Dixie Fish

by Andrew Geyer

Dixie Fish does vibrant things with narrative and voice. The novel chronicles the life of Walt Whitman Woodcock, a Southwest Texas ranch boy who comes to Columbia, SC with a seven-point plan for achieving true bliss. Armed with a phonographic memory--everything he hears, he remembers--a job waiting tables at the Dixie Fish, and a fraudulent admission to graduate school, W.W.W. sets about the task of creating nirvana in the capital of South Carolina . . .

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2011

About the author

Andrew Geyer was born in Austin and grew up on a working cattle ranch in Southwest Texas. He lived in Austin again in the 80s and 90s, along with stints in Columbia, South Carolina; Tishomingo, Oklahoma; Lubbock, Texas; Russellville, Arkansas; and Aiken, South Carolina. Geyer has been—among other things—a bartender, a waiter, a busboy, a bellhop, a cashier, a landscaper, a construction worker, a manager at a Birkenstock store, a student, a teacher, and a writer. A lover of the outdoors and an avid runner and canoeist, Geyer has traveled extensively in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and North Africa.

Andrew Geyer’s latest book is the hybrid story cycle Texas 5X5, a collection of twenty-five interconnected fictional narratives by five Texas writers that was published in 2014 by Stephen F. Austin University Press. His story “Fingers,” the opening piece in the collection, won the 2015 Spur Award for Best Short Fiction from the Western Writers of America. He is the co-editor of the composite anthology A Shared Voice, published by Lamar University Press in 2013. His individually authored books are Dixie Fish (2011), a novel; Siren Songs from the Heart of Austin (2010), a story cycle; Meeting the Dead (2007), a novel; and Whispers in Dust and Bone (2003), a story cycle that won the silver medal for short fiction in the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards and a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he currently serves as Professor and Chair of English at the University of South Carolina Aiken and as fiction editor for Concho River Review.

Reviews

[Marybeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s nothing like Southern gothic literature. Its subtlety. Its absurdity. Its twists of persons, places, and things. Flannery O’Connor. Ron Rash. Tennessee Williams. Eudora Welty. William Faulkner. Andrew Geyer.

Geyer’s protagonist, Walt Whitman Woodcock (W.W.W) leaves Southwest Texas in search of his bliss. There are seven components to this bliss. He’s planning to find this bliss in Columbia, SC, in a fish restaurant/bar called Dixie Fish, and in a house on Hope Street. Looking for bliss in Columbia, SC is the first hint that things are going to go dark badly. I know Columbia.

But not before Geyer gives you “a huddle” of characters that are so normal (well, close to normal) that when things start to go dark, you’re just plain slapped upside the head. That’s Southern gothic. Its shadows suck the breath from you. And Geyer’s done a very good job, indeed.