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Moments of Light
MOMENTS OF LIGHT
proves that the mythic powers of the balladeer and the story teller survive even in this fragmented and unmysterious day. In the eleven stories gathered here, Fred Chappell engages and entertains our minds and sends us away singing in our hearts, more knowing, more understanding of ourselves.
Fred Chappell's voice is sure and his vision is keen. As Annie Dillard writes in the "These are living, vivid narratives whose rich actions lodge in the world-wise and gentle Mr. Cody blowing up a tree; Norma, the drunk in love with innocence, quoting Shakespeare's sonnets in her ruined rooms; young Rosemary in the hayloft sticking her underpants under the hay; Mrs. Franklin pleased and bewildered at her own dinner party; and Stovebolt Johnson playing the blues in the Blue Dive, carrying himself in the world so carefully, with such thoughtfulness and controlled pain. These stories are as real as days."
MOMENTS OF LIGHT reflects the moral nature of man throughout history. In the first story, "The Three Boxes," Chappell writes, as only a poet or a philosopher would, "The lone man was alone"; with that he begins at once to sound the major themes of the book from the creation through the mostly innocent vision of the Enlightenment to this dark and wearisome time when Stovebolt Johnson, the balladeer in "Blue Dive", works a tavern for beers. The title story points up the end of man's intellectual innocence and the shortcomings of reason alone as the composer Haydn peers through a telescope at the fearsome beauty of the universe and sees dread and hope alike reborn.
Fred Chappell is the Poet Laureate of North Carolina. BOSON BOOKS also offers DAGON , THE INKLING and THE GAUDY PLACE by Fred Chappell.
Fred Chappell's voice is sure and his vision is keen. As Annie Dillard writes in the "These are living, vivid narratives whose rich actions lodge in the world-wise and gentle Mr. Cody blowing up a tree; Norma, the drunk in love with innocence, quoting Shakespeare's sonnets in her ruined rooms; young Rosemary in the hayloft sticking her underpants under the hay; Mrs. Franklin pleased and bewildered at her own dinner party; and Stovebolt Johnson playing the blues in the Blue Dive, carrying himself in the world so carefully, with such thoughtfulness and controlled pain. These stories are as real as days."
MOMENTS OF LIGHT reflects the moral nature of man throughout history. In the first story, "The Three Boxes," Chappell writes, as only a poet or a philosopher would, "The lone man was alone"; with that he begins at once to sound the major themes of the book from the creation through the mostly innocent vision of the Enlightenment to this dark and wearisome time when Stovebolt Johnson, the balladeer in "Blue Dive", works a tavern for beers. The title story points up the end of man's intellectual innocence and the shortcomings of reason alone as the composer Haydn peers through a telescope at the fearsome beauty of the universe and sees dread and hope alike reborn.
Fred Chappell is the Poet Laureate of North Carolina. BOSON BOOKS also offers DAGON , THE INKLING and THE GAUDY PLACE by Fred Chappell.
- GenresFiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
3 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
About the author
Fred Chappell
106 books120 followersFred Davis Chappell retired after 40 years as an English professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002. He attended Duke University.
His 1968 novel Dagon, which was named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Academie Française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic.
His literary awards include the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
His 1968 novel Dagon, which was named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Academie Française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic.
His literary awards include the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
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