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Wrench
After awarding the book a New American Fiction Prize, Larry Watson said that WRENCH "proves that Wayne Harrison knows what it takes to keep cars and stories running smoothly. He also understands the working of the human heart, and the result is a collection filled with authentic and compelling stories."
David Vann, author of Goat Mountain and Aquarium, said that "Harrison has a gift for evoking working-class lives in all their disorientation, threat, and quietness. And like the later Carver, his focus is on generosity, on moments when lives intersect and expand. Tragedy here isn't meanness but can be the ache of wanting to help someone and having to watch them destroy themselves anyway. These stories are elegant and powerful and ultimately about our resilience.”
About Harrison's debut novel, THE SPARK AND THE DRIVE, Richard Russo said, "There's nothing I enjoy more than entering a fictional world over which an author demonstrates complete mastery"; and the Washington Post said, "Whether or not you love cars, Harrison speaks that special dialect so fluently that anyone with a heart can hear it."
WAYNE HARRISON's fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and his short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Sun, and Salon.com. He teaches at Oregon State University.
David Vann, author of Goat Mountain and Aquarium, said that "Harrison has a gift for evoking working-class lives in all their disorientation, threat, and quietness. And like the later Carver, his focus is on generosity, on moments when lives intersect and expand. Tragedy here isn't meanness but can be the ache of wanting to help someone and having to watch them destroy themselves anyway. These stories are elegant and powerful and ultimately about our resilience.”
About Harrison's debut novel, THE SPARK AND THE DRIVE, Richard Russo said, "There's nothing I enjoy more than entering a fictional world over which an author demonstrates complete mastery"; and the Washington Post said, "Whether or not you love cars, Harrison speaks that special dialect so fluently that anyone with a heart can hear it."
WAYNE HARRISON's fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and his short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Sun, and Salon.com. He teaches at Oregon State University.
184 pages, Paperback
Published July 15, 2017
175 people want to read
About the author
Wayne Harrison
4 books32 followersBefore working as a corrections officer in Rutland, Vermont, Wayne Harrison was an auto mechanic for six years in Waterbury, Connecticut. A first-generation college student, he began in his mid twenties as a criminal justice major before getting turned on to creative writing by mentor and friend Jeffrey Greene. He later received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
His fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Sun, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, FiveChapters, New Letters and other magazines. One story was Notable in Best American 2009 and one received special mention in Pushcart Prizes 2012. His fiction has earned a Maytag fellowship, an Oregon Literary fellowship and a Fishtrap Writing Fellowship. He teaches writing at Oregon State University. His first novel, The Spark and the Drive, will be published by St. Martin's Press in July 2014.
Advance praise for The Spark and the Drive:
"Young men will always idolize the father substitutes who promise them a way out of the familiar. Ever volatile, such relationships fuel some of our best literature, and to this category we must now add Wayne Harrison's gorgeous and grittily poetic debut novel. Set in an auto shop in working class Connecticut at the end of the golden age of the American muscle car, The Spark and the Drive has all the horsepower and headlong beauty of the extraordinary machines at its center."
– Ann Packer, best-selling author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Swim Back to Me
"This novel vividly renders the cult-like world of muscle car enthusiasts, but the author's ultimate concerns are the sparks and misfires of the human heart. Wayne Harrison is an exciting new voice in American fiction."
– Ron Rash, best-selling author of The Cove and Serena
"Wayne Harrison knows, like no one I’ve ever read before, how to describe what goes on underneath the hood of a car. But more, much more, he knows what goes underneath our skins. He knows all about our deepest desires and what we’ll do to attain them. The Spark and the Drive is as intense and well-written a love story as you’ll find. I’ll be in the grip of Justin's – and Mary Ann’s – story for months to come." – Peter Orner, award-winning author of Esther Stories and Love and Shame and Love
His fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Sun, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, FiveChapters, New Letters and other magazines. One story was Notable in Best American 2009 and one received special mention in Pushcart Prizes 2012. His fiction has earned a Maytag fellowship, an Oregon Literary fellowship and a Fishtrap Writing Fellowship. He teaches writing at Oregon State University. His first novel, The Spark and the Drive, will be published by St. Martin's Press in July 2014.
Advance praise for The Spark and the Drive:
"Young men will always idolize the father substitutes who promise them a way out of the familiar. Ever volatile, such relationships fuel some of our best literature, and to this category we must now add Wayne Harrison's gorgeous and grittily poetic debut novel. Set in an auto shop in working class Connecticut at the end of the golden age of the American muscle car, The Spark and the Drive has all the horsepower and headlong beauty of the extraordinary machines at its center."
– Ann Packer, best-selling author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Swim Back to Me
"This novel vividly renders the cult-like world of muscle car enthusiasts, but the author's ultimate concerns are the sparks and misfires of the human heart. Wayne Harrison is an exciting new voice in American fiction."
– Ron Rash, best-selling author of The Cove and Serena
"Wayne Harrison knows, like no one I’ve ever read before, how to describe what goes on underneath the hood of a car. But more, much more, he knows what goes underneath our skins. He knows all about our deepest desires and what we’ll do to attain them. The Spark and the Drive is as intense and well-written a love story as you’ll find. I’ll be in the grip of Justin's – and Mary Ann’s – story for months to come." – Peter Orner, award-winning author of Esther Stories and Love and Shame and Love
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 24, 2019
WRENCH seems like one of those truly outstanding collections that, for whatever reason, managed to slip under the radar. Winner of the New American Fiction Prize and finalist for the Oregon Book Award, it's a solid, beautifully crafted bunch of stories about folks trying to move through their days in difficult circumstances. Blue collar, working class fiction with little use for narrative tricks or structural pyrotechnics; Harrison makes this writing thing look easy, even when it most assuredly isn't. Glad I read this one, and I hope it finds its way into more people's hands. It's absolutely worth a read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review