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Zusatztext 68199891 Informationen zum Autor Robert Olen Butler has published thirteen novels, six story collections, and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize and two National Magazine Awards, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction and an NEA grant, as well as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University. Klappentext "An unrepeatable feat, a tour de force." --"The Washington Post Book World" In "Tabloid Dreams," Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler dazzles with his mastery of the short story and his empathy for eccentric and ostracized characters. Using tabloid headlines as inspiration--"Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis," "Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac," and "JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction"--Butler moves from the fantastic to the realistic, exploring enduring concepts of exile, loss, aspiration, and the search for self. Along the way, the cast includes a woman who can see through her glass eye when it's removed from the socket, a widow who sets herself on fire after losing a baking competition, a nine-year-old hit man, and a woman who dates an extraterrestrial she met in a Walmart parking lot. "Tabloid Dreams" weaves a seamless tapestry of high and low culture, of the surreal, sordid, and humorously sad. Praise for Tabloid Dreams: "It is Mr. Butler's genius in this volume to lure an audience into the tent by shouting versions of the tabloids' headlines . . . and then providing more than the customer has been led to expect. Turning the lurid third-person titles of his stories into direct testimony from the principles, Mr. Butler often transforms the material's coarseness--and a reader's anticipated guffaws--into lyricism and wonder." --"The New York Times Book Review" "These stories are a real achievement and a true surprise . . . Butler peels back the sleazy veneer of the sensational to expose characters who long for love and the healing comfort of human compassion." --"USA Today" "To see, to know, to touch, to remember--these desires have always been at the heart of great fiction. They are here in abundance, along with the skewed and comic tenderness that is Butler's greatest gift as a writer. You start to read these stories and laugh; then, sucker-punched, you see the sadness and sweetness in each one." --"The Times-Picayune" "Out of pop culture, Robert Olen Butler extracts a result that looks uncomplicated, but subtly reveals many of the preoccupations of American literature--especially loneliness, conformity and innocence." --"The Boston Globe" "These stories are masterpieces of accessible complexity--jewels of poignancy molded from what is generally considered a slag heap of modern culture. Tabloid Dreams is a magnificent work of imagination, entertainment and humanity." --"Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel" "Daring and uncommonly beautiful literary flights of fancy. There are touches of Italo Calvino, Roald Dahl, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in them. At the same time, Tabloid Dreams couldn't be more American in premise, flavor and humor . . . [it] makes its dozen fanciful tales not just real to its readers, but also sublimely reasonable." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "A hugely entertaining, sometimes dazzling collection Zusammenfassung "An unrepeatable feat! a tour de force." ? The Washington Post Book World In Tabloid Dreams ! Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler dazzles with his mastery of the short story and his empathy for eccentric and ostracized characters. Using tabloid headlines as inspiration?"Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis!" "Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac!" and "JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction"?Butler moves from the fantastic to the realistic! exploring enduring concepts of exile! loss! aspiration! and the se...
