Cries for Help, Various : Stories

Overview: From 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 Powell’s “wit, his . . . dazzling turns of phrase” (Scott Spencer). In “Joplin and Dickens,” the musician and writer meet as emotionally needy students in an American grade school; in “Change of Life,” a father ponders whether getting new clothes for the family or the patriotic purchase of a “new Government Cookie Flyer” would be more meaningful. In “The Imperative Mood,” giving orders to others—“Fall back and regroup”—leads less to power than to rumination. Named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR and Vanity Fair "Rifles through fear, identity, meaning, and cultural memory in fortyfour short, surreal stories." Vanity Fair "By turns moving, funny, and maddening. 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." VICE From 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 fortyfour 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 Powell's "wit, his . . . dazzling turns of phrase" (Scott Spencer). Padgett Powell's language is both lofty and lowdown, his tone cranky and heartfelt, exuberant and inconsolable. His characters rebel against convention and ambition, hoping to maintain their very sanity by doing so. Even the most hilarious or fantastical stories in Cries for Help, Various ring gloriously, poignantly, true. Presents A Collection Of Short Stories That Cover The Topics Of Longing, Fear, Work, Loneliness, And Cultural Nostalgia. Horses -- Love -- Joplin And Dickens -- Mrs. Fiberung -- Gift -- Sisters -- Perhaps South America -- Confidence -- Change Of Life -- Cries For Help, Various -- Longing -- Dizzy -- Dusk -- Letter From France -- Wearing A Meat Shirt And Killing A Snake -- Spy -- Thang Phong And The Son Of The Chief Of Police -- Breakdown -- Mrs. Stamp -- Bedtime -- The Flood Parade -- Getting You Some Cocktail -- Solitude -- The Imperative Mood -- The Indicitive Mood -- Losing The Wax -- Marbles -- Bebek -- Hoping Weakly -- Gluing Wood -- The Retarded Hermit -- The New World -- Wagons, Ho! -- The Cork -- Not Much Is Known -- Matter Of Time -- A Local Boy -- Mao -- Yeltsin Dancing -- Yeltsin Spotted Abroad In A Bar -- Yeltsin And Canaries -- Working For Brother Catcard -- Utopia -- No Empress Eyes. Padgett Powell.