treinta años de vida, ha fallecido.La muerte, la vejez, el deseo de conservar la lucidez, la posibilidad de volver a enamorarse después de un duelo son solo algunos de los tópicos que Stephen Dixon, uno de los escritores más talentosos de la literatura estadounidense de los últimos años, profundiza en Historias tardías, y lo hace con una vitalidad sorprendente, lejos de cualquier tinte melancólico o nostálgico.En un ambiente donde por momentos la falta de memoria, la confusión y la soledad parecieran tomar el control, Dixon encuentra un terreno fértil para explorar los límites de la escritura y, al mismo tiempo, desarticular sus obsesiones más profundas.

Nathan Frey viaja en auto por la autopista con sus dos hijas de 6 y 9 años, vuelven de un fin de semana largo en Nueva York, donde visitaron a la familia de su esposa, quien decidió quedarse un par de días más con sus padres. Un viaje normal, hasta que surge una especie de altercado con dos hombres que van en otro auto. Y con ese evento, se desata la más tremenda y conmovedora obra de Stephen Dixon.Como en una especie de loop, luego del primer capítulo, donde se narra la vida de Nat y de su familia en los años siguientes, el narrador repasa aquel viaje en auto siete veces más, cada vez desde una óptica diferente o haciendo foco en momentos puntuales: Nueva York los días previos a la partida, diálogos con sus hijas durante el viaje. ¿Qué hacer si lo impensable sucede? ¿Cómo se puede estar seguro de que algo sucedió de la manera en que uno lo recuerda o de la manera en que nos lo han contado?Un libro vanguardista y universal, profundamente psicológico, que con una intensidad emocional extraordinaria logra tener al lector atrapado de principio a fin en los pliegues de la mente del protagonista, un padre que adora a sus hijas y que lucha contra sus paranoias y miedos de todas las maneras posibles.

Finalmente ella dijo "Quiero empezar a salir con otros hombres en una vena más seria, no solamente una noche aquí y una escapada allá cuando me harto de ti o me quiero vengar de algo que hiciste o dijiste o sencillamente me calienta algún otro tipo durante un día o dos, de manera que quiero que te vayas de una vez y es la última vez que voy a decirlo", y él dijo "Tal vez las cosas todavía puedan arreglarse entre nosotros, siempre se han arreglado, y si realmente se arreglan, no vas a sentir que necesitas ver a nadie más, así como yo no lo he sentido nunca, y no tendré que irme".Si existiera un archivo universal con el registro de todas las relaciones sexo-afectivas que tuvimos a lo largo de la vida, ¿permitiríamos que se hiciera público? ¿O preferiríamos que algunos secretos nos acompañen hasta la tumba? Probablemente Gould Bookbinder, el protagonista de esta novela en dos novelas, tendría mucho para decir y otro tanto para ocultar.Son los años cincuenta en Nueva York, las reglas para el cortejo son muchas y bien diferentes a las actuales y Gould es un joven muchacho ansioso por iniciar su vida sexual, para lo que será necesario que transgreda cada una de estas reglas. Con el paso del tiempo las cosas van cambiando, la revolución sexual de los sesenta se filtra en todos los rincones y Gould va armando un prontuario de relaciones de lo más diversas.Stephen Dixon, considerado por la crítica como un escritor de escritores, reversiona en Gould el viejo recurso del fluir de la conciencia y arma una estructura hipnótica a través de la fórmula "Él dijo / Ella dijo", dándonos acceso a lo que piensan los personajes mientras son ellos mismos quienes conversan en una suerte de diálogo infinito, tan hilarante como adictivo.