William Gay (1) (1941–2012)

One of the most highly respected writers of southern fiction, William Gay wasn’t published until he was fifty-nine. A group of editors, friends and fans sorted through remnants, scraps and notebooks found by Gay’s family in at least two houses after his death in 2012, much of it from the years he was honing, before he was published. Several books and collections have come from that trove. This may be the last.

Here there are short stories, unfinished fragments, bits of memoir. The Trace is a Faulkner-like fragment of an epic trip taken by a man and his brother’s wife to find the brother. The Ascension of Pepper Yates is the story of a wanna-be cop who stumbles into a real police job. There are stories of family strife, men loving the wrong women, men screwing up by way of drink and losing jobs.

Gay writes of his love of reading and the endless quest to find enough books as a child. He writes about Faulkner and his influence on Gay’s own writing. A highly satisfying collection that adds to Gay’s catalog.… (més)

[[William Gay]] is easily the best writer you're not reading. Thanks to an LT friend, I found him and now I'm a devoted acolyte. With [[Flannery O'Connor]]'s sense of the Southern Gothic and [[Kent Haruf]]'s poetic lilt and keen sense of the complications of the human heart, reading Gay is like entering a cathedral.

This novel follows the Bloodworth family as the patriarch, E. F., returns from a self-imposed exile with his banjo and stories to tell. It's a slow burn until the expected violence finally erupts during an ice storm. The characters are complicated and eccentric, and Gay's love of the Southern countryside feels like stepping into a lush, botanical apse while a mournful elegy plays. Words to adequately describe the beauty of Gay's writing fail me.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended… (més)

Thanks to a recommendation from an LT friend, William Gay may become a favorite author. Relatively unknown, out of the Southern Gothic tradition, Gay's stories in this collection pack a punch, for the language's poetic brilliance and characters working through the chaos of their lives. By highlighting everyday, while fringe, people, Gay manages to weave a thread of the human condition that is recognizable to all. Even if the circumstances of any one of the stories might be absolutely foreign to the common life, the underlying internal lives are familiar and evocative. Great introduction to an author who more people should read. A favorite all-time book.… (més)

After digging up a few graves, Corrie and Tyler deduce that the local mortician, Fenton Breece, has an evil bent with the dead after he receives them. They also steal his briefcase which contains photographic proof of his dark practice. Breece hires the town killer to hunt them down and retrieve the proof before they can deliver it to a respectable lawman. Tyler heads for the backcountry to evade the killer, and ends up on an Odyssean journey, meeting up with a Greek chorus of characters only rivaled in form by those Cormac McCarthy might produce.

Gay's deft and poetic touch with the world around us is elegiac. Some reviewers bemoan his grammatical style - I doubt they'd have the same quibbles with Faulkner or McCarthy. It's another symptom of just how overlooked [[William Gay]] is in the world. There are few living writers with his delicate and cutting touch with a story.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended.… (més)