Displaying 1 of 1 1996 Format: Book Author: Piazza, Tom, 1955- Title: Blues and trouble : twelve stories / Tom Piazza. Edition: First edition. Publisher, Date: New York : St. Martin's Press, [1996] ©1996 Description: xii, 192 pages ; 22 cm Subjects: United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction. Notes: 550579 ; *550580 Contents: Brownsville -- Born yesterday -- C.S.A. -- A servant of culture --Memphis -- Responsibility -- Moment -- Port Isabel hurricane -- Burn me up -- Losing hand -- Slowing down -- Charley Patton LCCN: 95039344 ISBN: 0312139349 Other Number: 33358437 System Availability: 2 # System items in: 2 # Local items: 2 # Local items in: 2 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Fiction/Biography Profile Genre CollectionFictionSociological Topics American culture Setting - United States Time Period -- 20th century Large Cover Image Trade Reviews Library Journal ReviewThese 12 stories, some of which have appeared in Story or American Short Fiction, provide readers with a glimpse of a cross section of contemporary Americans looking for meaning in their troubled lives. The stories share travel as a common motif with each character searching outside her- or himself for happiness. We are taken into the abject life of an entertainer named Billy Sundown and witness his unusual effect on the life of a former classmate; a Gulf Coast fisherman having an affair with a college instructor safeguards his home and family against a threatening hurricane; a businessman unknowingly carries a loaded gun into his girlfriend's home for Thanksgiving; and a pair of Jewish tourists in Memphis stumble into a shop with Nazi memorabilia. The author's terse style paints a revealing picture of our perplexed culture. Piazza's first book revives the essence of the short story and allows readers, unlike the characters, to "sit still and look inside yourself." Recommended for all collections.David A. Beronä, Westbrook Coll. Lib., Portland, Me. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly ReviewThis debut collection won a James Michener Award for its stirring rambles from New York to New Orleans. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedBooklist ReviewA sense of displacement pervades the stories in this first collection. Alhough many of the stories are set in the South, they are not specifically southern. Most often, they take place between here and there, both geographically and figuratively. Specific locales or epiphanous moments might be the road to Daytona Beach, as in "Born Yesterday" ; a high-school gym where evacuees take shelter during a storm in "Port Isabel Hurricane" ; or, in "Bum Me Up," a middle-aged man's encounter with a Jerry Lee Lewis^-type singer whom he knew as a child and has held as an icon over the years. Characters tend to be outsiders, often on the run, sometimes from failed relationships. Sometimes, too, the most enduring relationships are also the most unlikely, as in "CSA," in which a white antique-store owner, a dealer in Confederate memorabilia, and his black assistant have a perfect understanding. The stories are strengthened by a specificity of detail only occasionally lapsing into overexplanation. --Mary Ellen QuinnKirkus ReviewThere's nothing arbitrary about Piazza's debut collection of 12 stories, arranged in imitation of a standard 12-bar blues. His characters range across the American landscape and capture the sad notes in their disparate voices. Piazza's casual artistry stomps the blues away in these singularly American stories that confront the bugaboos of race and class without any of the usual multiculti platitudes. ``C.S.A.'' saves its wallop for the last sentence, in a tale of Jewish northerners who freak out over the Nazi regalia on sale in a Memphis memorabilia shop. Similarly, ``A Servant of Culture'' unravels some of the knotty relations between blacks and Jews in the record business, a complex founded on guilt, resentment, anger, and a love of music. The successful Mexican fisherman in ``Port Isabel Hurricane'' wishes the impending storm would wipe away his comfortable bourgeois life so that he could pursue his affair with a Jewish English professor from Boston. Many of Piazza's lonesome travellers take to the road when love goes sour, but his native wandering is strictly post-Beat, antiromantic stuff: The narrator of ``Brownsville,'' lamenting his loveless state in a New Orleans cafe, hopes to erase the slate in Texas; a similar male suffering from a failed romance hopes to cleanse himself in the waters off Daytona Beach, only to have his car break down in nowhere Florida. The deep melancholy of Piazza's tired Americans comes through in ``Burn Me Up,'' a meditation on a Jerry Lee Lewis-like performer, full of hellfire and redemption, and his uneasy relation to his loving fans. Among other moody and atmospheric pieces, ``Responsibility'' stands out for its melancholic verisimilitude, tapping straight into the truth of growing up and assuming the burden of being alive. The desire for a brand-new start, the celebration of rootlessness, the coastal drifting: Piazza's American dreaming is lyrical and hard-earned, full of the kind of details and emotional realism that resonate long after you put the book down. Summary Fans of Denis Johnson and Thom Jones will enjoy these 12 startling stories that range over the breadth of the American landscape. A dialogue between traditional stories pitched in unusual keys and a series of blueses--short, voice-driven pieces that evoke a unique and uncanny mood of longing--Blues and Trouble offers a unique shock of both surprise and recognition. Librarian's View Syndetics Unbound Displaying 1 of 1
