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Title: Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe II: Anthology of Southern Writers by Sonny Brewer ISBN: 1-931561-43-5 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: A GIANT LEAP FORWARD - SOUTHERN WRITING AT ITS BEST!
Comment: The list of great anthologies has increased by two. Not only has the anthology list expanded, it has made a giant leap forward with the Stories From the Blue Moon Café: Anthology of Southern Writers series. Blue Moon Café I and Blue Moon Café II, edited by Sonny Brewer, a Fairhope, Alabama, resident and Bama native, knows how to pick a jam-up good story, essay, or poem when he sees one. No question there. And the craziest, nuttiest thing, I believe, is that he gets these big guns of Southern literature-Larry Brown, William Gay, Jill Conner Browne, Cassandra King, and Fannie Flagg-to hand over their cash cow honorarium as a donation, proceeds to benefit the non-profit organization called Fairhope Center for Writing Arts. Now that's the amazing way of Dixie!
So here we are, handed a double portion of the very best writing from the South, stories that serve down-home sweet tea fiction, as well as Southern Gothic literature with more than a hint of bourbon and bloodshed.
If this book is anything, it is an event. That's an E-V-E-N-T! The writers, some twenty out of the thirty-three included, go to Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, and then on up to Oxford at Square Books for readings and signings. It's a veritable Southern Writers' conference, now two years running. They even have free beer and live music, thanks to Publisher David Poindexter and his MacAdam/Cage Publishing Company over yonder in California (MacAdam Cage just printed the wildly popular The Time Traveler's Wife, a Today Show Book Club pick). I went to Jackson and Oxford this year and got a copy of Blue Moon signed, listened to the authors read. And I'll go back next year too. And the year after that.
The book is diverse and rich. One poem throttled me with its economy of language, the boiling down to the essence of things. I have thought about the children's book author Charles Ghinga's "The Bowman's Hand" almost every day since I read the poem. It's a description of boys playing the "Cuss Game" at a Birmingham school, how one boy's punch leaves his young buddy dead.
There's the short story originally published in the Southern Review by Beth Ann Fennelly and her husband Tom Franklin, perhaps one of the finest short-shorts I have ever read in any literary magazine. Michael Morris provides a lively story in his "Just an Old Cur." I thank the editor for introducing me to Morris's work. There are lesser known authors in this volume that you won't want to miss: Joe Formichella, Suzanne Hudson, Frank Turner Hollon (one of my favorite authors), Jamie Kornegay, Jack Pendarvis, Lee Gay Warren, and Sidney Thompson, among others. They offer a treat for the careful reader that will not go unappreciated.
Let me say this, too. Mr. Brewer is one darn heck of a risk-taker. Case in point: He published Eric Kingrea, a freshman at the College of Charleston, an English major, 18 or 19 years old, who writes a World War II story inspired by the late historian Stephen Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers. My guess is that the editor is some kind of Seer. He sees both the value of Kingrea's great little story, and he sees that Kingrea is going to take his big foot and kick an awful lot of fictional tail in the near future if he keeps on writing.
So, if you want to read something outside the power circle of frozen, infested, and incestuous Southern literary hacks, grab a copy of Blue Moon Café II, and see what I am talking about. I know you'll like what you read. Oh, man, I like it!
----------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman
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Title: Stories From the Blue Moon Cafe by Sonny Brewer ISBN: 1931561095 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down : Collected Stories by William Gay ISBN: B000094P58 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2003 (NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH) by Shannon Ravenel, Roy Blount ISBN: 1565123956 Publisher: Algonquin Books Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: They Write Among Us: New Stories and Essays from the Best of Oxford Writers by Jim Dees, Dick Waterman, Willie Morris ISBN: 0971897417 Publisher: Jefferson Press, LLC Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Half-Mammals of Dixie by George Singleton ISBN: 0156028581 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 08 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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