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Empty Pockets: New and Selected Stories
Praise for Dale "A world takes place here with extraordinary articulate, fragile, heartfelt." —Robert Creeley "Dale Herd's writing has affected the way I look at the world, as well as opening me up to one more possibility of how to transform the world into words, and his books certainly deserve a place on the highest shelf."— American Book Review From high school love notes to a drug runner's day; from a boy's first fistfight to the unexpected aftermath of a woman's first experience of marijuana, Dale Herd's stories travel the backroads, sending postcards of life as it is lived.
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 12, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 18, 2020
A Masterful Collection
If you’re in search of a substantial collection of Truly American short stories, at once we’ll written, understated, beautifully flowing, heartfelt, honest and wild, look no farther. This is it. You have arrived.
If you’re in search of a substantial collection of Truly American short stories, at once we’ll written, understated, beautifully flowing, heartfelt, honest and wild, look no farther. This is it. You have arrived.
September 29, 2021
A curious collection of short stories.
March 7, 2017
I picked this book up and read through it while on a trans-Atlantic flight. That flight was perhaps the shortest of my life.
One of America's favorite narratives is about Manifest Destiny, the frontier, and the cowboys that made it (as ridiculous as that may be). America is a huge place, and Americans are proud of it.
Herd focuses on stories across America. Zoomed in stories. Not to show the vastness of the country, but to show how little the vastness is. It is a wonderful juxtaposition that is made specifically by the collecting of little bits of people's vast lives (impossibly vast). It does not pretend to be able to tell all of it, it presents itself as it is, as it should be.
A person's life seems little when contrasted with the country, but you don't zoom out that way. Rather, each person's life is seen in little snippets, next to one another. It is this packing of the stories together that form a larger picture. Like pixels on a monitor, each one may show an individual color zoomed in, and you can look at each pixel and understand what color it is showing (if only temporarily, as they are so frequent to change, just like people's lives). But to take a step back and say 'wait a minute', and to see how these colors connect and form a picture is where the true art is. And Herd does that wonderfully.
One of America's favorite narratives is about Manifest Destiny, the frontier, and the cowboys that made it (as ridiculous as that may be). America is a huge place, and Americans are proud of it.
Herd focuses on stories across America. Zoomed in stories. Not to show the vastness of the country, but to show how little the vastness is. It is a wonderful juxtaposition that is made specifically by the collecting of little bits of people's vast lives (impossibly vast). It does not pretend to be able to tell all of it, it presents itself as it is, as it should be.
A person's life seems little when contrasted with the country, but you don't zoom out that way. Rather, each person's life is seen in little snippets, next to one another. It is this packing of the stories together that form a larger picture. Like pixels on a monitor, each one may show an individual color zoomed in, and you can look at each pixel and understand what color it is showing (if only temporarily, as they are so frequent to change, just like people's lives). But to take a step back and say 'wait a minute', and to see how these colors connect and form a picture is where the true art is. And Herd does that wonderfully.
December 23, 2014
This is such a great book. It's full of well written short stories that make you think about life and the world and view it in a different way. Empty Pockets is a great coffee table book; something you can just have on your coffee table and people can flick through and read any stories they want. I highly recommend this book!! Pre-order now on Amazon!! It's released 10th February 2015!!
May 31, 2015
I thought I would give this a try since it got such good reviews even though I'm not a fan of short stories. Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me. I read about 25% and that was more than enough. Just to be clear, my rating is mainly due to the fact that I just find short stories difficult.
July 31, 2015
Review TK.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews