![]() The stories are set in the working-class Florida flatlands, the coyote-and-cacti expanses of Arizona, and lush New England, lands of water and desert, and Williams has fun describing them. (Her collection of very short stories 99 Stories of God, in part an homage to Thomas Bernhard, reads almost like a hilarious prank on her dad with its pedestrian Lord.)Īlongside her playfulness, she adds a dramatic flair. Her father and grandfather were both ministers, and her books are full of gentle father-ministers. Even Jones’s unconventional profession is one of Williams’s conventions. The sentence that opens the first story of The Visiting Privilege, “Taking Care,” is quintessential Williams: “Jones, the preacher, has been in love all his life.” Here we find the slight oddity of the ambiguous missing direct object (with whom could Jones have been in love all his life?), an implicit longing, and the narrator’s faintly teasing tone. At five hundred pages, it includes most of her first four collections (though scandalously leaves out a few of the best pieces) and thirteen new stories. The publication of The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories is sure to be celebrated. A real live kook, she is widely admired by writers with even the faintest interest in the avant-garde, and her books have been finalists for major prizes, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, because she is a fiery writer with a sharp humor and a dark energy and because her sentences are weird, funny, and full of emotion. She can be irascible in interviews (one poor interviewer admitted he “cringe” to publish the interview uncut because of her little digs at him). ![]() ![]() She does not own a computer and she corresponds by postcard. Joy Williams wears sunglasses day and night.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |