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Absolute Invention
In his third short story collection, Absolute Invention, Sheldon Lee Compton returns to the realms of imagination belonging to magical realism and fabulist fiction. This collection fires up the world of creative creation he first dealt with in his collection Where Alligators Sleep. You'll encounter a town that beautifies amputation, ghost dinosaurs, dragons that live in ponds, and a man who cures his on loneliness with help from a homuculus, among many other stories and characters you will never find anywhere else. From start to finish you'll get exactly what is absolute invention.
102 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 28, 2019
6 people want to read
About the author
Sheldon Lee Compton
31 books106 followersSheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, novelist, prose poet, and editor from Pike County, Eastern Kentucky.
He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019) and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020).
Compton is also the author of the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019).
His poetry chapbook Podunk Lore was part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018) and his first full-length poetry collection, Runaways, was published in 2021 by Alien Buddha Press.
Compton's novel, Alice, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 as selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance.
In 2021 Cowboy Jamboree Press published The Collected Stories of Sheldon Lee Compton and followed that in 2022, on the anniversary of author Breece D'J Pancake's tragic death on April 8, 1979, Compton's memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound, which the publisher describes as a book that "reflects on his [Compton's] own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake."
In 2012, Compton was a finalist for both the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award and the Still Fiction Award. His writing has been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Wigleaf's Top 50. He was cited twice for Best Small Fictions, in 2015 and 2016, before having his short story "Aversion" included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and his short story "The Good Life" included in Best Small Fictions 2022.
Since 2020, he has taught in the Master of Fine Arts program at Concordia University, St. Paul. He also edits the Poverty House Collective and writes the interview series Chaos Questions for Hobart.
He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019) and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020).
Compton is also the author of the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019).
His poetry chapbook Podunk Lore was part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018) and his first full-length poetry collection, Runaways, was published in 2021 by Alien Buddha Press.
Compton's novel, Alice, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 as selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance.
In 2021 Cowboy Jamboree Press published The Collected Stories of Sheldon Lee Compton and followed that in 2022, on the anniversary of author Breece D'J Pancake's tragic death on April 8, 1979, Compton's memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound, which the publisher describes as a book that "reflects on his [Compton's] own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake."
In 2012, Compton was a finalist for both the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award and the Still Fiction Award. His writing has been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Wigleaf's Top 50. He was cited twice for Best Small Fictions, in 2015 and 2016, before having his short story "Aversion" included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and his short story "The Good Life" included in Best Small Fictions 2022.
Since 2020, he has taught in the Master of Fine Arts program at Concordia University, St. Paul. He also edits the Poverty House Collective and writes the interview series Chaos Questions for Hobart.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 24, 2020
I didn't think this was allowed these days around here. Surely somebody must have told Sheldon Lee Compton at some point (or all the points) not to write such things, not now. I remember in one of Tutuola's stories there was a creature in the woods with a great distended belly and it would go plomp plomp plomp whenever it chased you or went looking for copper bracelets. Open up any of his books and you'll get a whiff.
I'm already off track. Well some of us like what they call weeds...
There is something very wrong, don't you think? Sometimes as you're reading, you start to believe that Mr. Compton has a few screws loose. That's probably some of the times I shiver and tell myself, "Oh, yeah." On edge (Other Ears Look Fine). Duende. Marechera-hammer. Nothing much here for agents and publishers and fads (Lead Like Moses). There's no Rash-ing it and telling you the stories you want to hear---how to save everyone without Jesus or big fish and hidden marijuana gardens and rocket launchers with a firm handshake (including the forgotten granddaughter of your adopted cousin's war veteran twin who keeps secrets...).
Sherwood Anderson had a similar problem: The Man With the Trumpet. So did Hans Christian Andersen (A Dragon Shall Ascend).
There's an old verse somebody's trying to find: you've got to believe in miracles—live them, rather...(In the Tendaguru Beds).
I opened up to Dead's epigraph one night—my eyes spit up in double take right there. Not window dressing. For once. Instead of some award-winning Komunyakaa Child's Play about metal youth in a jeans jacket with band patches (Draft Notes on Life Eternal).
I see here that stories are sparks if you know everything's a spark. Everybody, well not everybody, wants to study things and their books and show how a story represents some position or time period or not, reflects on this and that. Or even better, write one that "makes the change" (a hundred and eighty million years later? okay). But sometimes an asteroid is more than where it came from or the parts that make it up. And it doesn't care about you. But you should still care about it. The brown fish, Mayan pelota, hummingbirds, and the key chain made in China. Don't just read about them in the news.
Variety. Energy. Bursts. No time for plodding. Synapses pop. Cosmos died when your mother was born. Don't waste it on McDonald's. I mean, do you know where the rubber on those tires came from? Used to be something living and growing in the Congo...
This dirty-handed mythmaker (The Wood Witch; Causality Dilemma)—In darkness, awaiting light. Sherwood Anderson, I am surely bringing a copy there to Marion, VA just to make you smile when I read you Fall Gently In The Grey Woods Of Our Death...
I'm already off track. Well some of us like what they call weeds...
There is something very wrong, don't you think? Sometimes as you're reading, you start to believe that Mr. Compton has a few screws loose. That's probably some of the times I shiver and tell myself, "Oh, yeah." On edge (Other Ears Look Fine). Duende. Marechera-hammer. Nothing much here for agents and publishers and fads (Lead Like Moses). There's no Rash-ing it and telling you the stories you want to hear---how to save everyone without Jesus or big fish and hidden marijuana gardens and rocket launchers with a firm handshake (including the forgotten granddaughter of your adopted cousin's war veteran twin who keeps secrets...).
Sherwood Anderson had a similar problem: The Man With the Trumpet. So did Hans Christian Andersen (A Dragon Shall Ascend).
There's an old verse somebody's trying to find: you've got to believe in miracles—live them, rather...(In the Tendaguru Beds).
I opened up to Dead's epigraph one night—my eyes spit up in double take right there. Not window dressing. For once. Instead of some award-winning Komunyakaa Child's Play about metal youth in a jeans jacket with band patches (Draft Notes on Life Eternal).
I see here that stories are sparks if you know everything's a spark. Everybody, well not everybody, wants to study things and their books and show how a story represents some position or time period or not, reflects on this and that. Or even better, write one that "makes the change" (a hundred and eighty million years later? okay). But sometimes an asteroid is more than where it came from or the parts that make it up. And it doesn't care about you. But you should still care about it. The brown fish, Mayan pelota, hummingbirds, and the key chain made in China. Don't just read about them in the news.
Variety. Energy. Bursts. No time for plodding. Synapses pop. Cosmos died when your mother was born. Don't waste it on McDonald's. I mean, do you know where the rubber on those tires came from? Used to be something living and growing in the Congo...
This dirty-handed mythmaker (The Wood Witch; Causality Dilemma)—In darkness, awaiting light. Sherwood Anderson, I am surely bringing a copy there to Marion, VA just to make you smile when I read you Fall Gently In The Grey Woods Of Our Death...
January 1, 2021
Another great collection from a great author. This one touches on a bit of fantasy/magical realism/ poetry. I like this style of Compton's writing as much as his gritty takes of Appalachia life.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews