Cries for Help, Various

One of NPR's Best Books of 2015"Rifles through fear, identity, meaning, and cultural memory in forty-four short, surreal stories." —Vanity Fair"By turns moving, funny, and maddening....These stories are very much in the key of Donald Barthelme." —The New York Times Book Review"Somehow both grounded and absurd, each one of the stories trying get at that heart of the confusion and sadness at the core of contemporary life." —VICEFrom the highly acclaimed author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood, Padgett Powell's new collection of stories, Cries for Help, Various, follows his mentor Donald Barthelme's advice that “wacky mode" must “break their hearts." The surrealistic and comical terrain of most of the forty-four stories here is grounded by a real preoccupation with longing, fear, work, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. These universal concerns are given exhilarating life by way of...