sewn paper
e-mail the Author
Fiction/Short Stories
October 2001
160 pages
ISBN 0-88984-227-2
$18.95
Pittsburgh Stories
Selected Stories, Volume Two
Clark Blaise
Pittsburgh Stories is the second volume in Clark Blaise's
Selected Stories. The first collection, Southern Stories,
was published in the year 2000. A total of four volumes is projected.
Pittsburgh Stories contains such familiar Blaise
standards as `Grids and Doglegs' and `The Seizure' but also
offers entirely new uncollected stories such as `Sitting Shiva with Cousin
Benny' and `The Waffle Maker' which reveal Blaise
at the height of his powers. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth
Century Literature in English says of Clark Blaise: `His
short stories are widely considered to represent his central
achievement.' These forthcoming volumes can only enhance his considerable
international reputation.
`Written over four decades, Pittsburgh Stories, is the second in a
projected four-volume set of Clark Blaise's selected short stories. Set
largely during the forties and fifties, these nine stories, with one
exception, are reminiscences about a distant Pittsburgh adolescence. The
previous and inaugural collection in the series, Southern Stories, was
also unified by one locale.
Blaise's prowess as a writer is evident from the outset. The opening
story, "The Birth of the Blues", written in 1983, is clearly the work of
a skilful, deft craftsman. A well-honed tale, it impresses with its
subtlety and detail. The protagonist, young Frank Keeler, witnesses his
father's humiliation before a woman who has hired him to fix her pipes.
Standing before the two Keelers in her bathrobe, she reprimands Frank's
father and summarily dismisses him. In so doing, she sets both father
and son alight with desire, "becoming for Keeler, the prototype of all
beautiful women. For his father, the most perfect bitch." ' `These stories are polished and raw at the same time.' `The pieces collected ... display the sure hand of a skilled writer. And
though Blaise is unflinching is his portrayal of the poverty and
backwardness of the post-war American South, a muted sense of wonder
leads the reader over some very rough terrain.' `More often than not, Blaise meets the high standard he has set for himself.
In story after story, he deftly blends musings and incidents, subjecting all
to searing analysis that never lapses into pat explanations. He's one
of those "genuine artists" Chekhov celebrated in yet another letter to
Suvorin, the ones who know full well you'd best keep your eyes wide open.' `Blaise has the writer's gift of recalling childhood textures in
cinematic detail.'
- Books in Canada
- Joel Janofsky, Montreal Gazette
- James Grainger, Quill & Quire
- Kathleen Snodgrass, the Georgia Review
- Ray Conlogue, The Globe and Mail
