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With Jazz [Signed]
First published in The New Yorker.
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"When I was a grad student back in the 1980s, Bobbie Ann Mason was considered one of the Southern reps of the so-called “dirty realists” or “Kmart realists.” Her work was praised for its frank, unabashed inclusion of elements then supposedly unusual in American literary fiction — television, brand names, pop culture, apartment complexes, malls, etc. Although she was rightly considered a master of the short story in this mode, reading her work again, I see what a short-sell this view was. Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer indeed, and if she is a realist, she is that best kind of realist: an emotional realist. Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment, or in any moment, and her representations of American life are beautifully compressed and distorted, as all great art must be — to purpose — and that purpose is to embody an organic beauty that melds sound, sense, and substance." (George Saunders)
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"When I was a grad student back in the 1980s, Bobbie Ann Mason was considered one of the Southern reps of the so-called “dirty realists” or “Kmart realists.” Her work was praised for its frank, unabashed inclusion of elements then supposedly unusual in American literary fiction — television, brand names, pop culture, apartment complexes, malls, etc. Although she was rightly considered a master of the short story in this mode, reading her work again, I see what a short-sell this view was. Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer indeed, and if she is a realist, she is that best kind of realist: an emotional realist. Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment, or in any moment, and her representations of American life are beautifully compressed and distorted, as all great art must be — to purpose — and that purpose is to embody an organic beauty that melds sound, sense, and substance." (George Saunders)
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1994
About the author
Bobbie Ann Mason
82 books221 followersBobbie Ann Mason has won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her books include In Country and Feather Crowns. She lives in Kentucky.
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