No Relief

by Stephen Dixon

Book by Dixon, Stephen

Genres: Short Stories

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Stephen Dixon was a novelist and short story author who published hundreds of stories in an incredible list of literary journals. Dixon was nominated for the National Book Award twice--in 1991 for Frog and in 1995 for Interstate--and his writing also earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

yes

[Roxy · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Relief is the second book we read in Creative Writing class so far. I liked this a lot more than Waltzing the Cat, even though both followed the same theme of "Argh! I can't seem to find my soulmate!" Stephen Dixon's stories are much more shameless, bold, and unique than Houston's, which is why I liked it. The main characters (even though Dixon changed the name of him several times, it was practically the same guy) was a nutsoe. Nutsoes make everything more interesting. My favorite part was the way the whole thing was written- extremely colloquial, all over the place, and honest with lots of long, complicated sentences. I wouldn't call the writing humorous (it made me laugh out loud once or twice) but it also wasn't sad. It was mostly simply amusing and oddly relatable. I read it in just a few hours. I found no reason to put it down. I was being wildly entertained and had some time open. I definetely want to read more of Dixon in the future!