Drought & Say What You Like

by Debra Di Blasi, Debra DiBlasi

Debra Di Blasi writes from the heart of the Postmodern American Gothic. A native Missourian, she plumbs the depths of psychosexual repercussion and searing sentiment behind the region’s parched, pitchfork-bearing façade. Though her writing has been widely published in literary journals,  Drought , paired here with a second novella,  Say What You Like , is a stunning first foray into book form. In  Drought , Di Blasi dissects a young couple’s relationship on a failing cattle ranch, allowing us to see all the subcutaneous mental and physical violence they endure. As unceasing heat kills the couple’s livestock, Di Blasi focuses a science writer’s exactitude and a poet’s charged restraint on the human cost of rural tragedy.  Say What You Like  offers an even more ruthless examination of a couple’s deep-seated pain. Pared down to short, numbered sections, the relationship of a nameless “He” and “She” is laid bare by Di Blasi’s unflinching skill with the scalpel. Debra Di Blasi is a daring young writer of the top order.

Genres: Literature

89 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

**PREORDER NOW: BIRTH OF EROS, my new explicit Crime/Literary Fiction/Historical/Post-WW2 novel. Pub date November 1, 2022, www.kernpunktpress.com I'm the author of 11 books, including winner 2019 C&R Press Nonfiction Award for Selling the Farm (Sept. 2020), You Are What Is Written (Aug. 2020, coauthored with National Book Award Finalist in Poetry, H. L. Hix); Prayers of An Accidental Nature (Coffee House Press), The Jiri Chronicles (University of Alabama Press/FC2), TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER: An Oral History of the New America: #AlternativeFictions (Black Scat Books) and Drought & Say What You Like (New Directions), winner of Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award, and adapted to film that won a host of national and international awards. Short writing has appeared in Big Other, Boulevard, Chelsea, The Collagist, Copper Nickle, Entropy Magazine, The Iowa Review, Kestrel, The Los Angeles Review, New Letters, New South Fiction, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, Triquarterly, Wigleaf, Wayne Literary Review, among many others, and in notable anthologies of innovative writing. Learn more at www.debradiblasi.com

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two short stories about difficult relationships, existing in the space between fiction and poetry. Sparse minimalist pieces that are well crafted. Maybe too well crafted, too deliberate and overwrought. The symbolism is sometimes too much, complete with images of a female praying mantis ripping off the head of the male mantis, I mean who hasn't seen that metaphor before? And rain, lots of rain and hot days and the smell of death. Foreshadowing, too much foreshadowing, as if we need all these weather reports. Bring on the rain already. I'll just take my chances, I won't even bring my yellow umbrella. Not enough flesh on the bone for me to really bite into the story or the characters. And, on the other extreme, not minimalist enough for me to appreciate the gaps between the logic as I like to do in poetry. Everything was too easy, there was no stretching there between the rungs.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Debra Di Blasi quickly becomes my favorite of what I'll call the sparse, or whatever you'd like to call the opposite of the baroque. If you've been feeding on the fat, take a break with this lean. It'll do you well.

Debra Di Blasi unEARTH'd in Divergent Trajectories: Interviews with Innovative Fiction Writers.

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relationships are mysterious and elemental, as intense and inscrutable as the weather, or so suggests Ms. Di Blasi. And she does so with great economy, wit, and--above all--style, dry and shifty with a rich vein of darkness--natural but unsettling in its clarity of presentation--undergirding it all. Both novellas are told in the form of short snippets of text which are pithy and allusive. They revolve around toxic pairings of men and women that possess the inevitability of all great tragedy. We humans, as revealed here, are governed not just by material physics but also by a socio-emotional physics, wants and whims that are perverse and irresistible in equal measure. The way she exposes this oh-so-human push and pull is exacting and, if not moving, rather engrossing. It is impossible to look away.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book with serious build up and impact! A southern writer, her work is of the grotesque style from the south, it is a love story that is twisted and tragic, but in a totally unassuming way. It is a quick book to read, and stays with me years later. A good book to reread. Excellent sense of place. It is poetry but in short sections like prose poems with some dialogue. Whatever you do keep reading it, it's worth it.

[Michelle Hogmire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful example of successful minimalist writing. "Say What You Like" is more powerful than "Drought," in the way that Di Blasi captures the specific experience of staying in a toxic relationship through universal "man" and "woman" protagonists, although the nature imagery in "Drought" is particularly stunning. Horribly underrated author.

[Melanie Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are my favorite novellas ever. For some reason, I had the audacity to tell Debra DiBlasi at an &NOW writing festival in 2007 that I had purchased her book the day before, read it all in the tub that night, and I thought she did a good job with the short form. Who the hell am I to say that to her? Her work is amazing. Also, doesn't "the author does a good job" sound very ENG 101? Heh.

On the other hand, me beings so forward has led to our current friendship, so I'm incredibly grateful!

I've taught this book a few times in college courses. I've re-read it several times. I'm surprised how the work says so much in so little.

[Barbara Collins · Rating 1 out of 5]

really don't like how the book was written. easy read but not my cup of tea
really have stopped reading this
like I wanted to hear about worms in cows..