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 In France, Eric Miles Williamson is known as “The Erudite Bukowski.” In America, he has been called “The Last Beat.”
Best known for his internationally praised and stunning novels of the blue-collar world, with the publication of 14 Fictional Positions, Williamson now shows his readers he is much more than a chronicler of the lives of workers and America’s downtrodden. Williamson may have triumphantly captured the blue-collar experience in his novels, East Bay Grease, Two-Up, and Welcome to Oakland, but 14 Fictional Positions shows us that he, above all, is a painstakingly careful author deeply entrenched in the history of his medium. Former editor of Chelsea and Gulf Coast, now editor of American Book Review, The Texas Review, and Boulevard, longtime member of the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and a college teacher since 1984, Williamson may have humble beginnings, but he is now a powerful force in America’s literary establishment.
Each of the stories in 14 Fictional Positions snaps with precision and intelligence. In “Hope, Among Other Vices and Virtues,” we find two men drinking “in manly tandem” whose women loathe them as much as they love them. “I love you,” says Agnes. “You are everything in a man I want to change.” “H A N G M A N,” set evidently in Brazil, weaves “a leaf-fringed legend” of two lovers whose lives are dictated by the formal arrangement of words and literary references. In “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young” Williamson shows himself to be an aphorist of the caliber of George Bernard Shaw, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oscar Wilde, both witty and erudite. “The Teachings of Don B.” is a ghost story unlike any other in the English language, humorous and sad, insightful and playful, an homage to the foremost of Williamson’s many prominent mentors, who include Harold Bloom, Denis Donoghue, Ronald Sukenick, Jacques Derrida, Edward Dorn, and, of course, the ghost of Donald Barthelme.
Twenty-five years in the making, 14 Fictional Positions is a landmark short story collection, and confirmation that Eric Miles Williamson is an author whose energy, talent, and wisdom place him among the very best authors at work today in America.
WHAT THE CRITICS WROTE about 14 Fictional Positions:
"In his impassioned preface to his inventive first short story collection, novelist Williamson acknowledges his debt to Coover, Wilde, and Barthelme. Like his mentors, he masters a variety of structures and voices, including aphorisms, fables, collages, and traditional narratives channeled through golfers, drifters, lovers, and the soon-to-be hanged…Part homage to Williamson’s inspirations and altogether a love song to writing, this rough-hewn yet wise and hilarious collection will, like the literary ghosts it conjures, haunt readers long after the last page."—Booklist
about East Bay Grease:
“Williamson’s writing becomes transcendent. His prose cuts loose in torrid rhythms that evoke the peril and exuberance of jazz.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Le livre d’Eric Miles Williamson n’est pas un polar, malgré les morts violentes qui le parsèment, mais un splendide roman noir. Ce premier roman possèune force extraordinaire.”
—Paris Match
“A confident debut, and an arresting, often harrowing read.”
—The London Times
about Two-Up:
“…a little like falling face-first against a concrete slab. It puts you in close touch with cold reality and could even change you forever.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“Some novelists enter readers’ brains subtly. Not Eric Miles Williamson. He enters noisily, with a jackhammer. Williamson, the bard of the blue-collar laborer.”
—The Kansas City Star
“Two-Up is a rare work of fiction whose sharp realism and dark center recall the sagas of an earlier, more authentic sort. Williamson’s triumph is to open up one of the great currents of American literature, the saga of the American worker, a bloody, battered, disabused hero. Two-Up is an effort where words never fail.”
—The Bloomsbury Review
about Oakland, Jack London, and Me:
“It’s not just because both writers are from the slums of Oakland, California, that Williamson is such a passionate advocate for London. His white-hot scorn for literary fashion lights up nearly every sentence here. One of the least politically correct texts of our time.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
“Fans of White Fang and The Iron Heel will rejoice. The deconstructionists, on the other hand…As if Norman Mailer had devoured Derrida and spit out the bones.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Williamson is most effective in blasting the pretentious, theory-ridden, politically (if not ethically) correct academic Establishment. And his aim hits the target dead center in a tough but honest, often brilliant indictment of current literary critics with their supercilious and jargonish posturing.”
—Earle Labor, editor of The Portable Jack London
and about Welcome to Oakland:
“This powerful slice of greasy, grimy life is highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Eric Miles Williamson is the mystic on the street corner.”
—East Bay Literary Examiner
“Most readers will veer away from Eric Miles Williamson’s Welcome to Oakland the way they would from a street gang descending on their car with tire irons and handguns….Williamson gives a contemporary turn on a literary genre pioneered by Hugo, Dostoyevsky and Céline, and in the American canon by Kerouac, Burroughs and Bukowski….Ignoring Williamson would be a mistake.”
—The Washington Post |
